Author: Rok Klemše
Location: Cvetličarna, Ljubljana
Interview date: 16.12.2010
Exodus, a thrash metal institution and the band that laid the foundations of thrash metal with their 1985 debut, Bonded By Blood. After that debut, the band lost its legendary vocalist, the charismatic Mr. Thrash, Paul Baloff, who did rejoin Exodus in 1997 for the live album Another Lesson in Violence. In the meantime, the vocal spot was filled by another legendary name, Steve “Zetro” Souza, who put out four records (and one live album) with Exodus between ’87 and ’97, and then, after Baloff’s tragic and untimely death (Paul Baloff died in 2002 at the age of 41 from the effects of a stroke), Tempo of the Damned in 2004, a record that defined how thrash metal should sound in the new millennium. Today the frontman spot in Exodus belongs to Rob Dukes, with whom at the helm the band recently released a new record, Exhibit B: The Human Condition. Through it all, from the band’s formation in 1980 right up to the current record, the central name of Exodus has been the legendary guitarist Gary Holt. This stage beast is now one of the central names of the thrash metal movement, and we got the chance to talk to the creator and pillar of the Exodus sound before the show at Thrashfest 2001.
RockLine/Rock Hard: Welcome to Slovenia again, this is your third or fourth time already, if I’m not mistaken. How’s the tour with Kreator and Death Angel going so far?
Gary Holt: It’s insane! This is our first tour together with Death Angel, even though we’ve been good friends since the early eighties. And it’s also already our third tour with Kreator in a year and a half. It’s insanely fun, and when you put two Bay Area bands in one room, all hell breaks loose. Every night is the same story, “I’ll just drink tonight and then no more,” and obviously nothing comes of it. I called it an early night yesterday and went to bed on the bus while backstage everything was already getting trashed. I wasn’t sober, of course (laughs). But what else are you gonna do in this kind of cold besides winter socks and Jägermeister?
RL/RH: So, to start, let’s go back in time. How do you remember the early thrash metal movement, which you were an important part of?
Gary Holt: It was insane, those were great times. The club scene was unbelievable, and not just for thrash, for metal in general. There were so many clubs in the Bay Area back then that you could go to a different one every day of the week and never hit the same place twice. Seven clubs in seven days, and you could see a different band at every one. A lot of good stuff came out of that scene.
RL/RH: Do you remember the first Exodus gig? If I’m not mistaken, it was before Paul Baloff joined the band.
Gary Holt: Yeah, yeah. Tom (Hunting, current Exodus drummer, author’s note) was singing and drumming back then. It was at the Monterra Bay Community Center on New Year’s, I don’t remember the year. Those were the days when we rented a hall, brought in ten kegs of beer and sold tickets to our own shows ourselves, before we ever played any clubs.
RL/RH: How do you see the current thrash “revival”? It seems like today’s scene is almost as strong as it was in the eighties.
Gary Holt: Nah, it’ll never be like the eighties again, back then everything was new and fresh. But I think today’s scene is incredible, there are tons of good young bands. People asked me in 2003 what I thought about the thrash revival, and I always told them I’d let them know when I actually saw one. In 2003 there definitely wasn’t one yet. We worked hard ourselves to try to bring it back, soon plenty of other bands joined in, and today it surely helps that a lot of veterans have put out the best records of their careers. None of them are here just as some eighties band cranking out mediocre shit, they’re making killer records. Just look at Death Angel, Overkill, Heathen, Testament, Megadeth, Slayer, even Metallica has turned in the right direction.
RL/RH: Let’s hope they turn a little bit more (laughs)…
Gary Holt: Yeah, they just can’t hire Rick Rubin to produce. He’s a genius, but not the right one for Metallica.
RL/RH: Speaking of production, you’ve been working with Andy Sneap for a few years now, so could I say he’s also, to a certain extent, co-responsible for the Exodus “trademark” “crunch” sound?
Gary Holt: That’s right, we’ve been working with him since 1997, since the live album Another Lesson in Violence. He surely has his share in it, but people, including ones from other labels, often tell me that Andy’s best productions are the ones with Exodus. But that’s because we know how to get our sound. Andy knows what sound we have, he knows what sound we need to have, I know what sound we need to have, and together we easily get the result we want. When we go into the studio my guitar tone is already dialed in and we can start recording within an hour, instead of screwing around with the sound for four days. As a producer, mixer and motivator Andy is the best, and he’s also one of my best friends. So work isn’t even work, we’re constantly goofing off and he’s like the sixth member of this band.
RL/RH: Last summer there was a ton of talk about the “Big 4” shows. What’s your take on that? Mine is that Exodus should at least be part of thrash metal’s big four.
