In a new interview with Blabbermouth, Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick recalled the time he left the band for a short period of time.
When the interviewer asked why felt like he needed to leave the band, the rocker responded: “They say the more years go by, the faster they seem to go — and the reverse is true. If you don’t have that many years on you, time seems to go a lot slower. I look at it now — the time I was 16 to 23 — and it doesn’t seem like that much time. These last seven years seem to have gone by very fast.”
“But being that age, it’s almost half your life, so it seemed like a long time. At that time, I was growing — I was at this very impressioned age and needed to step out, experience life outside the band, experience music outside this very specific genre,” he added.
Skolnick left Testament back in 1992 and rejoined in 2005. Earlier, he admitted that he had left the band just at the right time.
“I think I probably would have left anyway, because I realized I just I needed space to develop as a musician. I think it would have been a little less contentious if things were a little more functional, but at the time they weren’t,” he explained during an interview with This Day in Metal. “Now, it’s very different. The older version of Testament, it’s almost like a different band. I don’t think these guys today could deal with the guys that they were back then. And I’m sure I wasn’t that easy to deal with, either, in different ways.”
“And it’s just being young, but I would say that when I came back, it was very clear that I would be able to do it and keep my instrumental side. And I made that very clear, I’m going to do other projects. I’m going to continue doing instrumental music. I want to continue improving, working with artists that might be completely removed from the metal scene. And it’s fine. I think it became more acceptable to do that,” the guitarist added.
Skolnick rejoined Testament in 2005 and has since contributed to every album released by the band. His last work with the band is ‘Titans Of Creation,’ and it was released in April through Nuclear Blast.
The rockers are set to perform tonight in Maplewood, Minnesota. Following their ongoing North American tour, they will have a show in Istanbul, Turkey, before kicking off their European tour with Kreator and Anthrax on November 21.