TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick recently spoke with Will Romano at Goldmine Magazine about his jazz band, the ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

Goldmine: Your interpretation of other artists’ material is intriguing. In some cases it’s difficult to discern what song you’re actually playing.

Skolnick: "I think RUSH’s 'Tom Sawyer' from Last Day In Paradise was the first time we’d recorded a cover and it wasn’t obvious, until late in the song, that we were covering anybody. The JUDAS PRIEST song 'Electric Eye', from Transformation, was a little bit like that, because we changed the beat. It was arranged in the style of modern jazz piano music. The first album, Goodbye To Romance: Standards For A New Generation, was nearly all covers. Since then we’ve recorded a number of original songs that we’re really proud of and are going over well live. While we were in rehearsals on the road … we just decided to jam on 'Fade To Black' (METALLICA), but we’re in the process of including more originals in our live sets. So, the fact that we chose to record 'Fade to Black' is perfect, because it’s like a statement about phasing out the covers.

Goldmine: After Testament you recorded with SAVATAGE and later the band that evolved from it, TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA (TSO). What can you tell us about those experiences?

Skolnick: "Savatage was a very bittersweet situation. On the one hand I got to do an album with a band that I liked in high school. The flipside is that the gig came about because of a tragedy: Savatage guitarist Criss Oliva had passed away in 1993. That was around the time that I had left my band, Testament, because things hadn’t been working out, and I found playing with Savatage appealing. It was like, ‘Hey, why not?’ Then again, I knew I was heading in a different direction from the band, but I just didn’t know where. For some reason, joining Savatage just didn’t feel right. I’m not sure why that is. It’s a little like our conversation earlier — who knows why things happen? It wasn’t one particular thing. Maybe I felt I needed to … be one of the main creative voices in the band. If I had stayed with Savatage I wouldn’t have been."

Click here for the complete interview.