For more than four decades, Chuck Billy has been one of thrash metal’s most recognisable voices.
As the Testament frontman prepares to release his upcoming memoir, Holding My Breath: The Two Testaments Of Chuck Billy, he’s reflecting on a very different battle, the one that nearly cost him his life.
Speaking in a recent interview with Dr. Music, Billy discussed how surviving a rare form of cancer fundamentally changed his outlook, shifting him away from organised religion and towards a broader sense of spirituality.
Raised in a Catholic household, Billy said religion played a major role throughout his childhood and teenage years, after years of touring the world and reconnecting with his Native American heritage eventually opened new perspectives.
A new perspective
After being diagnosed with germ cell seminoma in the early 2000s, Billy combined conventional medical treatment with traditional Native American healing practices, experiences that would leave a lasting impact (per Blabbermouth).
“After I experienced the whole Native thing and just these unbelievable, mind-blowing things that I experienced, and the outcome and beating it, I could sit there and go, ‘Okay, thank God, thank whatever,'” Billy explained.
“But I think spirituality — it turned me more spiritual instead of religious.”
More than two decades after being declared cancer-free, Billy says that mindset continues to shape his daily life:
“My house is covered with different gods from any faith, statues around my house. I don’t have one god in my house. I have every form, because I’m a spiritual guy now.”
Billy’s cancer diagnosis itself came through an extraordinary series of coincidences, after unexpectedly selling his home and moving to a new area, he visited a doctor for what would become one of the first thorough health checks of his adult life.
That appointment revealed a tumour in his chest roughly the size of a squash, growing near his heart and restricting his breathing, a year after treatment, Billy was declared cancer free in 2002.
Many of those experiences will form the backbone of Holding My Breath: The Two Testaments Of Chuck Billy, which arrives on November 10th, the memoir promises to explore both the rise of Testament during thrash metal’s golden era and Billy’s remarkable fight for survival, recovery and self discovery.
Pre order your copy here.
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