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EXODUS Guitarist: PAUL BALOFF's Death Was Wake-Up Call For Achieving Sobriety

April 9, 2004

In an exclusive interview with ElectricBasement.com, EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt explained how vocalist Paul Baloff's death caused the band to rethink their ways and get to work on a new album, the recently released "Tempo of the Damned" (Nuclear Blast).

"Fourth-fifths of the band — myself included — were fucked up all the time and just not capable of doing [the album]," Holt admitted. "It took Paul's death to serve as a wake-up call for achieving sobriety…to ever make this happen. None of these songs, other than 'Impaler', 'Sealed With a Fist', and 'Throwing Down', [the latter of which] were two WARDANCE songs [the ill-fated mid-'90s act formed by Holt and EXODUS drummer Tom Hunting], none of it ever happened until we turned over a new leaf, so to speak."

But it wasn't an immediate transition, as Gary explained: "Paul died February 2nd, 2002 and I didn't get clean until mid-December 2002, so it still took some time after that because with his death there was all this drug abuse still going on, but you're thinking it deeper sometimes due to your own depression and shit. It took awhile. It's been a long, fucked up road, but I've never felt better and been clean for like 14 months, and the album is the result." Read the entire interview here.

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