The band is in the midst of their headlining tour in North America, and it is incredible.  On previous European tours, the trio enthralled audiences in at the Larvik Guitar Festival in Norway, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Austria.  The audiences were made up of jazz aficionados and metal heads wanting to see what the lead guitarist from the thrash metal band TESTAMENT is up to.   New York City based Alex Skolnick Trio (AST) blends genre and form of disparate bebop jazz standards and originals with a highly cerebral balls-out take on arena metal rock staples. Comfortable in blurring the stylings of Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass with Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, Mssrs. Alex Skolnick (guitar and vocals), Matt Zebroski (drums), Nathan Peck (acoustic standup bass) are stellar virtuoso artists who thrive on playing challenging music in front of their fans. Conceived as a sharp three piece ensemble uniquely inspired by the musical wanderings of Alex Skolnick, world-renowned lead guitarist and founding member of Testament, one of the most influential metal/thrash bands of all time, AST delights their dedicated audience while breaking hallowed and, supposedly, mutually opposite music genres. Along with Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett and Charlie Hunter, Alex has the profound distinction of being one of the more successful breakout individual students of uber-guitar-hero Joe Satriani. The last seven years has seen the ensemble produce three Alex Skolnick Trio records, Last Day in Paradise 2007 (Magna Carta), Transformation 2004 (Magna Carta), and their debut recording Goodbye To Romance: Standards For A New Generation 2004 (Skol Productions) The international music press has been overwhelmingly receptive and effervescent in their support of the Trio. Since the debut, AST had had an entire Jazz notes column in Billboard, garnered 4 ½ stars by Downbeat, reviewed by Jazziz, The Village Voice and has charted on the JazzWeek radio charts. Most recently the Trio enjoyed its status amongst the greats as an NPR Jazz Daily Pick feature. Typical of a comment by an AST fan (in this case, Kirk Hammett of Metallica) as recently as December, 2008 proclaimed in Guitar World magazine when speaking about AST: “Love them. I love his work. What Alex is doing by putting heavy metal songs in a jazz context is completely refreshing. His take on "Detroit Rock City" blew me away; that song has never sounded better to me. And when you think about, the old jazz standards were the pop music of their time, so Alex has updated the notion of what a standard is, and it's opened up all the current music to interpretation.” Live AST performs a compelling mix of live music and typically intersperses half the set of original compositions, with arrangements of classic Metal-Rockified jazz music by Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Pink Floyd, Rush, Sabbath, Dio and more, most of which have been thoroughly road tested by the boys. Line-Up: Alex Skolnick (Testament, Metal Alliance):  GUITAR Matt Zebroski:  DRUMS Nathan Peck (Maynard Ferguson, Maria Maldaur, Richard Cheese):  BAS