TESTAMENT's ALEX SKOLNICK On His Early Guitar Solos: 'I Felt Like There Was Something To Prove'

During a recent appearance on the "Axe Lords" podcast, TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick was asked why it was important for him to show off his skills as a lead guitarist during the band's early years, with the song "Practice What You Preach" containing a one-minute-20-second solo in what is a five-minute track. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, you could get away with it back then. Now, I don't think they'd let me do a solo that long. [Laughs] I still do [the long solos] live. But, yeah, part of that, for me, I felt like there was something to prove, because the area of music that we were coming from, it was kind of garage rock in some ways. There were a lot of examples of garage rock — VENOM, for example. I don't know if they're considered the first black metal band or the first death metal band… VENOM was kind of a garage band. MOTÖRHEAD, obviously — an awesome kind of garage band. The early SLAYER stuff, it was kind of raw and garage band. It was awesome. I wouldn't have it any other way. But I didn't hear anybody playing…"

He continued: "The guitar players that I liked — I was a huge fan of the virtuoso guys: Randy Rhoads, Uli John Roth, of course, Eddie Van Halen, even though, VAN HALEN was much more commercial than the music that we were doing. We all loved VAN HALEN. So I was gravitating towards those players. And there was always a rivalry between Southern California and Northern California. And we had this scene of all these fast, heavy bands, but down in Southern California, you had the glam commercial bands, and some of them — DOKKEN, RATT, a few others — had just unbelievable guitar players. I loved [RATT guitarist Warren DeMartini's] playing. Still do. I mean, those records come on, if I hear that on SiriusXM or whatever, I'm just knocked out. It really holds its own. So I was coming more from that place lead guitar-wise. I just thought, 'Okay, you know what? We need heavy, Northern California, fast, aggressive music, but that has soloing of this quality.' Nobody was doing it. So that's kind of where I was coming from at that time. Now things have changed now. Now it's okay to do that. At the time, I was also getting a lot of criticism for it. I remember people saying, 'You sound like an L.A. player. You should go join a glam band.' But now you've got ultra-heavy bands with great guitar players — too many to name. There's REVOCATION, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, CHILDREN OF BODOM — may he, Alexi [Laiho], rest in peace. There's so many. It's totally okay to be a virtuosic player in heavy music, but it was not at the time."

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.

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.

Six years ago, the ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO — comprised of Skolnick, drummer Matt Zebroski and bassist Nathan Peck — released "Conundrum", its first album since 2011.

TESTAMENT's latest album, "Titans Of Creation", came out in April 2020 via Nuclear Blast. A follow-up effort is tentatively due in 2025.