EXODUS: Interview with Gary Holt

Exodus' “Blood In, Blood Out” is without any doubts, one of the strongest Thrash Metal releases of the year and to talk about it, Against Magazine interviewed none other than the band’s lead guitarist and mentor for the past 32 years, Gary Holt. In between talks about the new album, we got to discuss the band’s recent singer switch, songwriting for the new record and the inputs of guests like Kirk Hammett or Chuck Billy among other subjects such as the “Facebook lyrics” episode and also the recording of Slayer’s next record, on which Holt will feature.

From what I know Exodus has been back from a tour recently. How are the crowds reacting to Steve’s return, and how did you felt in the first date you played live with him again after so many years?
Well, to be honest, the first few shows, it took getting used to it again, you know? Despite how many years we played in a band together, it’s been many years. But as every show went by, we got more and more comfortable with each other on the stage again and now it’s like second nature. The South America tour we did was just awesome and he’s gotten better and better on stage every show and his vocals have just been killin’ and everything’s going great!

Yeah, he’s really been killin’ it as it shows from the new record! So how did Steve came to rejoin the band?
Yeah! Well, there was never any intention of making a singer switch when we started this album. If that had been the case, we wouldn’t have tracked or done so much work with Rob on it. It just got to that point where you know…the best way to put it is that we weren’t on the same page anymore. We weren’t agreeing with things and we had four guys in one camp who were really excited about the album and Rob who didn’t seem to be as enthusiastic. We know he had a lot of stuff going on at the time, but it got to the point where it wasn’t all new, it was old issues that kind of rose to the forefront. Everybody likes to speculate about what the real reason is because I won’t give it you know? They’re like personal relationship issues and I don’t feel any need to talk about it. Of course, you know, if you don’t give an answer, they make up their own. You know what I mean? Some of them are pretty funny like “Oh, they did it for the money!” (laughs). Recording an album with two singers costs us money, we had to pay two guys! But Steve came about because we knew we needed to make a singer switch and then the question became “Who’s going to be the singer?”. We talked about all options, we didn’t just zero in in one guy. We talked about looking for a new guy, we talked about looking into established bands and singers that might want to change the scenery, and then we talked about Steve and so the next thing we did was say “Let’s have Steve come in and sing one of the new songs and see how it feels”. He had a track, the opening track on the album, “Black 13”, he had the music on the sand for like seven hours and the lyrics for two, and he came in and sang it like he’s been singing it for six months and it was just awesome! That was the end of the singer search right there. We went with the guy that had already been here!

Great choice, though I personally like Rob’s material a lot as well…
So do I, he’s one of the best singers out there, and he took a lot of shit from people, you know? I don’t think it was fair then and I don’t think it’s fair now. He’s an amazing singer and I’m proud to say that I watched the guy come from no prior experience to just being a powerhouse. But like in any relationship, whether it’s a band or a marriage, sometimes things aren’t working anymore…

Yeah, I understand that. Let’s talk now about this killer new record “Blood In, Blood Out”. To me, it has some of the vibe and sounds like the natural successor to “Tempo of the Damned” from back in 2004, but how about you? How do you feel about the sound and style of this record?
That’s what a lot of people think you know? I think that maybe in some levels it does. People are saying that it sounds much more like an old school record, but I think that songs like “Food for the Worms” and all that stuff are still like modern, super grindcore fast Exodus. We never intended to make anything that sounded like anything. It’s the same in every album we do. We never get down and say we need to write something that is more similar to “Tempo” or “Fabulous Disaster”, it’s just whatever the hell we write and it happens, no matter if it’s 11 minute songs or four minute songs. This album was no different. The songs as they were written called for more like “gang” vocals, so it got more gang vocals. The last albums like “Exhibit A” had almost none, but it was like a super progressive album which didn’t call for it. “Exhibit B” had a quite few on it and this one has more.

It sounds like it would be the next step you guys would take with Zetro back then…
Yeah, I think it is. I think it probably makes sense putting it in that way.

