EXODUS Guitarist Talks About Upcoming Album

Scott Alisoglu of Teeth Of The Divine (and BLABBERMOUTH.NET) recently conducted an interview with guitarist Gary Holt of veteran San Francisco Bay Area thrash metallers EXODUS. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Teeth Of The Divine: Let's talk about this DVD a little bit. Quite honestly, I think "Shovel Headed Tour Machine" is just plain fantastic.

Gary Holt: Yeah, it came out really good! It wasn't even an intentional DVD. We played Wacken and the show was so sick. I mean they film everything anyway and they give you the little watermarked sample and it was like, man, we really need to put this thing out, it's really killer! What a show! Then Rob [Dukes, vocals] had been chasing us around with a video camera for years. He's the sober guy in the band [laughs], so he's the one that's not going to leave it lying around and lose it [laughs]. He did all the editing for both discs with a guy named Craig Cefola. It just came out really good. I'm not one to like watching any of my own shit, I don't even listen to my own records when they're done, but I did watch this and I was laughing, crackin' up, and it was engaging and funny. I thought it was a little different than the typical heavy metal documentary and Rob did a great job.

Teeth Of The Divine: On "Let There be Blood", I was one of the reviewers that thought it was one of the few cases where a band actually bettered and did justice to the original work. At the end of the day, how split were fans and critics about the re-recording of "Bonded by Blood"?

Gary Holt: Well, you have three camps. You have one camp where they loved it, you have another camp where either they won't admit that they liked it because there is nothing not to like, but they're defensive about the debut and I understand that. That's OK. How can you get mad at someone who loves your first album so much that they consider it untouchable? It's like the Bible to them. Then you have the other camp of people who just hate us anyway [laughs]. That's the camp that I say fuck off to and I couldn't really care less. I even did an interview with this guy in Poland who is a good friend of mine and he didn't like it, so I kind of flipped the interview around and started interviewing him and asking him why. He said that Rob's vocal performance is too one-dimensional. I asked how many dimensions did Paul Baloff have on it? That's not a knock on Paul because it wasn't meant to have a second dimension; it was all out violent thrash. Then he says well that's true. Then I asked what would he think if Rob added a second or third dimension. And he said that he would have thought he was fuckin' with the original too much [laughs]. Exactly! Then he absolutely agreed that he just loved "Bonded by Blood" and didn't like the idea, but it had nothing to do with how we did it. I think we did it with all the energy and fire that it deserved. We didn't sterilize it, we didn't change the arrangements… The only thing different from the original is a couple of solos and the tuning. We have been tuning down since before Paul died. You get purists that say it's not EXODUS and Paul Baloff is rolling is rolling his grave and it's down-tuned. So is the live album, suckers! We all liked it. There is only one "Bonded by Blood" and it was never meant to replace it and I tell people that it's like a companion piece. There is a modern updating, the production, and I think as a result the songs still sound completely relevant. They sound current and strong and they don't sound dated one bit. It's not anything but a better production really. A couple of the faces have changed, but we didn't stick a power metal singer in there on "Strike of the Beast". We were just trying to show the world how we do these songs today, which is the best example of why we did it. It's a bit of homage to the original and this is how we play them now, this is how we send live, and if you don't like it that's fine. It wasn't meant to reinvent the wheel.

Teeth Of The Divine: As for the next album…

Gary Holt: "Exhibit B: The Human Condition". It's really, really sick. It's really different from the last one and it's really different from the two before. But it's 100 percent EXODUS. Out of the last three, this one is faster, but it's also a little more melodic, and it's also a little bit more old school. Some of Rob's vocal patterns are just so old school; it's killer. The production is a little more, let's say, less sterile. Not less sterile, but less digital perfection, more organic. It's really, really lively. There is by far more melody on it as well. Thematically, it's a little different. Musically, the intro to this album links to the outro of the last album and this one ends on a take from the intro to the last album. The two tie together really well. The last one centered a lot on religion and this one is, as the title says, about the human condition; cruelty, ignorance, and inhumanity and brutality. Just the things that man has shown to be so adept at doing. Nuclear Blast is chomping at the bit to get the album released. We're shooting for May 18th.

Read the entire interview from Teeth Of The Divine.