Gary Holt: The Big 4 is based on the number of albums sold, and those four (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, author’s note) definitely sold the most. That’s where the nickname comes from, they were the biggest thrash bands of the movement. I don’t burden my thought process with that shit. I do what I do, I can put my albums up against anyone’s, and on stage I try to knock everybody’s socks off every single time. That’s what I worry about, not about being left off any Big 4, Big 5 or Big 10 lists.
RL/RH: Since coming back from the dead at the Thrash of the Titans festival in 2001, your power hasn’t let up. It even seems like you found a new aggression with the comeback. Every new album is heavier and more aggressive than the last. Would you say that’s largely down to Rob’s vocals?
Gary Holt: Yeah, it’s definitely a combination of the vocals and the fact that I’m old, bitter and angry (laughs). Besides, I don’t want anyone saying the band’s tempo is slowing down and that we’re not as aggressive as any other band. And as far as the music goes, I don’t have a shred of humor left (laughs). It’s dark, bleak and nasty (laughs). We’ll just keep going the way we want to, and the next record might sound like Air Supply.
RL/RH: When you recorded and released Bonded By Blood, did you realize you’d made one of the most influential records in metal?
Gary Holt: No, I had no clue. I knew the album was killer, we were just kids playing the music we wanted to play. Today, years later, when we play those songs live, it’s still like dropping bombs. And that’s fucking cool!
RL/RH: And how do you remember those times, when the one and only Paul Baloff was the band’s frontman?
Gary Holt: Fondly as hell! Paul was the heart and soul of the band. We parted ways with him, but in 1997, before he died, we fixed that mistake. I don’t mean Steve Souza was a mistake, but Paul’s life back when we fired him just wasn’t organized enough. Although, when I looked back at myself and my own life around the time of his death, I realized I was ten times worse.
RL/RH: You wanted to record the next studio record with Paul too?
Gary Holt: Yeah, but before that could happen, I had to get clean of drugs myself. Paul died, the other 4/5 of the band were wasted all the time, and I spent almost a whole year in rehab after Paul’s death. Paul died on February 2, 2002, and I got clean in December 2002. Sadly, it took Paul’s death for me to get serious. When you’re wasted all the time, you talk about recording albums, but you write practically nothing, because all your creativity is destroyed. But once I got clean, writing riffs was suddenly easy as pie again. The easiest thing I know how to do is write riffs, I could write you one right now and it’d probably be easier than putting on my shoes. And that’s because I love doing it. My favorite thing in the world is writing riffs.
RL/RH: What were you up to when Exodus were on hiatus between ’92 and ’97, if I’m not mistaken?
Gary Holt: We actually parted ways in 1994 and came back in 1997 with Paul. Everybody always mentions Thrash of the Titans as the reunion. We never actually broke up, we were just too fucked up from everything to even play. We never broke up, we just weren’t doing anything. (“We never broke up, we just weren’t doing shit”). Tom Hunting from the background: “We were doing shit, just not music” (laughs). During the time we weren’t doing anything, I was at home looking after my kid. I was a dad, which mattered more to me than the band.
RL/RH: When Rick (Hunolt, the band’s former guitarist, author’s note) left the band, the famous “H-team” fell apart. Was it hard to find his real successor, a guitar partner who suited you?
Gary Holt: I wasn’t looking for anyone, I just called Lee (Altus, current Exodus guitarist, also the guitarist of Heathen, author’s note).
RL/RH: So Lee was your first choice?
Gary Holt: He was my only choice. If he hadn’t wanted to accept, I had no other option.
RL/RH: Would Exodus have become a one-guitarist band if Lee hadn’t accepted your offer?
Gary Holt: I’d probably have found someone eventually, but I wouldn’t know who. I’d probably have had to hold auditions, but with Lee I knew he’d be perfect for the band. I knew him from before Rick, I knew him back when Kirk (Hammett, author’s note) was still in the band. He’s a great musician, a great friend and he’s got old-school credibility. It’s way more fitting to have someone with the same background in the band than to get some kid who’s played in ten death metal bands.
RL/RH: When you decided to re-record Bonded By Blood, fans had a lot of reservations about you ruining Paul’s legacy. Were you maybe afraid of a negative reaction from the fans too?
Gary Holt: No, not at all. Hell, considering it was a re-recording, the album sold really well. A lot of people like it, a lot of people don’t. They don’t like the idea itself, not the album as such. Bonded By Blood can never be replaced and that was never our intention. We just wanted to freshen the album up and pay “homage” to it. Originally I didn’t even want to play on the album, I wanted 9 different bands to play the album’s 9 songs. Sadly, because of nine different labels, nine managers and so on, that turned out to be impossible. I’ve never told them this, but these guys (points at Death Angel vocalist Mark Osegueda, author’s note) I had picked out for Metal Command. Then I just wanted nine different vocalists on the album, but once again the different labels were the obstacle. Mainly because we did everything ourselves, without a label.
