Away-Team.com Senior Staff Writer Jim Keller has issued an interview with TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Q: Your current album, Formation Of Damnation, to me is far and away the strongest album you guys have recorded since Practice What You Preach. It’s probably a more straightforward thrash sounding album than some of the last few albums. Was this a culmination of various writing from the last nine years or did you all sit down and write the album together as a whole band?

A: "No, it was a combination. I think the previous album the guys did when I wasn’t with the band, The Gathering, that was the first one I felt, a lot of people felt, where Chuck and Eric sort of found a formula that works for them. So I didn’t want to really, get in the way of that formula and try to make it 1989 again. But I made a lot of suggestions with the music they were doing and I did bring in some music of my own. Some of that got used; the song 'F.E.A.R.' is something I wrote. But it was more a combination of ideas that Chuck and Eric had had, playing around with some new stuff."

Q: And Eric being the predominant songwriter, music writer for the band, now with this you’re current lineup which is the semi-reunited lineup or the original lineup with addition of Paul Bostaph is it a more of a collaborative thing now or at least going forward to looking at the next album is going to be more collaborative?

A: "We’ll see, just kind of going to let it happen as it happens."

Q: And will there be a new album?

A: "There will eventually be, yes."

Q: We mentioned the many lineup changes you guys have done over the years. You being one of them. You guys all got together in 2001 as THE LEGACY for the Chuck Billy cancer benefit. That show saw the best of the Bay Area thrash scene reuniting for a great cause. Bands like EXODUS, DEATH ANGEL, SADUS, VIO-LENCE and of course you. In the last eight years or so, Exodus, Death Angel, you guys now with the Formation Of Damnation, have released what many consider to be the best music of your individual and collective careers. Some amazing stuff has come out of the original Bay Area thrash scene in the last couple years. It seems that it’s alive and well again. What do you attribute the current popularity or resurrection of the Bay Area trash scene to?

A: "Well I think part of it is it’s not as isolated as it used to be. It used to be this very isolated area of music. Pretty much limited to the Bay Area with the exception of ya know MEGADETH from LA and ANTHRAX form New York. I think it’s now like one of many genres of very heavy metal. Ya know you have black metal, you have death metal from Florida and it all relates to thrash metal. There are all these relatives in metal. And now you’ve got some newer bands that have formed in the last ten, fifteen years that in some cases are seeing a lot of success and that’s brought a lot more awareness to the original Bay Area thrash scene. So when we first did the reunion shows it was unclear what kind of type of fan we would have. Was it just going to be Old School fans? But there are actually a lot of young fans that are keeping it alive and well."

Read the full interview at here.