Interview mit Gary Holt von Exodus

The cover is once again created by Pär Olofsson. What kind of briefing did you give him that he came with this crazy idea of a Giant with eyes on the arms and a mouth in his hand … So, what was the idea you gave him he created this album from?
The thing I love about working with Pär is like I’ll give him the title and the lyrics and he always sends back a sketch that’s almost finished. That’s all I did: I sent him the lyrics, this fantasy comic book tale of a subterranean deity who’s been awoken from centuries of slumber, and he sent the thing. And in the hand, I sent him a picture of a lamprey, that fish that attaches to other fish with it’s mouth. And he made that the mouth in the hand. Which someone later said that it looks like it’s paying homage to the VIO-LENCE-cover and I was like, oh my god, right! So, hats off to my Bay Area brothers. But yeah, it was inspired by a fish with rows of teeth, almost like a leech. But the first sketch was like finished, I just said, make more people bowing to him, and that was it.

To me, it looks quite modern. And that’s not automatically what you connect to a thrash metal band, especially long lasting thrash metal band like EXODUS. Or do you know what I mean?
Most people thought it was super old school! (laughs) It looks like an old school cover to me. A lot of people thought it looks cool. And then you get some people go, „Oh, it’s AI!“, No, it’s not. It’s the same artist. This is his fourth album cover for us. „It’s AI! It’s not as cool as the last one.“ It’s the same artist, you can figure it out. But you know, AI now is like the new „auto tune argument“: If you don’t like something, they just immediately call it AI. And if you didn’t like a singer, they say: „oh, it’s auto tune“. But most people don’t know what auto tune sounds like, you know?

„Some people think all digital art is AI“

Maybe it’s because of it’s that bizarre with these eyes on the arms and so on. To be fair, it reminded me to AI art as well in the first hand. But would you consider using AI for any part of your art?
No, never. No, not for us directly. I know the label has a couple of t-shirts on the web store, because every record deal requires that: the label always gets a couple of shirts and they did use some AI type stuff. That’s fine. But it’s not mine. When we do a new Wrex shirt, our little mascot-dude, Mark DeVito draws it. And we go back and forth like 1000 times before I’m happy with it. But yeah, for myself, no, I’m not going to use an AI album cover. But there’s a big difference between AI and digital artists! Some people think all digital art is AI. My daughter works in animation, it’s still done with human art, whether it’s creating dinosaurs in „Jurassic Park“, or things for a band, you know?

The album is entitled „Goliath“, which naturally reminds one to the David vs. Goliath story. So was that the idea behind it, or what was your inspiration to call the album „Goliath“?
No, it’s just … the song itself was just huge and dark and monstrous, so I wanted to write a song about an enormous monster. And just that was the name that came to me. So I went with that. And when the album was finished, and we selected the songs, it was just fucking huge, just enormous. And so we just thought that the word fit the whole album. Plus, EXODUS always had a certain cadence to all of our titles, you know, „Bonded By Blood“, „Pleasures Of Flesh“, „Fabulous Disaster“, and so on. We’ve never done a single word album title ever! This is the first time … „Impact Is Imminent“, „Force Of Habit“ … we’ve always had that kind of balance to the title. So we liked it. You know, we thought it’s very powerful.

The album comes out on Napalm Records, which is a first for you, because since „Tempo Of The Damned“ all EXODUS-albums were released by Nuclear Blast Records. What was the reason why you left and went to Napalm Records?
We had a really great run with Nuclear Blast and I have nothing but love for Nuclear Blast. But the people we signed with, as a label in 2003, are not the people that are there today. They’re all gone. There was one person left and he’s one of my closest friends, and now he works at Napalm. So we’re happy about that. When Jaap came over, we sent a group text out, like celebrating, because he’s our brother. But Nuclear Blast is a different label now. Are they awesome? Yeah. Are they capable? Yes. But do I know them personally? Not anymore. With Napalm, we got the vibe like when we first signed with Nuclear Blast: They all come out to the shows and we hang out. And I feel like I’m signed with a label of fans again. And that’s how it used to be with Nuclear Blast.

