Eric Peterson (Testament)
April 2008
It's the second month of your promotional campaign so I guess you are pretty fed up with all the interviews by now.
No, not really. I mean it's been nine years since we had a record and I'm pretty happy with the record so I'm more than happy to talk about it. The way my manager works I'd be doing interviews 'til I die. (Laughs) Right now I'd probably done about 60 interviews so far.
What did the media people tell you about the album?
The reaction has been amazing so far. Everybody seems to like the record. A lot of people were very concerned of how long it's taken and that seems to be one of the most common questions, "Why did it take so long?" But I think a lot of people are saying that it's worth the wait so people aren't disappointed. That would be terrible if people had to wait a long time and then we put out a shitty record. (Laughs) That would be pretty upsetting.
What was the most positive and most negative remark about the album so far?
I haven't really heard anything negative about it to tell you the truth. The most positive thing I've heard that I've heard from somebody is that he thinks it's album of the year whatever happens, and maybe that means the best record of 2008 in this style of music. And another good thing is people think it's one of the best Testament we've done and that's pretty cool.
You did some touring over the last few years but when did you finally decide on making a new studio album?
I think when we signed to Nuclear Blast in the summer of 2007 was when we kinda told ourselves that we need to get the record done and commit ourselves to that. Because our attitude was always like "Okay, we get to it when we get to it. We're gonna start working on it and maybe it'll be done" and we never really put a date on it. But once we signed to Nuclear Blast they very really really persistent about it: "Okay, when are we going to get the record? Next month?" (Laughs) First we told them that it'll take a year and they were like "No way!" So basically once we signed with them in July we told them that we'd deliver the record in January so that means we had to start recording in December and we actually ended up starting the recordings in late November so we were a little bit ahead of the game. And then the record was delivered a little late as we delivered it in the middle of February. That's a hard time to do things business-wise. December and January has a lot of holidays, changing of the year and there's a lot of other stuff going on. New Year's, Christmas, Thanksgiving... it's a tough time to record I think and it's cold out and there's the festive feeling. There's a good feeling in the air but it's a very busy time.
How did it feel composing for Testament again?
It felt great. I've been working on ideas since 2003 off and on off and on so once I actually started writing again I had a lot of ideas to go with. I have a large library of riffs composed to pick from so if I needed a new riff I could always look in my library and pick out something that would match that. That's the way I like to write. I like to have a bunch of ideas that I forget about and have them stored and then when I'm writing a new song I go back and listen to stuff and sometimes I'm very surprised like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that."
In that sense what would be the oldest song on the record?
Leave Me Forever was written during the Demonic sessions. That's the last song on the new record and that song was written by Greg Christian and myself and it didn't get on Demonic because we parted ways with Greg. But now that we got back together we jammed it together and we put on the new album. The next oldest songs would probably be Afterlife. I wrote that song with John Tempesta in 2003. And most of the other stuff was written in 2007.
How did you share the songwriting credits this time?
Basically I pretty much wrote the most of it. Alex wrote F.E.A.R. which is a great song and we co-wrote Dangers Of The Faithless together. And then once the songs were written and composed I brought them to the band and kind of put them together. Of course I tell them the way I think it should go and then usually Alex or Chuck will give me some new ideas. We worked like that with all the songs and it was the same way with Alex's song F.E.A.R. we kinda helped him rearrange it to make it fit better.
Did you have a clear musical vision of how you wanted the album to sound like?
No. I knew in my head that I wanted to sound old school but modern. I was listening to a lot of stuff like Judas Priest's British Steel and old U.F.O. and this record doesn't necessarily sound like that but these very my earlier influences on my guitar playing. I also listened to The Gathering and The Legacy and tried to get the old school vibe back.
I'm glad you mentioned these two albums because to me the new CD is like a mix between the more traditional approach of The Legacy and the heaviness of The Gathering...
