Testament guitarist Eric Peterson discussed about the 90’s grunge scene pushing metal to the sidelines, telling From Zero to Hero:
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“It was awesome. Thrash metal started becoming all about poseurs and people that were fake.
“We always made fun of people that wanted to be in a rock band just for the sake of being in a rock band – getting girls or having long hair or whatever – and it seemed like thrash metal started going toward that way.
“Even us, we started using hairspray and parting our hair on the side and doing some stupid shit. It [grunge explosion] kind of weeded out the weak and showed the bands that weren’t real because they switched over and started wearing grunge clothes or switching over to the music that was called ‘alternative.’
“Bands like Slayer and Testament and Exodus and a lot of thrash bands stood their ground, I think. They didn’t really switch over.
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“It was hard. Record sales went down for us, it made the market a lot smaller. After we got out of that, we knew that it was going to be a certain period of time of music and we got out of it and I think we came back on top a little bit because we never lost that ground, I think.”