TESTAMENT guitarist Eric Peterson is featured in a new interview with Maximum Metal. An excerpt is available below:

MM: How are things going with The Dark Roots Of Earth? Where do things stand production wise? When can we expect it out and what touring plans do you all have to support it?

Eric: "It was supposed to be out in late April but may be in May, hopefully. Andy Sneap is going to produce. We almost didn't get it done but he stepped up. There were a lot of things left undone that Andy knew and we didn't feel right throwing it at Zeuss, who had a great mix set up; maybe we can do something with him in the future. It's gonna be our heaviest record and we have a ballad called 'Cold Embrace' on the new album which we haven't had since the Low album. We have songs on this album that have blastbeats in the choruses with melodic vocals…very DIMMU BORGIR/EMPEROR blastbeats with Testament riffs with Chuck doing 'Practice What You Preach' style vocals. 'True American Hate' may be the fastest song we have ever done. 'Dark Roots Of Earth' which is the title track, sounds like 'The Thing That Should Not Be' by METALLICA and 'Sign Of The Southern Cross' by BLACK SABBATH. There are lots of different textures, not mediocre, every song has its own trip. 'Throne Of Thorns' is an 8 minute epic, one of my favorite tracks off the new album…kind of like 'Hole In The Sky' by Black Sabbath. Lots of crazy middle sections that go into this weird jam that is just really cool. Also for me, I usually do leads. I did 30 percent of the leads on Formation, but it's close to 50 percent on this album. Chuck is singing well and I think old fans are gonna love it. Hopefully, a lot of new people will jump on board as well."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Host/producer Eric Blair from the Blairing Out With Eric Blair Show caught up with Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick who talked about the band's upcoming studio album, Dark Roots Of Earth, due out this spring. Check out the chat below: