There are not many guitarists in Thrash Metal who can compete with Testament’s maestro Alex Skolnick in terms of sound, feel and execution and his performances in “Dark Roots Of The Earth” have been an integral ingredient in the album’s enormous success. The evening of the 30^th of November I found myself in the backstage area of the London Koko talking to this guitar genius about the band’s tenth studio album, the upcoming headlining US tour, Jazz music and how it contrasts with the world of Metal, as well as getting some of Alex’s personal thoughts on his evolution as a musician and his relationship with his band mates. Want to find out why Testament are one of the most accomplished bands in Metal? Read on….

By Yiannis (John) Stefanis.

Hi Alex, it’s really great to be able to finally meet you in person. I have been a fan of the band since day one but somehow I never managed to arrange an interview with any of you guys before. More so, there was a time that I was led to believe that I would never have the pleasure to speak with you in your capacity as a member of Testament so this is really special indeed.

Alex: Great!

Anyway, here we are in the year 2012 with you back in the fold and with more great music created by you guys and everything seemingly being in your favour. How do you see and judge the current situation?

Alex: You know, the whole thing happened very naturally, it wasn’t planned really. We initially did these reunion shows (note: Alex is referring to a brief European tour which took place in 2005) and they got a very good reception and that is when we did this live DVD (note: “Live In London”) which was actually filmed here at the Koko and that also received such a great response that it made sense for us to do a new album. That album was “The Formation Of Damnation” (2008) which won a Golden God award and led to us touring with bands like Judas Priest, Heaven And Hell, Slayer and Megadeth, so suddenly we were back and then we had to do another record. Everything happened very naturally and except for us saying “ok, we need to be recording by that time” we said “ok, we are not going to put any pressure on ourselves and see what happens”. I think that this approach that we chose to follow made things much better. I mean, in both cases, our fans would have liked for new material to have come out much sooner but because the necessary time was taken on it, that is why the album was received as good as it has.

As I am sure you have gathered by now, I am an 80s kid – I grew up listening to Thrash Metal specifically and I am not the only person from my age group who believes that the whole “The Big Four” classification was slightly unfair. There are many other bands such as yourselves, Forbidden, Sacred Reich and many others which I can name in a split second which, at the time, could have done much better with proper support from the labels. Is the fact that you are now getting major attention again really all about timing? How do you explain that?

Alex: I think that there is a need for it…I think that a few things have happened. I think that Testament are a more developed band and we are capable of doing albums that are more realised as a result of our experience as musicians. This experience is very beneficial to the band and imperative for the creation of a good album. I also believe that being apart for the amount of time that we were also had a lot to do with it. We have existed outside this band and, in my case, I went and did other things…I still do other things. When I came back I think that I brought with me a lot of the experience form the rest of the world (laughs), seeing how things work outside Metal – especially with regards the production of things, thus helping with the recording process. Now, you take some of the other bands which have been around for a long time like the Big Four for instance. I am a fan of all those bands and a friend with all those bands. Some of them have experimented a lot and some of them have been so successful that they have no interest in exploring their old sound at all and the most obvious of these bands is Metallica. They have no interest in going down that road. I think that they are doing some cool stuff but I think that what’s happened with this band is that we really wanted to capture some of the original energy and do it right, because we thought that we never did it right before. There have been great moments and great potential and so there was a hunger there but also there is our fans base who wanted to hear such music from us again. People hear the classic bands which do not sound the same anymore and then they hear all the bands which came later and there are some very good bands amongst them of which we ourselves are fans but which sound different than us. I believe that there is something about having been in that place (note: San Francisco Bay Area) at that time that we were in which gives you that very special sound which you really had to have been there in order to capture.

What I know as a long term fan is that Testament have managed to keep up with all the changes that took place in a Metal scene and incorporate a few different elements along the way but without jeopardising their style which is a pretty difficult thing to achieve really. If you asked me back in 1988 if I would have liked Chuck to use Death Metal style vocals the answer would have probably been ‘no’ but the times when he did choose to go down that path he did so with much success.

Alex: Yeah, and now he is not just doing Death Metal vocals! There was a time when he was using them a lot and even he doesn’t really like to sing like that anymore but when it’s used cleverly then it makes a lot of sense. So yeah, I think that you’re right; experimenting has helped the band to be where it is now.

Why is it that “Dark Roots Of The Earth” managed to become one of the highest charting albums in the history of Nuclear Blast in America, and that was not the case with “The Formation Of Damnation”? As far as I’m concerned they are both equally good albums so I cannot see why one would succeed where the other one has failed, so to speak. What is it about “Dark Roots Of The Earth” that make it worthy of such distinction?

Alex: I think that Nuclear Blast deserves some credit for handling its promotion. A lot of it, and this is not a surprise, a lot of measures of success in music don’t have to with the music itself. A lot of it has to do with just pure business decisions. It’s no disrespect to either of the albums. They (note: Nuclear Blast) came up with some clever promotional ideas. Everything was timed right, they put out one song on YouTube “True American Hate” and did a video for it which got everybody excited, the album was streaming the day it came out…they did a bunch of other things that were good. It was just the right amount of advertising and the fact that we were building off a good album. The period in between the latest Testament album that I did and “The Formation Of Damnation” was a good nine years during which I was not even doing this genre of music (laughs) so I think that nobody knew what to expect but with our next album (note: “Dark Roots Of The Earth”) we had already proven that we could do a good album. So, I think that it is very different to come out with an album that is following a good release rather than coming out with an album that follows a good album but which was done a few years ago. Plus we have a totally different line up now so…yes; I believe that with “The Formation Of Damnation” people were waiting for us to prove ourselves and with “Dark Roots Of The Earth” we have already done so.

