TESTAMENT's ALEX SKOLNICK On Downside Of Social Media: 'Every Fan Can Express Their Opinion, But Some Of Them Are Just Trolls'

In a recent interview with Jack Mangan and Mark Pruett of S.L.A.M. Support Life And Music, TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick spoke about how the advent of social media has made it possible for bands and musicians to build an audience without record deals.

"Social media, it's been around a while now — it's nothing new — but it's continuing to have a big impact on musicians," Alex said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "We're all on there, and I think it's a good thing and it's a bad thing.

"I was scrolling the other day, and suddenly the feed gives me this image — it's MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA, 1972 on the BBC, Billy Cobham doing the most insane drum solo I've ever seen," Alex continued. "I didn't know this footage existed. I would not see this if it wasn't for the Internet and my social media account. In this case, it was Facebook. I also like the fact that we can be our own brands.

"I started my professional career pretty young. I was 18 when we did the first TESTAMENT record, and it was nice to get some exposure, but it was very limited," Skolnick added. "I was very kind of under the control of whatever media piece on the group would come out. And there were some good ones, there were some not great ones. But basically that's your image. The interview that I would give to the magazine, whatever it was, Metal Edge or the ones that were around back then… But that was your whole presentation, and you were sort of dependent on the editor who would do these interviews, and you were limited. And now I'm not dependent on that press or the official band photos or whatever. I have these pages where I can be myself and put out what I wanna put out. And I think that's a great thing."

Touching upon how advancements in recording technology have significantly transformed the music industry over the years, evolving from early analog methods to sophisticated digital systems, Alex said: "As somebody who was doing art before all this, you have such an appreciation for it, as well as the technology of being able to record music. It's so much easier than when we started recording music, and being able to cut and paste parts of music, started by Pro Tools, but now we have Logic. So on the one hand, the technology is great, but like all technology, it gets abused. And there are artists — air quotes, 'artists' — out there who are putting out music, building brands, that can barely play live. And some of them have had big... There's been drama because they'll go on some show or some clip of them actually playing comes out, and it's nothing like what they've been putting out there.

"The recording technology is abused," Alex explained. "You can hear that in so much of popular music. You can just tell everything is overly perfected. You're hearing the same verse — the musicians are playing the same exact same verse that you heard the first time around because they're cutting and pasting. And that's a problem."

Alex went on to suggest that while all music listeners should have a voice and be able to express an opinion on social media, not everyone has earned the right to have a microphone.

"As an artist, it's great to have a voice, but does everybody need to have a voice now?" Skolnick said. "Every fan can express their opinion in the form of comment sections. And some of them are valid, but some of them are just trolls and really unqualified to make opinions."

He concluded: "So, I'm sorry for the long-winded answer, but, yeah, the many aspects of technology has both positive and negative connotations."

One of the elite breed of guitar shredders from the 1980s, Skolnick was famously a student of Joe Satriani, along with Steve Vai and METALLICA's Kirk Hammett, and was even sought out by Ozzy Osbourne, playing a gig with the BLACK SABBATH legend in the U.K. in 1995.

Skolnick joined TESTAMENT in 1985 at the age of 16 and stayed with the band for eight years before leaving in 1993 and going on to study at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

Skolnick's long-running Brooklyn, New York-based jazz-rock band ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO (AST) recently released its sixth album, "Prove You're Not A Robot", via Flatiron Recordings. Alongside Skolnick's inventive guitar work, bassist Nathan Peck and drummer Matt Zebroski bring rhythmic complexity and emotional depth, with odd-time signatures and genre twists that have become AST hallmarks.

Since forming in the early 2000s, AST has reimagined the jazz guitar trio, melding influences as far-reaching as Wes Montgomery, BLACK SABBATH, Prince, tango, calypso and Western swing. Known for their adventurous covers of rock and metal classics, they've earned praise from outlets like Billboard, Downbeat, Jazziz, The Village Voice and NPR, and have toured internationally, captivating audiences from Norway's Larvik Guitar Festival to Paris's The Olympia and New York's Radio City Music Hall.

In addition to playing with ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO and TESTAMENT, he has worked as a sideman with such artists as vocalist Ishtar of the French band ALABINA and Jewish folk singer Debbie Friedman. He has also guested on an album from RODRIGO Y GABRIELA.