People love to rewrite thrash history as a nonstop rivalry. When Testament's Alex Skolnick got asked, in a recent interview with Tone-Talk, about the "vibe between thrash bands in the mid-to-late '80s", and whether there was "major rivalry and competition among the bands or more camaraderie and encouragement", his answer leaned heavily toward unity, with one specific exception.
"Interesting question. I think overall more camaraderie and encouragement, because I don't think any of the bands ever sounded the same. I grew up listening to Exodus and early Metallica. I discovered Metallica. They were already touring for the first record. By the time I played on my first record, Metallica was off to the races; they were already on Master Of Puppets.
"Slayer had a few records out; I think Reign In Blood came out the same year. Anthrax had a few records out; they'd already been through a couple of singers. So all those bands — even Megadeth had a couple records out — they were already off and running, so I never really saw them as competition," Skolnick explained.
He continued, explaining that the closest thing to a competitive flashpoint came when Exodus replaced their singer and grabbed someone from Skolnick's camp: "I think the only time where I did feel a sense of competition was after I'd been in my band for about a year — yeah, I think it was just over a year — Exodus parted ways with their singer [Paul Baloff], and they poached our singer [Steve 'Zetro' Souza, from the pre-Testament band Legacy].
"Gary Holt is a great friend — Slayer [and] Exodus guitarist Gary Holt — I'm actually reading his book A Fabulous Disaster: From The Garage To Madison Square Garden, The Hard Way now, and I just got to the part where he's talking about that. And I didn't know this."
"Apparently, they had split from their singer, Paul Baloff — may he rest in peace — either way. We didn't know that at the time, but at the time we thought, 'Oh, they're coming after our guy. They're trying to be more like us.' And so there was a little sense of competition.
"But then we found a new guy — his name's Chuck Billy, and he's still in the band today. And it kind of made us sound really different, and we couldn't have sounded like Exodus. And then they found a different sound once they had their singer, Steve 'Zetro' Souza, who had been in our band. So only for that time period, suddenly it felt, like, 'Okay…' It's like a team. 'Oh, they took our guy.' But other than that, no — I think everybody got along surprisingly well, especially for how crazy everybody was. It was kind of a hard-partying scene. [We were] young and wild… And everybody's great friends now," Skolnick added.
He also broke down how he approaches the two-guitar setup in Testament, and how that compares to other heavy bands: "Yeah, I think it's different for everybody. There are different types of two-guitar situations. I think for the genre that I came up in, which became known as thrash heavy metal, yeah, you had to have two guitars; it's two-guitar music.
"So all the essential thrash bands — I mean, Metallica is not really a thrash band now; they're mega supergroup, but they started out kind of leading this thrash movement with two guitars. Megadeth, two guitars, Slayer, two guitars, and it was modeled after groups like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
"And there are different types of situations. There are some groups where you have — Scorpions, for example. You have one guy who's just the rhythm guy, main songwriter, Rudolf Schenker. AC/DC [is] the same model. And then you have other groups where you have somebody who's, they're the same ability [and] they play similar solo styles — Iron Maiden, Judas Priest — and it's always different.
"And then you have somewhere — Megadeth is a good example where there's a guy that's very dedicated and more of a virtuoso player, but another guy that also plays solos — Dave Mustaine — and he's got his own personality. And you have to figure out what type of group it is."
Skolnick got specific about where he fits next to Eric Peterson, including how solos land song-to-song: "When we started out, Eric Peterson didn't play many solos. He was more of influenced by groups like Motörhead and Venom, and just sort of more raw, heavy stuff. And I was coming from [Eddie] Van Halen, Randy Rhoads; I'd studied with [Joe] Satriani. But over the years, he's developed a style."
"So I think nowadays it's a little more like Megadeth, where he's kind of like the raw player, but he's got his sound, and he's like the Mustaine, and I'm the Marty [Friedman] or the Kiko [Loureiro]," he continued.
"And every song is different too. There are certain songs where it fits to have one guy or to have another. If it's a solo like 'Practice What You Preach', where it goes through a number of different keys, tempos, and modes, that's probably for me. But then we've got some newer stuff, a song like one of the new singles, 'Shadow People', where it's just this raw vamp, and he plays great over that. So, you have to evolve and you have to work it out. You have to figure out, what kind of band are you? Are you the AC/DC type or the Scorpions type where it's rhythm and lead guy, or is it two lead guys, or is it somewhere in the middle? So it's different for every band."