Yeah, that's what we kinda went for. We wanted the heaviness of The Gathering and the modern style of it. The drumming style is definitely the same as on The Gathering was but the singing style is more like the older albums. It's got the best of both worlds.
What's the message behind the album's title "The Formation Of Damnation"?
It's having all kinds of different meanings. I could tell you like five different meanings. The first meaning of it was God's wrath at the end of the world as we know it. (Laughs) It's more of a fantasy based ideology, which represents the cover very much so. But The Formation Of Damnation has got more meanings: it's like a formula of our music. We are the formation and the music is the damnation. And the song is more of a political song that is about false leaders crowned.
You seem to touch upon many different topics this time. One of the song is about a Californian motorcycle club...
Exactly. Henchman is about a motorcycle club and Chuck's good friends of them. Chuck rides motorcycles himself and he wanted to catch that subject of the freedom of riding and the loyalty and friendship of a motorcycle club. It's pretty much talks about the good things being in that club and their restrictions and their way of life.
What does F.E.A.R. stand for?
It stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. The song is just about your fears and things that make up in your head. They come and go depending on how much you exaggerating your head. It's basically a very abstract song about fear.
One of my favourite songs on the album is about 9/11...
Yeah, The Evil Has Landed is a really cool song and it's a topic we were sure we wanted to talk about. I think the lyrics are very very cool because it talks about something that really touched us because it happened in our homeland, which was inevitable. But of course it can happen in every country and it finally happened here and it's not really that we're pointing fingers on things but it's more just like telling the story of what happened.
What are you memories of that day?
I live in the other side of the country in California but what was weird for me is that I was on the phone with the president of the record company that I was with at the time and he's in New York. I was on the phone with him and he was just like "Oh my God! Oh shit!" and I was like, "What? What? What?" He told me to turn on the news and I couldn't believe my eyes. That was pretty weird to feel the vibe of somebody there.
Do you like the way America and the world have changed after 9/11?
Of course not. A lot of freedom was taken away from the world when that happened. It's one of those things where there's "more than meets the eye" with people and the way they do things and who they are and how they appear. There's "false evidence appearing real". (Laughs) It makes a lot of sense and everything but we have to take those precautions especially here because you don't want that to happen again. And it can happen and that's the craziest thing that someone to hijack a plane like that. People are crazy. Why can't we all get along? I don't know. There's more to it than we know.
Do you care about the presidential election over there in the States?
I care a lot but it's so crazy right now because the two people running... first of all the big question in everybody's mind over the last two decades was "Could we ever imagine having a woman president?" or "Could we ever imagine having a black president?" and then here we are with all the crisis in the world going on, we have a woman and a black person running for president. (Laughs) But they got their ideologies of life and everything and like with all presidents, you never know how they're gonna be until they get in the office but part of their campaign is to put down the other person and promise that they're gonna do obvious great things. But you really don't know until they get in the office of what they're gonna do.
Let's get back to Testament... You've been working together with quite so many great musicians over the years. How did you decide on this line-up to do the new album with?
In 2004 after a broke my leg in Slovakia we had a downside of 4-5 months and we had some more member changes and at that point we just decided that it would be a good time to get the original line-up back together and a lot of offers were coming in for us actually to do that. It was a good time for that to happen.
But in the end Louis Clemente couldn't do it...
I tried to write some songs with him but he got injured and he was getting a lot of pain when he was playing so he just decided that he wasn't going to be able to do that.
Then you wanted to finish the album with Nick Barker on drums, right?
Yeah. Nick Barker actually was gonna be on the record but he had some visa issues when he was getting back to the States. It was gonna take too long for him to clear that and get here and they couldn't even promise him that he actually could come back in the end. That was really weird and we had to decide that we have to do it with someone else as we had no idea when Nick can come back to the States.
So you went for Paul who's not a newbie in the band as he was already involved with Testament in the past.
Yeah, Paul's been in and out of the band unofficially and officially and he's from the same genre as us. He's been around for a long time and he fits the band really good. He lives in our area and he doesn't live in a different country so it worked out better. Paul plays great. He really fits the band a lot and as you can hear it on the record he did a really really great job.
