TESTAMENT interview transcript - 20200131.

Transcript of an interview I recorded with Eric Peterson of TESTAMENT - 20200131.
Full article here.

MAL-
Okay, on the line, Eric Peterson from TESTAMENT, Eric, thanks for taking my call.
ERIC-
Hey, how you doing? No worries,
MAL-
We'll quickly touch on the early days if I may. What do you remember? You're the only like, constant member all the way through. What are your memories of back in those early days?
ERIC-
Well, I mean, it was for our kind of music It was kind of a new thing. Especially for the world, thrash metal was kind of a new genre, I guess. You know, of course, it's been 35 years since our you know, 33 years maybe since our first release and back then it just had this really cool feeling you know, like you know, something totally different and that we were a part of, I mean, you could probably count on both hands all the thrash metal bands. Now you need a calculator. No, it was it was really cool to be part of, you know, the blueprint I guess of this style of music.
MAL-
Looking at how the industry's changed, from then, to now. Now, obviously you'd have a lot more competition, but you'd have more opportunities in the form of, you know, YouTube and Facebook and Spotify and all that sort of thing. How do you reckon TESTAMENT would go as a new band starting out these days, your reckon the challenges would outweigh the advantages or do you reckon they'd sort of even themselves out?
ERIC-
Ummm, that's sime good question. So if you took away all of our everything we've done, and just start music, it would be tough, you know, it would be hopefully, by doing that, you'd give me back 30 years of my life. So I would, I would have a lot more energy. So but you know, at the same time, you know, we're still we're a band that's, you know, very, very young at heart still. And, you know, we still look pretty, pretty good. We all we all got our hair still. So that's awesome. And um, yeah, I mean, it would definitely be a lot different, that's for sure. But you know, we've done a lot of things with the way we sound and been influenced by a lot of things. It would definitely be different. I mean, yeah.
MAL-
Now, when was the last time you came to Australia? Was that on the Soundwave tours in 2014?
ERIC-
Yeah, it was in 2013.
MAL-
Look, I've got photos of you in Adelaide on the first of March 2014. And you are playing a Dean guitar, black one in like a Destroyer type shape.
ERIC-
Yeah, they call it the Z, that's a good guitar and I've kind of stuck with that style. I do play play Flying Vs as well. I have a couple of signatures with them. One of them's called the 'Old Skull'. And it kind of it kind of has our mascot skull that we've had since the beginning on the guitar, it's really cool. And then I have one that's like that, but it's got a Floyd Rose o it, a tremolo system. Really good guitars, man, play really well.
MAL-
All right, excellent. Now you're coming out to Australia again. Late March, you're doing the download festivals in Sydney, and Melbourne, Melbourne first and then in Sydney and then you're doing a sideshow up in Brisbane, tell us all about what you've got planned for Australia and how keen you are.
ERIC-
Well, we're really excited to play the Download. I know that some of the festivals have gone away from Australia so it's good to see that that's, you know, taking place over there and, you know, then there's some great bands on the bill. It's a really good, really good bill. Pretty excited to see MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE. I think that's gonna be awesome because they kind of went away for a while and came back so I was pretty.. It was a pleasant surprise to see them on the on the bill. We have a new record coming out. It's called 'Titans Of Creation' that's going to be out April 3rd, but in between now and then we're going to have a couple of singles released. We're releasing one tomorrow called 'Night Of The Witch'. And then we're going to have another one later once it's called 'Children Of The Next Level', and that will be out prior, you know, I think a month later. So when we come to Australia, I think we will probably be playing new songs and we'll be playing deeper cuts that we haven't played for a while, so we're pretty stoked.
MAL-
Tell us about the Brisbane sideshow. my friends up in Brisbane a very excited about that. The good thing about the sideshows is you generally get a longer set of your favourite band, so they're very excited about that.
ERIC-
Yeah that, I mean, I think we should be nice and warmed up by then. We haven't toured for a while but we will have just done 27-28 shows in Europe headlining so I think we'll spot on when we get there. It will be you know, the bugs out and pretty much have a set plan that we're going to do. There's right now we have we're doing a lot of different stuff that we haven't done for a while. So we'll see how all that goes. I would imagine some of them will work some of them might not you know, some of them are pretty brutal playing them, crazy riffs, my hands are like 'Oh my god'.
Yeah, we;re stoked, can't wait to go.
MAL-
Were those crazy ones written when you were much younger man, hey?
ERIC-
Well, no, they're newer, relevant like, 'The Persecuted Won't Forget' it from 'The Formation'. I mean that that's, that's brutal, man. It's just picking pick, pick lots of picking. And then there's a song called 'Last Stand For Independence'. And then we're going to be doing some stuff off 'The Gathering', which we haven't done, which was the harder ones like 'Fall Of Sipledome'. So, yeah, we're gonna have some pretty cool new stuff that we haven't done of the more recent records, so that's gonna be cool
MAL-
Well, you mentioned a number of shows in Europe. So coming to Australia after the European tour, is that what I'm picking up there?
ERIC-
Yeah, we'll be we'll be going straight from Europe to Australia. I think we'll have maybe a week and a half off, so we should be nice and waarmed up and ready to go.
MAL-
All right. Eric Peterson from TESTAMENT, great to talk to you. Best of luck with your Australian tour Download in Melbourne on March 20 in Sydney on March 21, and then a sideshow at The Triffid in Brisbane on the 22nd. Thanks again for talking to man, you have a great night.
ERIC-
Thank you very much. I can't wait to see you all in Australia.