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.
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 hat to “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, reharmonizing Petty’s tune and stretching it into something moodier, more psychedelic, still recognizably “Breakdown” but refracted through a jazz lens. The point isn’t cleverness for its own sake, but honoring songs by refusing to play them on autopilot.
The bittersweet closer “Asking for a Friend” traces back not to a guitar, but a piano, and to a conversation on Skolnick’s own podcast, Moods and Modes, with Pat Metheny. “He had talked to me about writing on piano,” Skolnick says. On this record, he followed that advice almost obsessively. “Almost all of it was written on piano.”
“Asking for a Friend” emerged accidentally, after he misplayed a pop tune he was trying to learn. “I played it wrong. But the wrong version sounded really nice. And it didn’t sound like whatever it was I was trying to learn.”
The title sat in his notes for a while, until the song earned it. Then came the twist: Dave Grohl released a track with the same name. “I recorded this two years ago,” Skolnick says, laughing. “I had it first. But what can I say? I’m honored. I guess that’s a sign. Good minds think alike.”
To bring Prove You’re Not a Robot on the road, the trio is heading for intimate clubs across the US and Canada, a deliberate contrast to the arenas and festivals of Testament. “Improvisational music is more of an intimate listening experience,” he reflects. In Europe, they played elegant rooms like Le Chateau in Paris and Porgy & Bess in Vienna, spaces where people sit, listen, and, if needed, shush.
He enjoys watching metal fans step into that environment. “There’s no reason you can’t have more than one type of musical experience,” Skolnick insists.
Convincing venues, however, can be another story. “They see my name and they think we’re going to show up with a giant drum kit, and I’m going to have walls of Marshalls amps like Yngwie, and they think it’s going to be this shred fest. And they don’t know. It’s an acoustic dynamic. It gets very quiet.”
It’s the same mission as the record: defy assumptions, insist on nuance.
None of this means Skolnick is softening. Parabellum is one of Testament’s most punishing records, shot through with modern extremity and flashes of black metal tension. A major catalyst is new drummer Chris Dovas, whose sensibilities pull from contemporary heavy acts. “He brings a lot of that energy,” Skolnick says. Tracks forged with Eric Peterson tap into a sharper, more modern aggression, while others echo the band’s classic DNA.
He cites the ballad “Meant to Be” as an example of piano-informed writing crossing into his metal life, the main melody and its guitar translation both born at the keys. It’s perhaps the most accessible track on a record otherwise dominated by extremity, and he’s fine with that contrast.
“I like to be able to play in different musical situations and not feel restrained,” Skolnick explains. “One world doesn’t limit the other.”
That, ultimately, is what Prove You’re Not a Robot argues for: in a time of algorithms and crowd-think, keep your edges. Stay curious. Interact in real time. Refuse to move like a machine, even when the world keeps asking you to tick the box.
Prove You’re Not a Robot is out now. Pre-order it here.
Alex Skolnick Trio is:
- Alex Skolnick / Guitar
- Matt Zebroski / Drums
- Nathan Peck / Bass
Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:49 — 79.7MB)
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