Is he going to continue with the band on the live shows and future albums?
Yeah, I think so. He's definitely in the band.
Speaking of live stuff, Alex is still involved with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Does this make any problems for you when it comes to scheduling?
No, not really. TSO only tours in the later part of November, December and the beginning of January. That's a good time to be at home anyway. It's cold, it's winter, so we need to be with our families. I'm fine with that. If they toured in the summer it'd be a big problem.
You're gonna start a festival run in Europe soon but how about doing a proper tour over here?
The proper tour will probably start in September/October. That's the only time we can actually start touring because all summer is booked with all the festivals we're going to play. We haven't decided on where to start the tour but we actually are doing a States tour in August. We're playing arenas again and we're working on doing 4-5 weeks with Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell and Motörhead and that'll be a great tour.
Do you plan something special as far as the setlist or the stage show?
We're gonna play music. (Laughs) The line-up that recorded the album is going to play the tour and that's special. We're pretty excited to get over there again and play. I think the most special thing is that we're going to play new material.
What songs can we hear from the new album?
We're gonna starting off with the first five songs from the new album and then we'll see how those work. Songs like Henchman, The Evil's Landed, More Than Meets The Eye, The Formation Of Damnation and The Persecuted Won't Forget will be played for sure and we'll see how the fans react to them. These songs are pretty good songs to be played live I think.
You already mentioned about Nuclear Blast but there's another label, Prosthetic Records that just recently reissued First Strike Still Deadly...
Yeah, we licensed those records out to Spitfire, which was the previous label we were on, and they just really didn't get the records to the stores. I think they didn't do a good job of promotion so basically our time was up with them and we were able to re-license them to a younger label that I think will get the records to the stores. We wanted those records to be available to the public because basically you couldn't find them in any shops.
Do you see any chance of reissuing the early Testament albums with a proper sound?
That's something we definitely would like to do but that's up to Atlantic. Those are the records we signed for when we were kids and basically they are on them forever. (Laughs) With the latest record deals we did that a lot differently and we just licensed our records to the company for 7-8 years and after that either the label did a great job with promoting and selling the album or we get the records back and we have the opportunity to get them out again. With the early albums it was different as we were kids and those albums on Atlantic as long as they want.
What do you think of all the old school thrash bands like Death Angel, Exodus, Forbidden and obviously Testament are coming back to life?
I think it's great. Testament's always been there, we never gone away. Chuck and myself, we kept the band going strong and in my opinion we turned the band around. We went back to our roots with Low, Demonic and The Gathering. I think we really gained a lot of respect back in the underground with those records. But regarding your question I think it's great that those bands are back and writing kick-ass records.
Do you like any of their recent discs?
I really like the new Exodus a lot. I think Gary Holt is writing some really great stuff. I'd like to hear him make the songs better though on the writing. I think the riffs are great, I just think they need to concentrate on now structuring the songs a little bit better. Definitely they're fucking writing some great shit. And I like the new line-up. As for the new Death Angel, I think the last one is better than the one they put out before. The new Death Angel is pretty good for Death Angel, it's great.
When can we expect the next Testament record? In nine years?
No, eight! (Laughs) We already have material written for the next record. We're all very excited about that and after this long break we're kinda back on track so I would imagine ourselves getting back in the studio in late 2009. This year we'll keep on touring and even early next year and the summer playing some bigger festivals. And after that probably we'll start writing and trying to get the studio in December to have a 2010 release.
And for closing, what is the current status of Dragonlord?
We just finished editing a live DVD that we filmed in Japan. It came out great and we're really excited about it and we're looking to release that in the fall. That's gonna be a live record that sounds fucking really great. It sounds better than a record I think. (Laughs) It's a lot more raw and it's a lot more modern. That's also a full DVD concert and from now we'll be working on new material and getting in the studio after the Testament touring and we'll record the new record.