EXODUS Working On Darker, Faster New Album

David E. Gehlke of Blistering.com recently conducted an interview with EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Blistering.com: Did the re-recording of "Bonded By Blood" rekindle a lot of old memories of Paul (Baloff)?

Gary Holt: Yeah, sure. Anytime we're recorded anything, I tend to use Paul as my barometer to see if it's heavy enough. Whether we're working on "Atrocity" or "Shovelheaded" I always think what Paul would think. When we're doing drum tracks, Tom (Hunting, drums) and I were laughing the whole time because we were remembering the total mayhem that it was when we were recording the album. We did the album at this studio [called] Prairie Sun which is on a farm north of San Francisco. We stayed in these cabins and went insane. It was amazing we got any work done [laughs]. Our friends came up from the Bay Area and they'd get drunk, get in fist-fights, and shit would get broken, but somehow we managed to make a classic.

Blistering.com: Any regrets on not doing a reunion album with Paul?

Holt: We had every intention of doing one, but before Paul passed away, all of us except for Jack (Gibson, bass) were a drug-addicted mess. We couldn't pull it together. We'd get high and get in a jam for a while. We'd have this room full of beer and guitars and we'd just hardly ever played. It took getting clean to get serious about [it], but unfortunately, Paul's death and then some for me to finally wake up. When we did the (2001) Thrash of the Titans thing, we rehearsed for two weeks and in the course of those two weeks, we played the whole set once. We'd show up for practice, play a couple of songs, stop, play another song, then have problems with a circuit breaker, so we went through each song at least once before we played the show. It's just hard when you're having that kind of problems trying to get serious and it's one of my great regrets to not do a studio album.

Blistering.com: What's the status of "Atrocity Exhibition Part II"?

Holt: We have the four songs we recorded and I'm spending the time I have at home writing. I have seven or eight in the works right now and are in the early stages of completion and Lee has some stuff, so we have more than enough songs for the next album.

Blistering.com: Any thoughts on how the songs are turning out?

Holt: It's just off the hook. I'm more excited about these songs than I have in a long time. This shit that is coming along… it's so heavy and it has stuff to offer that the last three albums didn't. I don't want to repeat each album. The last album is real long, epic and dark, but this album is dark, but it's faster and there's more guitar harmonies.

Read the entire interview at Blistering.com.

Fan-filmed video footage of EXODUS' July 5, 2008 performance at the Tidal Wave Festival at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in San Francisco's McLaren Park can be viewed below (clip uploaded by YouTube user "evildead420").