I know you pretty much wrote the music for all the songs except for “Body Harvest” and “Honor Killings” which Lee wrote. In the case of Exodus, how do the song ideas and riffs develop into full songs in the context of the whole band working on them?
You know, it starts the same way as it did when we were writing “Bonded By Blood”, it starts with the riffs you know? I still sit and record at whatever shitty recorder I have laying around. I don’t sit around there and mess around with digital recording at home. The only modern update is that instead of my old four-track cassette player I just records riffs on my phone now, so I don’t forget them. Then, when I got something put together I get together with Tom [Hunting] and we just start bashing stuff in the rehearsal room. It’s always been organic. I never sat down at home and done like the whole multi-tracking and editing to see what fits here or there, that doesn’t work for me. To me, to write a song I just follow my instincts.

When writing the riffs for this record, and having in account the fact that you’ve been touring a lot with Slayer, did you felt that the material you’ve written could be used in both ways, either in Exodus or Slayer?
No, I don’t think these riffs would work with Slayer. I think that if you went to the album, you would probably find some, but they were written for Exodus. If Slayer asked me to write something for them, after all the shows I’ve played, all the Slayer catalog I know how to play, I kinda know how their mind works and I could adapt you know, but I don’t think almost any of this would work for Slayer.

There must have been probably a moment when you were writing a guitar riff and thought “Maybe this is a little bit too Slayer-ish for Exodus”…
Well, I might ask myself that you know? I got a thousand riffs that I haven’t used that I still have on my phone and I didn’t really encountered any moments when I was like “Oh, that sounds a little too Slayer”. It’s all thrash metal! There’s always going to be a few similarities, but I think it comes down to note selection actually more than anything. Slayer use a lot of chromatic scales and Exodus tends to work around the pentatonic stuff and more structured melodic scales and things like that.

Let’s go on to the themes of the record. In what themes have you focused on this time for writing the songs. What were your inspirations?
God, that’s always a hard question for me because some songs are really cutting dry you know? “Collateral Damage” is about how average people in our society just throw away disposable votes to the politicians and then some other songs, they’re just a bit more ambiguous you know? They’re just hate and rage and just any black feelings I had in any particular day, I’ve just put them down to paper.

And you have this killer track “Blood, In Blood Out” which is kind of an homage to the old school days…
Yeah, it’s an homage to where this all started, where this whole circle of violence started. That would be going back to Ruthie’s Inn in Berkeley and things like that you know? When the rest of the country and the world were still fist banging, people were already stage diving from the top of the P.A. at Exodus shows, so yeah, it’s a little throwback, a little nod of the hat to the old days.

About the time that Blood In, Blood Out was near to be released, as everyone knows by now a 31 year old fan of Exodus, was arrested for posting the lyrics to “Class Dismissed” on Facebook, but then released soon afterwards. Do you remember what was your immediate reaction when you knew about it?
Well, I thought it was like kinda of ridiculous, but at the same time there’s a parent with two kids in college and another in high school, in a some weird way I maybe understood it. We do live in a society where you actually fear the times that kids are going to school, but the thing that blew me away was that it took them seven days to figure out he was not a threat, he was just a 31 year old metalhead and it seems like they could have figured that out in a day…You find the lyrics on his Facebook page, but if you looked at it you would find lots of pictures of him hanging out with his friends, drinking beer at metal shows and photos of him watching football you know…Now, if he was some kid or some grown up man and his Facebook was full of nothing but just the blackest fuckin’ diatribes about hatred for his life and society then maybe they would start linking the two together, maybe they could have a time bomb there, but that wasn’t the case. It took them a week to figure it out!

