Dionisis Kollias from Greece's Solidrock.gr spoke with legendary TESTAMENT guitarist Eric Peterson recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Solid Rock: I want to ask about the coming back of the older members. After the Gathering you were supposed to do an album with the touring line-up you had back then… You had an album First Strike Still Deadly instead…

Eric Peterson: "Em, it made sense ‘cause Alex (Skolnick) came back and did it with us. So that was pretty cool. We were going to put out a record after The Gathering with new members, not the old ones. And there are too many things that happened. Chuck (Billy) got sick, me breaking a leg, touring, different members, stuff like that."

Solid Rock: So was it your move to bring the old members back?

Eric Peterson: "No things were falling apart at that time. Basically, things were withering away. I was kind of done of finding another guitar player, find this or whatever but everything kind of made sense and came together with the old members coming back."

Solid Rock: So Testament is more solid now?

Eric Peterson: "Oh, yeah, definitely. It started off kind like a reunion to see how things will go and one thing kept on leading to another, a lot of positive things happened, so that was pretty cool."

Solid Rock: As far as your last album (The Formation Of Damnation), most fans considered it a return to your old style but with a fresh sound. Most of your albums are not the same with their previous one!

Eric Peterson: "Basically, it’s the best from everything we’ve done I think."

Solid Rock: So you’d say it’s your favorite album?

Eric Peterson: "Well, I like The Gathering a lot. It’s one of my favorites, it’s just brutal. The new one is like The Gathering but it also has the feeling of the old sound. But it’s got the more modern production, so I think it’s probably one of the better sounding records and the songs are like every period of Testament in one."

Read the entire interview here.