TESTAMENT's ALEX SKOLNICK And MOONSPELL's FERNANDO RIBEIRO Name 'The Most Metal' Books They've Ever Read

MOONSPELL frontman Fernando Ribeiro and TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick recently went on Side Jams With Bryan Reesman to talk about their love of books. When asked what were the most metal books they've ever read, this is how they responded:

Fernando: "For instance, 'Naked Lunch'..."

Alex: "That's funny, that's the first one I thought of."

Fernando: "It says 'heavy metal' in there. And some people just attribute the junction of these two words to William Burroughs. It's not my department, but I think it had to do with the tuning or the thickness of the strings of LED ZEPPELIN too. I think heavy metal expression was laying in there."

Alex: "['Naked Lunch'] is a little bit out there. It's a little bit far out, but it's so extreme. If you could channel the intensity of extreme metal to a book, definitely 'Naked Lunch'."

Fernando: "Tolkien, for sure, for symphonic or power metal. I really like this thing with books from the German authors like Thomas Mann and Günter Grass — that epicness of metal is contained in these books. I think the book 'Faust' by Goethe is a very, very heavy metal book because it has a story of every ingredient of heavy metal. It's epic. It has love, and to feel loved. It has a bargain with the devil. It has redemption too. So I think my pick, besides 'Naked Lunch', would be 'Faust' from Goethe."

Alex: "A modern one — Don DeLillo 'White Noise'. This unspeakable cosmic event — it's weird, it's almost like a pandemic but not really a pandemic. If I remember right... it's an airborne, toxic event."

Fernando: "He has a really short novel called 'Silence'. It's just come out, at least here in Portugal, and it's about the breakdown of communication [during a blackout] — I think it even takes place either in Chicago or New York — just how people react and get totally lost. We had a blackout here in Portugal and Spain. I was on tour, fortunately, but one of the things that people said was people [were] getting together to play card games or by candlelight. But the Don DeLillo 'Silence' book is not about the virtues of the blackout. It's about how people will get really crazy and without purpose when communications break down."

Skolnick also recalled meeting "The Handmaid's Tale" author Margaret Atwood by chance. "I was at a book event, and Margaret Atwood grabbed my arm and pulled me over," he recalled of being at BookExpo in New York City many years ago. "She pulls me over to a booth. I don't even know if this ever caught on, but it was a platform like Zoom. Except people meet authors and they can get a personalized signature, but digitally, and it's mailed to them. I forget exactly how it works. So she pulls me over… and then there was another writer on the screen. The author of 'Telegraph Avenue', I've read a bunch of his books, and his name is Michael Chabon. He's on this and we've just demonstrated this thing. I had a quick conversation with him, and he actually had a RUSH shirt on. We started talking about music. He's a big RUSH fan. So Margaret Atwood and Michael Chabon on a screen within minutes."

Skolnick previously expressed his love for reading books in a post on his official web site. He wrote: "I feel every good book is like a vitamin, a work out, a healthy meal or anything else you'd put in your body to make it stronger. Like all good habits, effort and patience is required and you won't notice the results right away. But over time, there is a noticeable improvement. In the case of books, the improvement is not in your physical body, but in your thought process and mental well being.

"It took years to discover this," he explained. "As a youth, the impersonal structuralism of the Berkeley Public School System offered little incentive to read, other than for the purpose of fulfilling requirements. A few great authors were encountered (Hawthorne, Dickens, Twain),but the entire concept and purpose of being a literate and independent thinker was left out of the curriculum, as was literature's place in contemporary life.

"As an adult, free to choose my own reading material, I've found there is nothing quite like bonding with a good book, one that doesn't just tell a story but challenges conventional ways of thinking and makes an attempt to rise above the sea of mediocrity in which, as a society, we are all drowning," Alex added. "For me, it is these books that inspire, challenge and lift."

As a young adult, Ribeiro reportedly studied philosophy at the University Of Lisbon for a period of time with the unfulfilled aim of becoming a high school philosophy teacher. He has published three books of poetry, namely, "Como Escavar Um Abismo" (2001),"As Feridas Essenciais" (2004) and "Diálogo De Vultos" (2007). He has also written a book of prose, "Senhora Vingança" (2011). He took part in the project "A Sombra Sobre Lisboa - Lovecraftian Tales In The City Of Seven Hills", a literary work featuring several authors and invoking Lovecraft's worlds adapted to the city of Lisbon. He wrote the introductions to "The Best Stories Of Howard Phillips Lovecraft", published in 2005, and translated the comic biography "Lovecraft" into Portuguese.