Alex Skolnick has laid out the ledger on social media and studio technology — what both gave musicians, and what both took — in a new interview with Jack Mangan and Mark Pruett of S.L.A.M. Support Life And Music.
The TESTAMENT guitarist started with the credit side. "Social media, it's been around a while now — it's nothing new — but it's continuing to have a big impact on musicians. We're all on there, and I think it's a good thing and it's a bad thing," he said. "I was scrolling the other day, and suddenly the feed gives me this image — it's MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA, 1972 on the BBC, Billy Cobham doing the most insane drum solo I've ever seen. I didn't know this footage existed. I would not see this if it wasn't for the internet and my social media account."
The bigger gain, he argued, is control over your own image — something he had none of starting out. "I was 18 when we did the first TESTAMENT record, and it was nice to get some exposure, but it was very limited. I was very kind of under the control of whatever media piece on the group would come out," Skolnick said. "The interview that I would give to the magazine, whatever it was, Metal Edge or the ones that were around back then… But that was your whole presentation, and you were sort of dependent on the editor who would do these interviews, and you were limited. And now I'm not dependent on that press or the official band photos or whatever. I have these pages where I can be myself and put out what I wanna put out."
Recording technology gets a harder reading. "It's so much easier than when we started recording music, and being able to cut and paste parts of music, started by Pro Tools, but now we have Logic. So on the one hand, the technology is great, but like all technology, it gets abused. And there are artists — air quotes, 'artists' — out there who are putting out music, building brands, that can barely play live," he said. "You can hear that in so much of popular music. You can just tell everything is overly perfected. You're hearing the same verse — the musicians are playing the same exact same verse that you heard the first time around because they're cutting and pasting. And that's a problem."
Which brought him to the comment section, and a distinction between having a voice and having earned a microphone. "As an artist, it's great to have a voice, but does everybody need to have a voice now? Every fan can express their opinion in the form of comment sections. And some of them are valid, but some of them are just trolls and really unqualified to make opinions."
Skolnick joined TESTAMENT in 1985 at sixteen and stayed eight years before leaving in 1993 to study at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. His Brooklyn jazz-rock group ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO, with bassist Nathan Peck and drummer Matt Zebroski, recently released its sixth album, "Prove You're Not A Robot", through Flatiron Recordings. On the TESTAMENT side, as we reported last month, Chuck Billy says nine songs are already written for the next record, with Eric Peterson and Chris Dovas pulling the material toward death metal.