Chad Bowar: How did you decide to re-record Bonded By Blood?
Gary Holt: It’s something we’ve talked about for a long time. Ever since we did the first live album we always thought how cool it would be to give the album the benefits of modern technology. Bonded By Blood is a classic, it’s always going to be the greatest album we do, but we just wanted to record these songs, put this out on our own and share how relevant these songs still sound today. If you listen to the re-recording they sound as up to date and current as anything anybody is putting out there now. That’s a testament to how great the songs are.
Were you pretty faithful to the original arrangements of the songs on the re-recording?
Yes. I went off subject on the leads a little bit, but we recorded the songs the way we play them now. Arrangement-wise everything’s the same. We didn’t change anything. We tune lower now, but we have since 1993. Everything’s faithful to the original, it’s just updated in the production.
Is it good to have Tom back in the fold for this album?
Yes. We had a great time when we went in to do drum tracks. It was more of a reminiscing session than a recording session, just remembering the mayhem that ensued through the original recording. We recorded it at a studio called Prairie Sun in Northern California that had their own cabins. It was on a farm. We lived there and all of our friends would come up. It was drunken madness every night. It’s amazing we got any work done. Friends would come up and get drunk and the next thing you know they’re in a fistfight inside the cabin. We actually did the drums for Tempo Of The Damned at the same studio, and the owner said we wreaked a level of destruction so great on the studio in 1985 that you almost had to step back and admire it. We had a lot of fun doing this because it reminded us of doing the original.
What does having someone like Andy Sneap doing the mixing of the CD add to the final product?
He’s the best there is. The first time we worked with him was on the live album with Paul (Baloff). Having him do that one and hearing how amazing the results were on a live album that we recorded one show for, we have worked together ever since on everything. There’s never a doubt who we’ll work with on each record.
How come you decided to release this CD on your own label (Zaentz Records) instead of Nuclear Blast?
Before we re-signed the deal with Nuclear Blast the wheels were already in motion to do this. In this business not much of anything you do as an artist belongs to you, but we do own Bonded By Blood and so we are able to do it on our own, free of any outside parties. We love Nuclear Blast, we re-signed with them, and we’ll be there for the rest of our careers, but this is something we already planned on doing. We have the resources and the time to do it, so we’re doing it on our own. We’re not trying to re-invent the wheel with this album. It’s our own pet project.
Are you able to get the same level of distribution as through Nuclear Blast so it will be available to fans everywhere?
We hope so. But now that this is done I’m writing and finishing the songs for the next Nuclear Blast record. I hope it’s out there for everybody, but my primary mission in life right now is getting this next album finished. It’s one project to the next.
How far along are you with The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit B?
We have the four songs that are recorded from the last session. They are done and in the can. I’ve got seven or eight I’m working on now, and Lee has some stuff, so we’re well above what we need, material-wise. It’s finishing it, finding the time to go into the studio because we are still touring in support of The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A. I’ve been in contact with Andy and we’re trying to figure out where we can fit the time in without pushing everything back too far.
Is there a tentative release date yet?
Hopefully we’ll be in the studio by sometime next spring. We’re doing a U.S. tour next April and May with Kreator, so we’ll have to work around that. It’s going to be a killer tour. It’s trying to juggle a lot of different things at once.
Exodus played a lot of summer festivals this year. Was there any that particularly stood out for you?
Wacken was a total body blow to about 75,000 people. It’s one of the best shows we’ve ever done. It was phenomenal. We’ve done it twice. The first time was before we even did Tempo Of The Damned and some of us, me included, were still doing through our drug problems. It wasn’t one of our greatest shows. But this one made up for it in spades.
Is there anywhere that you still haven’t played live that you’d like to get to?
I’ve never been to Hawaii. A couple of years ago we went to Australia for the first time. That was cool. I want to go to China now that a lot of people are playing over there. I’d love to do some shows in India. Israel would be cool.
