ALEX SKOLNICK Reflects On New ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO Album: “Everything Is Becoming So Dependent On Technology, But Our Music Is An Expression Of Being Human”

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ALEX SKOLNICK Reflects On New ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO Album: “Everything Is Becoming So Dependent On Technology, But Our Music Is An Expression Of Being Human”

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After weeks in Europe unleashing one of Testament’s heaviest tour runs, Alex Skolnick is back home, almost over the jet lag and coming down from nights of high-volume catharsis. The decompression is real. “I was there for a few weeks performing almost every night, and it takes a lot of energy,” he tells Rodrigo Altaf during their conversation. “You get used to it, and then you forget how much energy you’ve put out. And you get home, and you’re just exhausted for a few days.” That contrast between exhaustion and renewal sits at the heart of Prove You’re Not a Robot, the new album by the Alex Skolnick Trio. It’s a record that insists on human interaction in an era obsessed with automation: musical, cultural, and otherwise. The title is more than a clever nod to login screens. “Part of the inspiration for the title was the fact that everything is becoming so dependent on technology,” Skolnick explains. “I think there are just a lot of people that are not thinking for themselves and just sort of following podcasters or YouTube channels that are telling them how to think. And by not thinking, you’re behaving more like a robot.” We’re constantly asked to prove we’re not machines online, but he’s more concerned with how we behave offline. He points to a growing culture of conformity: in politics, in entertainment, in the way audiences let algorithms, pundits, and influencers decide what to think. For Skolnick, the trio’s music is the opposite of that: improvised, interactive, and unmistakably human: “It is music that does require interaction and being in the same room at the same time,” he says. “We are making this music together, and it’s an expression of being human.” Artificial intelligence hovers around his world from multiple angles. On Testament’s latest album, Parabellum, the band dives into dystopian tech on the track “Infanticide AI,” born from ideas by Chuck Billy and lyricist Del James. Skolnick notes how naturally that theme echoes the trio’s more understated concerns. “It’s interesting because even though my trio album doesn’t have AI in the title, you can certainly relate it to that as well,” he says. But where Parabellum channels futuristic dread through blast beats and razor-edged riffing, Prove You’re Not a Robot answers with nuance, swing, and space. It’s a reminder that resisting the machine doesn’t have to mean shouting over it; it can mean listening more carefully. The album’s visual world is as intentional as the music. The cover photo is Skolnick’s own black-and-white shot, born from a quiet moment with a “real camera,” not a phone. “This was an accidental image,” he recalls. “I was just going around taking photos, not thinking about what I was taking. And this really felt like it could be an image. And then once I had the title, it seemed to really fit.” Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God sits at the intersection of these elements: he’s the one who pushed Skolnick into serious photography, then stepped behind the lens for the band portraits. “Randy got me into taking photographs on a real camera,” Skolnick says. All the band photos on the album, “the photos I’m in”, are Blythe’s work, woven together by designer Maddie SJ with Skolnick’s own images. The result feels tactile and human, the opposite of AI-generated gloss. Photo by D. Randall Blythe One of the standout tracks, “Armando’s Mood,” nods directly to two unlikely but foundational voices for Skolnick: Chick Corea and Steve Howe. “Chick Corea is a massive influence,” he says, singling out pieces like “Armando’s Rumba” as essential, if daunting, study material. At the same time, he was revisiting “Mood for a Day” by Yes, rediscovering Howe’s hybrid picking approach. “I realized a lot of his acoustic parts are done with pick and fingers. And I’ve been doing more of that lately.” Somewhere in that overlap, a strange idea clicked. “Something about the melodies, I thought, oh, this is interesting. It’s almost like you could play ‘Armando’s rumba’ slow at this tempo. And it fits.” So he fused them, then twisted the meter into 11/8, more John McLaughlin than straight tribute. “It was really like a challenge, an exercise for fun. I wasn’t sure it was something worth putting on the record. But as I worked on it with the guys, it just really started feeling musical and challenging, but also fun. And now it’s this piece that’s very fun to play.” Their version of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” began as an emotional reflex. “That one came about on the day we found out he passed away,” Skolnick says. The trio was about to play The Iridium in New York, so they slipped in a partial, faithful version on the spot. For the new album, he finally gave it the full treatment by breaking it apart. “Of course, I want to make it different from the original,” he explains. The trio leans into 5/4, tipping its ...

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