TESTAMENT Guitarist Is 'Dumbfounded' By Former Bassist's Online Rants

TESTAMENT guitarist Eric Peterson says that he is "dumbfounded" by his former bandmate Greg Christian's recent complaints about the way he was treated by the group, explaining that the bassist was "making the same money as everybody else" while he was a member of TESTAMENT.

Christian — whose acrimonious January 2014 exit from TESTAMENT was well publicized on these pages — has been critical of his former bandmates for much of the past two years, claiming in various social-media posts that he was "fully taken advantage" of by TESTAMENT because he was "shit broke and struggling" while he was a member of the group and explaining that he only continued playing with them because he needed to pay his bills.

Addressing his former bandmates in a recent Facebook message, Greg wrote: "Truth is, all I ever wanted to do was play music — but truth also is both [singer Chuck Billy and Eric] have been living off my investment along with [their] own, while I've been starved out. That's polluted the energy of TESTAMENT. It can be fixed, but only by actual corrective action."

He added in a separate post: "I wasted my fucking life working for and investing my time and energy building something only to be ass out after all these years. At the time when I should be doing OK. It's not like I didn't earn it. And to have one of the two people that've been living off my investment smile and act like they give a shit. Wow.

"I don't hate. I just don't care. Obviously it's mutual. Talk is just hot air and lip service. In the real world, I made a real investment. The only way to make things right is with real money. Until then. I don't care."

He went on to say: "If I had it to do again — [I] would've done something different with my life. Not that. Not with those people. It wasn't worth it and it was a huge mistake… I love playing on stage and put everything I have into it. But I still think I made a bad life choice here."

Asked by Sticks For Stones to comment on Greg's online rants, Peterson said that he hadn't seen any of the posts in question, but added (hear audio below): "You know, we all get out there. The road's not easy. But we definitely don't travel around in a van; we travel pretty comfortably. We have enough to eat, we make decent money. If you had to look at it as a job, you would definitely have a good job. I don't know what to say to that. Whatever his personal strife is, I don't know."

He continued: "[That's] too bad. I wish him all the best. Some people just aren't happy. I don't know what to say. I can talk crap and say stuff and go back and forth, but I've always just been, like, I don't know. I don't know what he wanted. What do you want? You're making the same money as everybody else… I don't know. I'm really dumbfounded by it."

Both Billy and Peterson have been vague when discussing Christian's departure from TESTAMENT in past interviews. Eric told Germany's Rock Hard magazine: "Well, you know, I'll just say this… Greg, basically, I think, was basically struggling in his mind with what he was doing. And he just seemed very unhappy on tour, and he has a lot of different reasons; he can only describe that. But he just seemed very unhappy, and we just let him go. Like, 'OK, you're unhappy. Then go.' 'Cause it was a lot of tours where he was unhappy. That's all I can really say about that."

Speaking to 100PercentRock.com, Billy said: "Well, I think Greg, he informed us that he wasn't going to be participating on the new record release and that was his last tour with us… I think that the last tour, he just wasn't getting along, and he just decided that that was going to be the last tour with us, so we just kind of said, 'Well, okay. I guess we'll have to maybe look for what's coming up in the future.' You know — there's nothing we can do."

TESTAMENT's twelfth album, "Brotherhood Of The Snake", will be released on October 28 via Nuclear Blast.