Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Exodus
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2014
Length: 67:01
Rating: 4/5
No doubt about it! Bay Area thrash metal is alive! Damn alive. Exodus are back with the tenth album of their career and their first in four years. This past summer the lost-and-found replacement for the late Paul Baloff, Steve »Zetro« Souza, jumped back into the lineup. His comeback was as sudden as his exit in 2004. Clearly the wolf never changes its coat. Anyway, Rob Dukes had to go in June, and by July Exodus were already playing the German Bang Your Head!!! festival with »Zetro« out front.
Exodus went at the new album with massive ambition. Almost too much of it. The mere fact that it was written with Dukes in the lineup, and that they pulled Souza back into the ranks right before recording the vocals, is ambitious enough. Some complication is fine here and there, but it’s clear that Bay Area thrash metal doesn’t need songs running past six minutes. And there are quite a few of those on the new album.
Given Holt’s obligations with Slayer, a four-year wait for a new album is easy to forgive. »Blood In, Blood Out« took shape over the last two years. Ever since Dukes joined on vocals, the band just kept cranking up the aggression from album to album. The opening Black 13 and the title track confirm it right away, and they’d have suited Dukes’ occasional punk HC/metal HC rasp better than Souza’s traditional Bay Area thrash vocal school. By the time you reach a song like Food for Worms, it’s obvious that most of Exodus’ playing in the traditional Bay Area school is still among the fastest on the planet.
The album is definitely very good. No doubt about that. Zetro throws himself into the vocals with everything he’s got. The singer delivers exactly what you’d expect from him, and at times we get served more than a few warm nods to »Tempo of the Damned«, though this time the drawn-out arrangements mask them a bit. One of the first nostalgic winks at that cult album comes with Collateral Damage, then Numb and Wrapped In The Arms of Rage. In short, these are the album’s shorter songs, plus sections of the longer ones, like the closing Food For Worms. Zetro is wildly explosive throughout the record, and his screams in the highest registers are especially venomous, still packing a resurrected sharpness that will surely make gentler souls’ ears bleed. Up in those top registers, the singer isn’t running out of breath or power any time soon!
More melody has returned to the new Exodus, brought by Zetro’s traditionally minded vocal performance, which, as mentioned, he nailed phenomenally. The Holt/Altus guitar duo remains one of the most striking in the story of metal, and once again their playing is one of the album’s biggest thrills: all the sudden modulations in key shifts, the mixing of different rhythms under their phrases, and the way multi-part solos complement each other, built on the core of endlessly fascinating, technically honed virtuoso playing from both guitar masters, which takes your breath away. Even so, quite a few minutes are set aside for repeating riffs where not much happens (or nothing at all), and at those points shorter arrangements could definitely have given the album the same impact or even more!
The band can justify Kirk Hammett (Meallica) guesting in official statements and interviews in countless ways, but it serves as nothing more than a cosmetic garnish, since both Holt and Altus leave him far, far behind in technical guitar ability. Still, it may well be that Hammett’s solo spot on Salt the Wound helped »Blood In, Blood Out« become the album that, a week after release, climbed to number 38 on the eternal Billboard 200 chart of best-selling albums. No Exodus album has done that well on that chart in the band’s career so far. Likewise, Chuck Billy’s guest spot (the man who replaced Zetro in Testament back when they were still called Legacy) leaves no special impression, other than the two vocalists brutalizing the outro of BTK together without much effect. The bonus track, a cover of the Slayer classic Angel of Death, is an interesting one. The band plucked up the courage and put drummer Tom Hunting on lead vocals, and he delivers a purely melodic vocal. It’s a fun moment of studio hanging out during the recording of the new album, and it definitely adds some spice to the release if you go for the limited edition. The excellent new production was handled this time by Exodus bassist Jack Gibson, who has recently gotten really good with Pro Tools. Andy Sneap only stepped in to help with the final mix and mastering.
»Blood In, Blood Out« is an album that has no shortage of that unmistakable Exodus venom. It has all the trademarks of a genuine, high-quality Exodus product. Returnee Zetro did a top-notch job, the Holt/Altus duo once again astonishes with the virtues and flawlessness of their guitar playing, and the rhythm section’s chemistry remains the essential substance of the damn bristling set of teeth that is the metal institution called Exodus. The band has delivered an ambitious record, varied in its arrangements and at times even overstretched, so the stronger parts of the songs end up lying low and don’t hit as hard as they could. Seeing as the band cut this album from the same arrangement mold as the previous albums released with Dukes, we can hope for a shorter record next time, with more of that musical substance, flirting more intensely with the days of »Tempo of the Damned«.
Lineup
Steve “Zetro” Souza – vocals
Gary Holt – guitar
Lee Altus – guitar
Jack Gibson – bass
Tom Hunting – drums, percussion, vocals on track no. 12
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Dan the Automator – programming (intro of track no. 1)
Kirk Hammett – guitar solo on track no. 4
Chuck Billy – vocals on track no. 6
Production
Exodus
Tracklist
1. Black 13
2. Blood In Blood Out
3. Collateral Damage
4. Salt The Wound
5. Body Harvest
6. BTK
7. Wrapped In The Arms Of Rage
8. My Last Nerve
9. Numb
10. Honor Killings
11. Food For The Worms
12. Angel Of Death*
*…. bonus track