RL/RH: So you basically released Let There Be Blood through your own label?
Gary Holt: Yeah, sort of, in partnership with my former manager. Like I said, with this record we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, we wanted to give it new power with modern production.
RL/RH: Despite the modern production, the songs themselves still sound incredibly fresh.
Gary Holt: That was exactly the idea! To prove that the songs haven’t aged and are still killer today. These songs mean a huge amount to me, they’re like my other nine kids. Every one of these songs is perfect and I wouldn’t drastically change or rewrite a single thing in them.
RL/RH: So it was purely and exclusively about the production, since the original recording lacked power and clarity?
Gary Holt: Sure, but that’s how everybody recorded back then. Everyone’s recordings sounded like shit (laughs).
RL/RH: Okay, I’ve always wanted to ask you how you came up with Bonded By Banjo (a country cover of the classic Bonded By Blood, a hidden bonus track on the album Exhibit A: The Atrocity Exhibition, author’s note)?
Gary Holt: We’ve always sung it like that, you just change the way you sing and it sounds like a redneck, hillbilly song. Tom and I always joked about shooting a video of us sitting on the porch chewing straw… for a DVD, of us doing it live, but sadly we never managed to.
RL/RH: Kind of Deliverance style (laughs)?
Gary Holt: Yeah, exactly like Deliverance (laughs). We recorded a song that all of us sing on, Jack plays banjo and harmonica. The funny thing is I recorded the cleanest and dumbest, but otherwise identical, version of the solo from the album, and in its country style it fits the song perfectly. It’s the exact same solo, just played horribly badly and with a perfect country tone (laughs).
RL/RH: Moving on to the new album, when and why did you decide to split the albums into two parts?
Gary Holt: When we recorded too many songs for the first record, and they were all great. The original idea was to release a double album, the first CD would be Exhibit A and the second Exhibit B, but it didn’t pay off cost-wise. So I said we’d just release it in two parts.
RL/RH: You’ve been with Nuclear Blast for quite a while now, since the release of Tempo of the Damned, and it’s becoming a real family for thrash bands: you, Death Angel, Testament, Kreator, ….
Gary Holt: Yeah, because they’re fans and they understand the music. They’re my friends, who I love, and not just some label reps. Every time we see each other we drink ourselves to death (laughs).
RL/RH: Speaking of which, is it hard to get on stage with a hangover?
Gary Holt: I have a rare ability that most people on this tour don’t, and that’s knowing when to stop (laughs). I get hammered, but I’ve got an invisible line after which I go to bed. I’m always the first one in bed on the bus. Sleep refreshes me and I don’t like sleeping all day, it wrecks my body clock. Lee, for example, is still asleep right now (it was around six in the evening, author’s note), he was drinking until six in the morning (laughs).
RL/RH: The new record is truly dark, heavy and ominous, with lyrics to match; Class Dismissed, for example, is about school shootings in the US. Were you maybe afraid of the reaction from puritanical America, since the song tells the story from the killers’ side?
Gary Holt: No, I don’t worry about other people’s opinions. There were a few people who wondered if I support school shootings. Are you kidding me? I’ve got two kids in school myself! The song is more about the question of what drives a mind to something like that.
RL/RH: You wrote something similar on the previous album with Children of a Worthless God.
Gary Holt: Yeah, except in this song we’re speaking through the eyes of bloodthirsty Americans. That song got us into even more trouble (laughs). I didn’t write it, but I support it. And it’s not an anti-Muslim song, no, it’s an anti-extremist song, against extremist Islam. Nobody gets worked up when we criticize Christianity, but when we criticize Islam, they’re already gearing up for war. Come on! In the Exodus world, anything goes!
RL/RH: Hammer and Life, on the other hand, deals with more positive things, since it’s dedicated to Paul Baloff.
Gary Holt: The way the song goes is the way Paul lived right up until the moment he died. He wasn’t the type to bullshit, he was a hammer, and “hammer and life” was his motto.
RL/RH: One last cliché question. What’s in store for Exodus in the near future?
Gary Holt: We’re playing the 70000 Tons of Metal festival soon with our friends Death Angel and Testament, Forbidden. Having two Bay Area bands on this tour is already insane, imagine what it’ll be like with four (laughs). And in the spring I’ll treat myself to a long rest, my first since 2003, and I can’t wait. In recent years we’ve been putting out album after album and I’m a little burnt out. But I think I’ll use that break to write new material, and I’ll spend the rest of the time with my girlfriend and kids. We’ve got a few festivals in the summer, but those will be more like vacations for me.
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
This interview was a collaboration between Rock Hard Slovenija and Rockline.
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