In a new interview with Denny Spinks of Rock N’ Roll Medicine, Chuck Billy, the frontman of San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal veterans TESTAMENT, spoke about his upcoming memoir, “Holding My Breath: The Two Testaments Of Chuck Billy”, which is due on November 10, 2026 via Permuted Press. Regarding why now was the right time for him to tell his story, the 63-year-old singer, who was diagnosed with germ cell seminoma, a rare type of cancer, a quarter century ago, said: “At first I was approached to do the book. I didn’t seek it out because I’m a private guy. I haven’t really talked about a lot of my younger years and a lot of that part. It’s always about the band and what’s going on with the band. And so I thought, looking back, now having the opportunity and looking back and talking about or reflecting, especially once I started doing the book and looking at it as really therapeutic almost, and especially thinking, ‘God, okay,’ I was — I don’t know — must have been 17, 18, staring at that BLACK SABBATH record wanting to… I don’t know if it was music I wanted to get into. Maybe I just wanted to be a celebrity, ’cause I was a sports athlete. I wanted either to play sports or be a musician — not necessarily lead singer. I could play guitar back then. But that was kind of it, and I was, like, ‘I would do anything in my life to be successful,’ even if I had to live to, like, 38. And that was kind of how it all started. And so that’s kind of when it all happened with my cancer diagnosis at 38. I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this thing that happened when I was real young is actually, coming to happen.’ Yeah, it’s just a trippy thing.”

Chuck continued: “When I started talking about writing the book, I thought, ‘Okay, well, shit, it’s trippy because there’s two mes, two Chucks‘ — the Chuck before I got sick and that whole years of starting the band up to that point, and then the Chuck that beat cancer and the band that reunited back together and started writing all these other records going forward was a different Chuck and different TESTAMENT.’ So it was kind of an interesting pivot point of my story, but I kind of look at it and go, ‘God, it all lays back on that 38 pact thing,’ and here, shit, and I thought it was gonna happen. It didn’t happen. But what happened was all these bands got back together, and, wow, what a trip. It’s almost like you took one for the team to get shit started again. It’s just this weird thing. So I thought it’s interesting, especially at a time now. I’m in my 60s, and I see so many new bands, so many promoters, ’cause they gotta find who’s next, who’s the next headliners, who’s the next generation. There’s a lot of traffic, a lot of shit going on, and we’ve had a great, successful 40 years, and we’re doing good and making great music. But I thought it was maybe an interesting time for me to kind of capture the story of the two sides of me and the two sides of the band. And especially the pivot point because the route I went to beat my cancer with the chemotherapy and the native healings with all the healers I went to was mind-blowing. And every time I tell it and think about it, the things I went through, it’s unreal to me almost. And I thought I need to document and talk about that. I’ve talked about it in interviews and stuff, but I thought I really need to lay it down in the book and go back to the beginning and how it all started before I met Charlie, the first healer. So it was just something, I think — it was the right time. I had time to do it, and it was the right time to do it. I didn’t know what to expect. I thought, ‘Shit, man, I don’t got two years to write this book. I’m gonna be busy as hell touring.’ But I had some help. I had a guy, David Erickson, help me out, and we talked on the phone every day for, like, three or four months, and just chopped it up. And that was — like I said, again, it was therapeutic, man.”

Asked if the book starts at the age of 38 when he was first diagnosed with cancer, Chuck said: “The book starts pretty much when I’m, like, eight months old. The whole premise of holding my breath starts when I was eight months old. That’s kind of where my story begins, and that’s kind of where the ‘Holding My Breath’ title comes from, and kind of is the theme that carries out throughout my life — in my personal life and in the business and in the band — that phrase of holding my breath. I don’t wanna give it all away, but that’s kind of what starts from then, all the way through, all my young years before I got into the band. And what I did to train and be in a band before I got into the band. It’s all those years. All the stupid, crazy drug years and stupidity and just dumb things we did when we were young, and all the dumb drug stuff we did and we survived. And that’s the part you don’t get interviewed about when you’re talking about the band.”