American thrash metal legends and genre originators EXODUS played the first of two very special “Bonded By Blood” 40th-anniversary shows — falling upon late original vocalist Paul Baloff‘s birthday weekend (April 25) — Friday night at UC Theatre in Berkeley, California. The concert featured EXODUS performing “Bonded By Blood” in its entirety, plus other Baloff-era songs, including early tracks “Hell’s Breath”, “Warlord” and “Impaler”, plus “Pleasures Of The Flesh” and “Brain Dead” from 1987’s “Pleasures Of The Flesh” album, both songs having originally been written and demoed while Baloff was still a member of EXODUS. Joining EXODUS on stage at UC Theatre were two very special guests: Rick Hunolt, the other half of the famed EXODUS “H-Team” who is on every studio recording from 1985 through 2004 and co-wrote some of the band’s best-known songs such as “A Lesson In Violence” and “Deliver Us To Evil”; and bassist Jeff Andrews, who was a member of EXODUS from 1981 until 1983. when he was replaced by Rob McKillop.
The setlist for last night’s concert was as follows:
01. Bonded By Blood
02. Exodus
03. And Then There Were None
04. A Lesson In Violence
05. Metal Command
06. Pleasures Of The Flesh
07. Brain Dead (with Rick Hunolt)
08. Piranha (with Rick Hunolt)
09. Happy Birthday To You (Mildred J. Hill & Patty Hill cover) (for Paul Baloff)
10. Deliver Us To Evil (with Rick Hunolt)
11. No Love
12. Strike Of The Beast
Encore:
13. Hell’s Breath
14. Warlord (with Jeff Andrews)
15. Impaler
Although EXODUS rarely gets mentioned alongside the so-called “Big Four” of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — the aforementioned “Bonded By Blood” inspired the likes of TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL, VIO-LENCE and many others to launch their careers and is considered one of the most influential thrash metal albums of all time.
In early 2022, EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt was asked during an appearance on “Put Up Your Dukes”, the podcast hosted by EXODUS singer Rob Dukes, if original EXODUS guitarist Kirk Hammett, who has been a member of METALLICA for the past 42 years, was involved in the songwriting for any of the material that ended up on “Bonded By Blood”. “There were riffs that I had written while Kirk was still in the band, and he tried to adapt them, tried to change ’em a little bit — the old, ‘I changed it a little bit. I’m a co-writer on this riff,'” Holt recalled. “And that was, like, two riffs, I think. And the rest of ’em were written after he left. We never used a Kirk Hammett riff, ever, until [2004’s] ‘Tempo Of The Damned’ [album] when we recorded [the early EXODUS song] ‘Impaler’.”
Explaining that “the first two [EXODUS] songs finished post-Kirk Hammett were ‘Strike Of The Beast’ and ‘No Love’,” Holt continued: “The biggest talent I have, if you wanna call it a talent, is my fucking memory. I can remember fucking everything. I remember showing him… I can picture it as a film, showing Kirk the riff to ‘Strike Of The Beast’, and I can picture it as if I’m watching it on a film — in the jam room, me in my spot where I played him [the riff] and him wanting to change the higher note to a lower note; I remember it all as if I’m watching a movie of it. I remember all of it — every last minute of it. I remember details from fucking most meaningless shit.”
The original lineup of EXODUS consisted of guitarists Hammett and Tim Agnello, drummer Tom Hunting and vocalist Keith Stewart (bassist Carlton Melson joined in 1980). Holt joined the band in 1981, while Kirk left two years before “Bonded By Blood” saw the light of day.
Back in 2018, Kirk spoke about the fact that riffs from songs by EXODUS, “Die By His Hand” and “Impaler”, found their way into “Creeping Death” and “Trapped Under Ice”, from METALLICA‘s “Ride The Lightning” album. “What I think happened was when Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] and James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman] were thinking about getting rid of Dave [Mustaine], our sound guy, Mark Whitaker — who was EXODUS‘ manager — gave them EXODUS‘ demos,” Kirk said. “I think ‘Die By His Hand’ might have caught their ears. So when they were writing ‘Creeping Death’, they went, ‘Great. ‘Die By His Hand’. Put it right there.’ It was definitely not me going, ‘I have a riff here in this EXODUS song, and it needs to be here in this METALLICA song.’ By the way, I wrote that ‘Die By His Hand’ riff when I was, like, 16 years old.”
In 2014, Hammett was asked by U.K.’s Metal Hammer magazine if it’s strange to him how much METALLICA has eclipsed the other “Big Four” bands in terms of commercial popularity. “I try not to spend too much time thinking about stuff like that because whatever I think of is still not going to be a satisfying enough explanation,” he replied. “It’s just the way things are and how the chips fell.
“EXODUS in the ’80s had some bona fide problems, but I think their first album [‘Bonded By Blood’] is just as good as [METALLICA‘s debut] ‘Kill ‘Em All’. We were just playing the music we wanted to hear because no one else was playing it and it wasn’t being played on the radio. It was only a small group of people who knew about it and it was almost elitist in that ‘No posers allowed!’ thing.”
Rick discussed his exit from EXODUS during a November 2021 appearance on the “Put Up Your Dukes” podcast. He said at the time: “During the recording of ‘Tempo’, Gary had just gotten clean a little while prior to that, and I was still using. But I’ve gotta say, Gary Holt — my hat’s off to the man for… He never sweated me. Not once did Gary say, ‘Dude, you’re a piece of shit. I’m gonna fire you from the band if you don’t get your shit together.’ He never said nothing. He let it take its course, you know what I mean?
“I was a mess,” Rick continued. “We all were, but everybody got better, and I didn’t. I fell down the rabbit hole even worse, I think, because I was just so depressed. I couldn’t stop. I don’t know what was up… To the point where I was gonna lose my position in the band I’d been in for over 20 years — my best friends, my life. Yeah, it was dark as fuck.
“One day, after spending my life, giving everything that I had and the whole world to EXODUS, one day I woke up and I wasn’t in EXODUS anymore,” Hunolt added. “And that morning was, like… Dude, I can’t even describe the emotions that I [was feeling]. I woke up and I wasn’t in EXODUS anymore, dude. It damn near took me out, bro.”
Rick revealed that he went through a particularly difficult period after splitting with EXODUS. “I had to reinvent myself at 40-plus years old, [with] two little kids,” he said. “I ended up moving out of Oakland. I had to get the fuck out of there, ’cause we were living at the studio; it was bad. And then we moved in with my wife’s mom and I got a job at the [discount chain] Dollar Tree and I ended up working there for, like, two or three years. I mean, I can go on and on and on. But long story short, I met a guy who knew who I was and offered me a job on his ranch. And the rest is history. He taught me how to live my life and make money.”
Hunolt made a guest appearance on EXODUS‘s latest album, “Persona Non Grata”, which was released in November 2021 via Nuclear Blast Records.
Source: blabbermouth.net
