TESTAMENT Guitarist Says 'The Ritual' Album Was 'Just A Big Compromise'

TESTAMENT members Eric Peterson (guitar) and Chuck Billy (vocals) recently spoke to the UK's Terrorizer magazine (web site) about the accusations that they dampened down their sound in the early '90s in order to reconnect dwindling audiences, who diverted their attentions up north to the growing grunge movement.

Eric: "We went the opposite way. That was about the time when 'Low' came out. Our record label wanted us to write something more alternative, but we went and wrote a song called 'Dog Faced Gods', which was more kind of death metal."

Chuck: "'The Ritual' was on a path of its own. The record was actually written a lot heavier and thrashier, and at that time, Alex [Skolnick, guitar] was on tour with Stu Hamm doing some other gigs and coming back to listen to the songs we wrote. He was like, 'I'm not playing over the thrash parts! We need to slow it down and get some straight-ahead beats.' And when it did that, vocally, for me, it made it kind of boring because it's just one straight path, and it really slowed everything down and broke up the dynamics we created originally."

Eric: "The whole record was just a big compromise."

Chuck: "We were on the way to parting ways with Alex at the time, and you could tell he wanted to do something else. He was in a band from when he was fifteen and left when he was 23 and he grew up on tour playing thrash metal, so he wanted to do different things. So when he went on the Stu Hamm tour it opened his eyes that there was other stuff out here. That record was a little compromised. But I think it would have been a more of a 'thrash' record if we had stuck to our guns and said, 'No, we're not going to change it.' It would have been a different record, for sure."

Eric: "It's a good record for us though. I mean, we've had a lot of records that have come and gone. That one's a lot more classic rock sounding, you know?!"

Chuck: "It was influenced a lot by the record label as well though. Because we had a lot of people asking, 'Where's the next single? Where's the next video?' And we had the big Atlantic Records behind us, and we were kind of listening to them and it was a comprising time for us. Especially the way the scene was changing, we were changing as well."

Eric: "PANTERA came out with 'Vulgar Display Of Power', SEPULTURA came out with 'Arise', we came out with this. But we got success from it though. We were on the radio a lot. It's just that we didn't want to play 'Return Of The Serenity' live."

Chuck: "It gave us a different exposure. The next record, the last record with Atlantic Records, that's the point where they were dropping a lot of the metal bands, and we had one more obligation with them, so we thought, screw that we're going to write heavier! Alex left the band and Louie [Clemente, drums] was gone, and we thought, fuck that, we're going to be heavier now, and that's when we did the 'Low' record 'Dog Faced Gods'. And that opened up a whole new world with people writing in and saying, 'That's so different! You need to do more of that.' And then came 'Demonic' and we went a little bit too over that top on that one, because I sang almost all death style. Then we did 'The Gathering', which kind of brought it all together."

For more information, visit www.terrorizer.com.

TESTAMENT's video for the song "Electric Crown" (taken from "The Ritual"):