I remember reading one of your interviews two or three years ago during which you mentioned something along the lines that you left Testament as a boy and you came back to them as a man.

Alex: Yeah, that just sounds about right (laughs).

Well, that is certainly accurate when we talk about timing! What I want to emphasise is the fact that I initially felt slightly sceptical with regards your return as I could not see why a man who chose to study Jazz and become involved in styles of music that are more technically demanding than Metal would want to come back to a more, dare I say, straight forward and basic style of music. Every time I saw the band performing live these last few years, however, I saw in you a man who is really enjoying being on stage and that is not something anyone can fake. The stage, at the end of the day, has always been and always will be the ultimate test.

Alex: You are quite right, the stage is indeed the ultimate test and I also take a lot of pride in playing live. Stuff that you hear in our studio records, not only do I do them live but I actually do them better (laughs). Performing with passion in front of an audience is something that cannot be faked! Proving that was part of what I wanted to do. Metal is a much more street based music, it’s not a style of music performed by traditionally educated musicians but it was something I wanted to do and prove myself through. I mean, I know a lot of very well educated musicians that like Metal and even some that play it on the side. I know people who are very respected in the Jazz world, people who play with the very elite, the cream of the crop of Jazz, like the drummer Ari Hoenig who plays with the pianist Kenny Werner or the guitarist Mike Moreno that I know who was a Slayer fan. I mean, he plays with some of the top names in the Jazz world. Anyway, what I am trying to say here is that you can have more than just one side as a musician but, for some reason, traditionally in Metal it has always been all or nothing, and even Hard Rock! I always expected…like when I joined the band I was more influenced by guys in Glam Metal bands because as guitar players they were really good.Warren DeMartini from Ratt or George Lynch from Dokken and of course Ozzy’s guitar players and then Eddie Van Halen, but it was all more L.A-based. I always thought that all those guys would go on to do really different and interesting stuff but George Lynch did the Lynch Mob and with all due respect, the music was not all that different than Dokken. Warren DeMartini eventually rejoined Ratt and when I heard him I always thought that he had the potential to do so much and then, of course, you had Randy Rhoads who had plans to go back to University and learn more, so I thought that I want to be somebody who can do that and that one day I would be behind the Metal thing completely. I had to for a while, just to really start thinking…it was really like learning a different language and now I am bilingual.

Now when you need to perform songs like “Disciples Of The Watch” and “The Preacher” do you find yourself looking at ways of giving us with a more modern and technically challenging version of the said songs in a live environment?

Alex: Oh, absolutely! I just find that I have so much more freedom. When I recorded those solos originally, I was playing as deep as I could possibly play and I remember thinking that I was stretching myself to my limits. I would work very hard and practice very hard just to be able to play those songs live but now it really is effortless and I can even play around themes by adding improvisations and lift things up a little bit. I just feel much stronger musically.

With that all important knowledge at hand, how do you feel about playing again with your old comrades and how do you evaluate their skills and capabilities? Do you often find yourself going through an evaluation process every time you play with them?

Alex: Hmm…yeah but I try to separate it. I mean, these guys are amazing at being Testament – nobody else can be in Testament and nobody else can sound like they do…hmm…would I hire them to play with me a gig for a Broadway production (laughs) or a Jazz piano show? Probably not, but they do Testament very well and I think that it’s a little bit…it’s almost like Folk music or Blues. Those types of music might be easy to learn, a lot of people can play Folk and Blues and at least pull it off, but very few can establish their own sound – a sound that is unmistakable and which has a certain quality and I do believe that these guys have that and the playing in this band has that. And, of course, we’ve had a few different drummers in the band, quite a Spinal Tap situation (laughs), but the core elements that people are hearing now I think, you know, Erik’s riffs, Chuck’s vocals and my solos, those elements are there and to a lot of people that is Testament.

I hope that I don’t sound too ungrateful to you as I am absolutely delighted to have you guys playing here tonight but I have to admit that I felt quite envious when I saw next year’s US headlining tour being advertised. Testament, Overkill and Flotsam and Jetsam on the same day? You can understand why I was practically drooling in front of my PC! I immediately though to myself “why cannot they bring this line up in Europe”?

Alex: This will be indeed a great tour and you never know; if it goes well enough we might just bring that show inEurope.

On that same note – with you being the busy man that you are I assumed that Testament’s tour schedule would not be too heavy but, from what I have seen advertised, you have quite a few gigs lined up, right? Do you not go through a stricter selection process these days?

Alex: It is not really up to us as we have agencies that book the shows. We do have talks where we recommend certain things to them, we do tell them when we like a venue for instance and we do like this place (note: Koko) a lot. There is a venue that we played on our last tour inDetroit, not the nicest city (laughs), and this venue that we played is just horrible (laughs). We hate it – we hate playing there and we do say that to our agents but sometimes that’s the only place to play inDetroit so we have to go for it. We always give our feedback to the agents but on this tour that we are doing now inEurope, most of the venues that we play are really good – places that we hope to play again.

Alex, I have just been given the signal that I sadly need to wrap this interview up as you have more to do prior to the show. Thank you very much for your time and I hope you like tonight’s show.

Alex: Thank you – I appreciate that.

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