TESTAMENT Guitarist ERIC PETERSON: 'We're Survivors'

James Ridley of Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with TESTAMENT guitarist Eric Peterson. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the current metal scene:

"It's a really good time for metal right now. The scene is really growing. There are a lot of great bands to play with. There's older bands like JUDAS PRIEST and BLACK SABBATH still kicking ass, plus bands that came through with us in the thrash scene and a lot of new bands mixing it all together and making it more modern. So it's a lot of fun."

"Heavy music is never going to go away; it just comes and goes in spurts. This whole resurgence is because of a whole new generation of kids understanding metal. I think there were kids that were 11 not really digging on the music, but now that they're 17 or 18 they're total metalheads and loving it! I know my parents turned me onto BLACK SABBATH and LED ZEPPELIN and stuff when I was young, but it wasn't until I was in my late teens that I really got into it."

On TESTAMENT's current setlist:

"It's cool getting up there and playing the heavier older songs that we kind of stopped playing because we'd played them so much and we were trying to be more melodic and more 'musician-y' or whatever. Now we realise that we have to play 'Apocalyptic City', we have to play 'Over The Wall', you know, have a lot of fun with it and just not be afraid of who we are. But we're also playing tracks off 'Low' and 'The Gathering', stuff that wasn't written by the original line-up. Then again, Chuck [Billy, vocals] and I have always been the main songwriters."

On his it feels to have a new album out and be playing with the original lineup again:

"It feels great because Chuck and I carried the flag. The original lineup kind of left each other when metal wasn't so good. There was a lot of compromise on the final record with the original line-up: 'The Ritual'. It wasn't one of the heaviest records we've done. Now that everything is said and done I like the record, but I think we left on a light note so it was up to me and Chuck to turn it around and bring some death metal and mix it in with the thrash and make it more modern, more melodic. Now that metal is popular again and we've got the original line-up back together it's a wet situation, you know, its cool. We're all on the same page and that's the biggest part. We're really appreciating that the people that played on this record are the people you're going to see live."

On TESTAMENT's legacy thus far:

"We're survivors. We've surpassed the criticism of, 'Oh, how long are they going to last?' or ‘How long is thrash going to last?' People are saying to us that we've influenced a whole new generation, which is hard for me to grasp because it feels like yesterday that we came out. The role that we've played is being part of the blueprint of the thrash metal scene and modern metal."

Read the entire interview from The Metal Forge.