In the new episode of ‘Riffhard’ podcast, Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick shared his thoughts about the popular metal bands. The rocker looked back on the band’s early music and how it’s held up over the three and a half decades since it was first recorded.
“Metallica found a way to make their music very popular, but they really kind of broke loose from the scene that they came up in,” he started. “And it’s brilliant what they did, but they’re really the only ones that could achieve any mainstream popularity. They ended up being one of the biggest bands in the world.”
The guitarist also named other thrash metal bands: “But the rest of the bands, the bands that were influenced by Metallica — folks talk about the ‘Big Six’ or whatever: Testament, Exodus, Overkill, Death Angel, maybe you could add Forbidden, and then argue about who else would be there — but all of those bands, it was so left field and it wasn’t a sign of the time,” he said of the bands that couldn’t get ‘mainstream attention’ like Metallica did. “It got no mainstream attention other than an hour on MTV on Saturday nights where they’d play some of the videos.”
“Yeah, somehow in the 2000s, it’s almost like the times caught up with it. And then once you had the bands that were playing on Ozzfest, for example, guys that were a few years younger than me, not so much, but, yeah, Lamb Of God, Slipknot and so forth, and they managed to reach pretty big audiences — still do. So it’s weird,” he finished.
The mentioned thrash metal bands made their way into the music scene and eventually became known within the genre. However, Skolnick thinks the same bands sounded the same due to the limited gear back in the day.
“The tone was very hard to get at that time… There’s a positive side and a negative side to it. On the negative side, it was much more difficult,” Skolnick explained in another interview with LaughingMonkeyMusic. “You had to work much harder. Most of the amps were designed for ’70s rock. They sounded like they would be good for Lynyrd Skynyrd. And then, fast forward a number of years, and that tone gets popular. And there are even multi-million-selling albums that have had this tone. Well, amp manufacturers had no choice but to make amps that could sound crunchy. Now, it’s easy.”
This fall, Testament and Kreator are hitting the road together for the ‘Klash Of The Titans’ North American tour. It kicks off on September 12 in Reno, makes stops across the U.S. and Canada, and finishes in San Francisco on October 27. Possessed will be joining the two bands as the supporting act.
You can watch the interview below.