Jesus…a whole week…
Yeah, seven days in jail, you know? Just because of a lyrics post…

So, going back to the music and talking about the covers now. You recorded two cover songs for the limited and Japanese editions of the record, “Angel of Death” of Angel Witch and “Protect, Not Dissect” by the UK hardcore punk veterans The Varukers. Why have you chosen to do these two covers? You also got “Rat” Martin to record the Varukers number with you right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly!! Angel Witch, you know…that debut album is still one of my top three albums of all time. It’s an album that means a lot to me, to Tom and to Lee in particular since we were all around in those days you know? We actually tracked all the music for that one when we did the last album, we just never did the vocals and we had Tom [Hunting] singing it. He’s just got a better clean voice for that stuff, and The Varukers track…they’re one of the most significant British punk hardcore bands, they’re highly underrated and not as well known as like GBH and all that stuff, and the song is just vicious, so we went with that and I ended up getting in touch with “Rat” through a mutual friend of mine because I was trying to get the lyrics, just trying to decipher some of the lyrics of a really old rough punk recording, that was very difficult. Then, a friend of a friend knew “Rat” and we ended up emailing back and forth and it turns out that he lives like…25 minutes away from Andy Sneap and I was like “Dude, why don’t you come down and do some vocals on a tune?” and he was like “Yeah, I’m totally into that!”, so there you have it!

Yeah, I heard the original of that song and it sounded like “proto-thrash” back then!
Yeah! Totally! Totally! So is Discharge and stuff like that you know? Those bands were huge influences in the creation of thrash metal.

Now that we talked about “Rat”, I want to discuss some of the other guests of the record with you. The album starts off with “Black 13” that features a special remix by “Dan the Automator” from Gorillaz, then “Salt the Wound” has a Kirk Hammett solo on it and “BTK” features Chuck Billy on vocals. Can you tell us how each of these guys got involved in these particular tracks, and how the recording sessions with them went down?
Two of them were accidents and one of them was intentional, and the intentional one was Kirk! I’ve spent a lot of time with Kirk while I was out with Slayer and we played some shows with Metallica from the Big 4 shows like the Sonisphere festival and Soundwave in Australia. Just started out like two friends hangin’ out talking about the old days and becoming like 17 year old kids again and then it went from there like “you should do a solo on our new album!” and he was so into it you know? It was the first time we ever got to play on an old Exodus record! He founded this band! He taught me the beginnings of guitar playing. He was my first guitar teacher and so he finally got to play on it and he was super excited! As far as Chuck [Billy], he showed up at the studio just to check out the progress and I stuck him in the front of a mike, I said “I got this part for you, just go in and do some vocals!”, it was just perfect, and Dan…I’ve known him for at least 20 years. We always tried to collaborate back and forth like if he needs guitar and stuff like that, and always one of us is too busy to do anything! I saw him last year and we talked about having him do the intro to the record and then at the last minute his manager, who managed Exodus in the whole ‘80s and ‘90s, Isabella, she called me up to know if I still wanted Dan to do the intro. I said “Let me see if we still have the time”, so we sent him the stems of the track and he did this thing with it and it was just killer, like this super proto-industrial fucking madness!

Yeah, totally! When I was listening to the record for the first time I was kind like “Is this the right record?”, but then when the guitars crashed in, it made total sense…
Yeah! We wanted to do something different instead than other big orchestrated intro that we and everybody else has already done…

Having talked about Kirk, I just want to make this short detour into the past. How were those years with him in the band? How did you feel about the work you guys did as a guitar duo back then?
It was awesome you know? We were just kids, we did it for the love of it! There was no business involved you know? Back when we started, our manager was just another one of our friends who helped build stages and lights for when we were playing backyard parties and…every money we had we just spent on beer and strings maybe (laughs). That was a good time you know? We were kids, we were excited about music and we didn’t got close to be burned out yet, so…those were special days.

