ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 29, 2009
By Steve Newton
When original guitarist Alex Skolnick and bassist Greg Christian hooked back up with Testament to record last year’s The Formation of Damnation CD—their first album with the band in over a decade—fans of the Bay Area thrash act were so impressed they named it “comeback of the year” in Guitar World’s 2008 readers’ poll.
But founding guitarist Eric Peterson—who, along with vocalist Chuck Billy, has been with the group since day one—doesn’t condone reckless use of the C word.
“Don’t call it a comeback,” instructs Peterson on the phone from his Frisco home. “We’ve been here for years, so it’s funny why people say that. I guess in a way it’s a comeback for Alex and Greg, but the songwriters, me and Chuck, have kept the ball rolling. We went in a lot heavier, modern direction, dabbling in the melodic side of death metal, and even leaning toward some black stuff, musically, for me.”
The day of our chat, Peterson is preparing for a club gig that night with his other group, Dragonlord, which is heavily influenced by the black metal coming out of Europe, but also contains the thrash element near and dear to Testament. On its MySpace page, Testament–which plays Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on May 4–is described as “the inventors of the thrash-metal wheel”, a title Peterson plays down slightly.
“I think we definitely had a big part of the blueprint,” he points out, “but I don’t think we’re the godfathers of it. I think Metallica was the first band to modernize it and capitalize on it and go, ‘Officially, this is thrash.’ ”
There are definite similarities to the sound of Metallica’s more amphetamined works in the grooves of The Formation of Damnation. While there are the odd touches of modern death metal—as heard in Billy’s screeching vocal on the title track—the majority of the music is a catchy blend of vintage thrash and melodic metal, with former Slayer drummer Paul Bostaph slamming everything into place.
While previously focused on rhythm guitar, Peterson has graduated to more lead work, sharing spiralling solos with Skolnick on several tracks. His main influences on guitar while growing up were Judas Priest’s K. K. Downing and Glenn Tipton and, before that, Michael Schenker and Uli Jon Roth of Scorpions. Lately, he’s been revelling in the old-school fretwork of Ritchie Blackmore, playing the crap out of Rainbow’s Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll.
“I still go back and revisit a lot of that stuff,” he explains of his fondness for ’70s rock. “The Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush records, the early Rush stuff like Hemispheres—Alex Lifeson’s amazing on that.”
With Skolnick and Christian back in the fold, Testament has never sounded stronger, and Peterson agrees that the recent reunion has resulted in some of the finest moments of the band’s career.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of them,” he says, “but one that sticks out is going to Europe and doin’ 10 shows with the original lineup again. We’ve always had great responses without them, but there was that extra screaming in the crowd, you know, so it was cool for those guys to come back and hear that.”