TESTAMENT/ex-SAVATAGE guitarist Alex Skolnick's ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO have released their new video, for 'Bollywood Jam', featured on the band's Veritas album. The video can be seen here.

Skolnick has issued his newest piece for Guitar Player Magazine. In it, Alex talks about his abrupt loss of innocence when, at 13 years old, he realized something shocking: rock bands don’t always tell the truth! In hindsight, Skolnick admits, "Of course, knowing what I know today, the only thing shocking is the fact that I once found this shocking." An excerpt follows:

"I'll never forget the night my older brother burst my bubble about something I'd believed to be true. It was like finding out that there was no tooth fairy.

I was in the ninth grade and had just come home from my very first VAN HALEN concert. Earlier that evening, Van Halen vocalist DAVID LEE ROTH had said something from the stage that thrilled me as much as EDDIE VAN HALEN’s supersonic guitar pyrotechnics. It was as though Dave, king of all Jewish surfer dudes, had pointed me out in the back of the arena and spoken to me directly: 'Hey kid! Yeah you! Up there in the balcony! Ya see this bottle of Jack here? I’m takin’ a sip for you, buddy … L’Chaim!' I did a 'play by play' recap of the concert to my older brother, an aspiring bassist who’d chosen not to attend, and waited for just the right moment to relay the big news. That's when I quoted the exact words of Mr. Roth, who’d made me and approximately 13,999 others swell with pride by saying 'San Francisco—you guys are the best crowd of the whole tour!'

To which my brother responded with five words of abrupt magnitude, like a 6.5 Earthquake on the Richter Scale: 'He says that every night!'

NO!!! I refused to believe it. My parade had been overtaken by a torrential downpour. I felt like Neo, a character from a film that would come out 15 years later—The Matrix-who finds out everything he’s ever believed to be true has been a lie."

To read the rest of the article, including Alex's thoughts on METALLICA, click here.