Testament Adds Seven Spires Drummer Chris Dovas for First Six Shows of Tour

Lombardo rejoined Testament in February following the departure of Gene Hoglan. He told SiriusXM’s Liquid Metal that he reached out to the Testament camp the same day that the band announced it was splitting with Hoglan.

“I was still asleep, and my wife, she just said, ‘Hey, Gene just left Testament,'” Lombardo recalled. “And she’s been always telling me, ‘Man, I can’t wait for you guys to get together for that ‘Gathering’ reunion.’ ‘Cause we had been talking about this two and a half, three years ago — before the pandemic. And so I immediately — I didn’t even get my other eye open and I was texting Chuck. I said, ‘Hey, man, what’s going on?’ I don’t know exactly what I mentioned in my text, but it was very simple, ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ And he immediately called me back. And I remember Tiffany [Chuck’s wife] was on the phone; Chuck was on the phone. We were, like, ‘Hey.’ It was a great come-together moment, like, ‘Hey, here we go. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.'”(Blabbermouth)

Soon after Lombardo joined the group, Singer Chuck Billy told the WSOU 89.5 FM radio station that he didn’t expect him to focus only on Testament: “I’m not holding my breath that Dave just is in Testament only but we’re gonna have to kind of maneuver around what happens,” he said. “But then again, this is the beginning of the relationship. We might be busy enough and he might just be happy enough just working with us and it works out. So we’re just kind of taking it one day at a time, one tour at a time. We know he’s gonna be with us for the next three tours — we know that for sure — so we’ll see what happens after that.”