The biggest coronavirus scare in the metal world was the European Testament, Exodus, Death Angel tour which just winded down as coronavirus was hitting. What ended up happening was Death Angel drummer Will Carroll spent two weeks in the hospital before recovering. Some crew members, Testament frontman Chuck Billy and bassist Steve Digiorgio, as well as Exodus guitarist Gary Holt, have also tested positive for the virus, but all have seemingly made a recovery.
In a recent interview with Decibel, Carroll went into detail about what happened to him, and revealed that he actually started feeling sick the last three or four nights of the tour: “Near the end of the tour, a couple of the guys were really sick. I must have caught it from them because the last three or four nights of the tour I knew I had it. I felt terrible.”
In a later interview, Testament's Chuck Billy was asked by Hot Metal if he thought Carroll should have said something to the rest of the crew on the tour about feeling ill, and that he may have inadvertently spread the virus to all the other folks that got sick. When Billy was asked if he knew Carroll was sick, Billy replied:
“No. Because it was the last three days, I think he said, of the tour [that he first started feeling sick]. But no, he didn’t say he was sick or had it or thought he had it, but, you know, I think he should have said something. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was cool… I mean, he could have got stuck in Europe for a long time. With his problems, he could have been on a ventilator in Europe. But, again, to think that he was ill, just to get on that plane and spread it himself if he was contagious, that’s kind of… a little wrong.”
Chuck Billy was asked if he knew how he contracted the virus, to which he responded:
“I don’t. But being the band, we are amongst ourselves — the three bands. We really didn’t go and walk through the crowds or nothing. So we were isolated to ourselves. So if Will did get us sick, maybe it was that last hug on stage, that last show when Will was around us all. I don’t know — if he thought he was really ill at that point. Because we didn’t have a lot of public interaction with each other — it was mostly just all three bands and crews. So, we don’t know. It could have been that last night. Or it could have been at the airport, because some of the people on the bus didn’t get sick, who slept in the same areas with us and were really close to us. So maybe we got it at the airport that last night. Maybe we got it on the plane coming home. We just don’t know. But we do know that we all came down [with it] around the same time. I think if Will was sick first, if they were sick first, maybe they must have gave it to us — I don’t know — but the rest of our band and crew started feeling it, like, a day after we got home.”
You can certainly sympathize with Billy for feeling this way, but with the trouble that Carroll had to go through and all of them, hopefully they can just let bygones be bygones in this case.
[via Lambgoat]