I imagine it must have been a little difficult for you when he told you that he was going off to Metallica…
No! Actually we were happy for him you know? We thought it was the right move for him and it was kinda like he handed me the keys to the car! You know…”I founded this band but it’s your baby now!!”. I was already starting to write a lot of the material and everything was getting more and more aggressive, more angry and vicious and the next thing you know, we had “Bonded By Blood”…

You also worked with two great guitarists in Exodus so far, Rick Hunolt and Lee Altus. What are the differences in working with both of them?
Well, Rick is like the best musician that ever played in Exodus. He’s an amazing killer keyboardist. He’ll just sit at the piano with no practice and he just starts playing his ass off and he’s also an awesome funk bass player! He’s the best all around musician that played in the band because you get to do more than one thing and he even played a little bit of drums! Lee, he’s like the superior rhythm player. His sense of melody is really phenomenal so, they both totally have their strengths. They both cemented their place in Exodus history you know?

I’ve read somewhere, and correct me if I’m wrong, that some of your main guitar influences are Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, Angus Young, Tony Iommi, Uli Jon Roth, Mathias Jabs and Ted Nugent. If you had to choose one of these guys, with whom would you like to collaborate on doing new music?
Ha! That would be Blackmore!! He’s my hero, you know? He’s my number one favorite guitar player of all time, but I hear he’s kind of dick, so…he might not be that into collaborating with me, I don’t know…But, also, I love all the renaissance stuff and all of that, and it would be super fun to experiment with some medieval music!

Well, I gotta ask you this, because as we talked previously now you’re not only Gary Holt of Exodus, but you’re officially Gary Holt of Slayer as well. So, how’s the recording of the new Slayer record going and how’s it sounding so far?
Well, the stuff I’ve heard, I’ve been obviously a bit more busy with the Exodus world, is like killer! Just awesome! It’s 100% Slayer so, people are going to be blown away. Kerry’s worked his ass off on this record and when people hear it, they’re going to understand. People just like to talk shit and this and that and all of it…Kerry is the glue. Through all this stuff, the drummer changes and Jeff’s passing, he lived and breathed Slayer and just kept the band going you know? The album is super…killer! People are gonna be just blown away, it’s gonna be awesome! He’s still writing! He’s still writing more songs, he’s got way more than enough and he’s not done. He hasn’t quit working, not for a second.

And you’re playing some of the leads in the record right?
Yeah, I’m going down there next week to get started on that, so I’m kind of excited about that.

You’ve been juggling your activities between two of the most high profile bands in thrash metal. What’s the difference between being in Exodus and Slayer in terms of how both bands operate? How do you feel your life has changed since you became a regular musician on these two bands?
Well, it’s changing in a way that I’m busier than I’ve ever been. Both camps are my families you know? The only real difference is that with Exodus we run a little bit more around the stage and in Slayer we kinda stand there and just fucking bang and be fuckin’ vicious about it! Offstage they’re both quite relaxing you know? We just like to chill out, eat a good dinner and have a few drinks!

So, you’re gonna be touring with Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies for the next few months. How do you think the challenge of taking up the stage two times in a row every night for almost four hour runs will be? How are you preparing for it?
The main thing is that you gotta get your rest! I have some joint issues, so I gotta stay off my feet and when I’m not playing, just try to sit down and not wander around, which sucks because part of the fun is going around and hanging out with people, but I just park it somewhere and sit and rest and then play the first show and rest while Suicidal plays and then play the next one. You know, It’s a challenge. At 50 years old, playing twice at night isn’t a walk in the park, but I’m willing to do it, gets two tours done at once so, it gives me a little bit more time at home with family.

You’re going to set the threshold of how it’s done on this tour…
I’ve done it twice on shorter tours, but this is the first full length one, so it’s gonna be a challenge for sure!

So, what’s next in line for Exodus? Any other plans on other releases after this tour? Possibly a new live record with Zetro on vocals?
We don’t have any plans for a live record right now. It’s just the November tour, then break through the holidays and then we’re going to be working on some stuff for the following year and it goes from there!

Thank you for the time you took to talk with us Gary. Any last words for the fans?
Just thank you for all the support in making this new album such a success!

Originally published on Against Magazine, October 27, 2014.