In a new interview with Music Interview Corner, Testament’s Alex Skolnick shared his thoughts on religion. The conversation came about when he was asked about a t-shirt he wrote years ago, with the phrase ‘On the back of this shirt is a list of scientific discoveries that were later proven wrong by religion’ on the front, while the back of the shirt displayed an empty list with spaces numbered 1 to 10.
While the guitarist respects religious people, he thinks it causes problems.
“I think it causes more problems than it solves. I think it’s okay to have your beliefs, but there are things you know will happen, or that you can say with certainty it’s gonna happen, and then there are things that you can imagine are true,” he said. “And, yeah, I always liked the story of [English astronomer, mathematician and physicist] Halley, the scientist. [Edmond] Halley calculated the [return of the] comet [in 1758], and he said, ‘There’s gonna be a comet.’ And they all thought he was crazy. And he said, ‘Oh, well, here’s why.’ And he had mathematical calculations. And sure enough, he said, ‘Okay, at this time there’s gonna be [a comet],’ and there was the comet.”
The guitarist also mentioned what the scientist could have said instead: “And he could have said, ‘You know what? I am God and I’m gonna make this happen.’ And he didn’t. He could have started an organization and he could have gotten a lot of money… But he didn’t. And I respect that.”
Though many bands write and sing about religion, Skolnick thinks it’s gotten troubling in daily life. “A lot of terrible things happen with religion, and a lot of the heavy metal songs have been written about it,” Skolnick added in the same interview. “We’re certainly not the first [band to sing about it] — not that we have a lot of songs about that, but that’s just something, yeah, in real life, I’m just, yeah, sometimes troubled by the outsized role that religion plays in our society.”
In other news, Testament is currently working on their new album, and according to Skolnick, it should be ‘wrapped up by the end of the year.’ The band’s last album ‘Titans Of Creation’ came out in 2020.