„It still sounds like EXODUS, but it sounds different“

Since „Tempo Of The Damned“ you also did all your albums with Andy Sneap as the producer – but not the new one. What was the reason for changing the producer and working with Mark Lewis this time?
We reached out to Andy because he’s like a member of the band. He’s one of my best friends in this world. But he was too busy with JUDAS PRIEST, so he wasn’t doing any projects. So we knew we had to use someone else. But then he said it himself: He said, it’s time you try something different, because we’ve done every album since ’97. You know, he mixed the live album with Paul Baloff, and he has either just mixed or at least produced  every album we’ve done, so we thought it was time to try something different.
It’s always important for us to work with someone I know. And Mark’s been a good friend of mine for a long time and a great producer. So we had asked him to do it and he was excited and thrilled. We knew we wanted a bigger bottom end on this album, more bass guitar, more low end, not concentrating on just making sure it’s perfectly tight and it’s OK at loud volumes … we didn’t care if the speakers distort. We wanted a bottom end like a big classic metal album,like a hard rock record. And Jack’s bass tone is so fucking sick, and we got that shit up there in the mix. It’s just amazing. And it still sounds like EXODUS, but it sounds different.

But was it different to work with someone else this time? So did it have any influence on how you recorded or even on what you recorded?
No, no, because he didn’t produce it. He just mixed it, you know. We produced it ourselves and handed him all the tracks, you know.

„It’s a good problem to have too many awesome songs“

If you look back at the history of EXODUS, the band was always running like a well-oiled machine. So until your split in 1993, you released an album every couple of years, and same goes for the time after you came back with „Table Of The Damned“. After the split with Rob Dukes you slowed down a bit, you only did two Albums with Steve „Zetro“ Souza in the 10 years of his second round with EXODUS … What was the reason for that, why did the band slow down?
Well, I was kind of busy with that other band, SLAYER (laughs) It slowed me down a little bit, I’m not gonna lie. But we have 80% of the next album already done! We recorded 18 songs for this album, and they’re all amazing. I still have panic attacks over which songs we selected. Because some of my favorite stuff is on the next album. Half of my favorite solos are on the next album. Like, wow, that one’s so good … but people just have to wait. Lee and I, we had a goal all along on this – to finish the next album, so we could quickly release it when we’re done touring. And you know, we came two songs short. But by the time we get around to that point, we’ll probably write 10 more and we’ll record them all and then pick them out. But it’s a good problem to have too many awesome songs!

How did you decide what would be included on “Goliath” and what wouldn’t? Did you make that decision yourselves, or did you leave it up to the producer or the label?
No, that’s entirely a band decision. We didn’t let the label hear anything until it was done. They don’t get to hear a single song. Because we write it for ourselves, like we always did. „Bonded By Blood“ – we didn’t write that for anyone else, because we didn’t know if anyone else liked that kind of music. We were just writing the music we wanted to play ourselves.

Choosing the songs wasn’t easy, but we looked at it and we were very diplomatic about it. Lee wrote a lot of really great, great songs and we wanted them on this album. You know, I wrote 12 songs, we put six on it. And for instance, „Summon Of The God Unknown“ … I wrote a second epic ight minute song. We didn’t want to put both on the album. One eight minute epic was enough. And the other one is completely different. It’s like an eight minute hammer to your head. It’s bludgeoning, brutal as fuck. Whereas „Summon Of The God Unknown“ is super heavy, but it’s got a lot of different vibes and layers and textures. So it was things like that: Allright, we’ll save that one. We got other songs, like some of my favorite, we’ll save that. Half of my fast stuff is on the next record!

So these songs are already completely recorded and you will just have to add a few more when you’re done with touring?
We need 10 songs and we wrote eight., so a bare minimum, we need two more songs.  But we’ll probably write 10 by then, because we’re not going to limit ourselves to only two. We’ll probably have new ideas. And so we’ll record all of it, and from all of those, we’ll pick the next record.

… and then the next record after that one is already halfway done!
Yeah, we’re not getting any younger, so it’s a good problem to have, once again, to save ourselves some work down the road. We were super creative when we were doing this album. Everybody was motivated. Everybody was working around the clock. While I was working on one song, Lee was working on his, Rob was working on lyrics … everybody was working hard on this one. And the result was that we had 18 songs done.

„At this point of our career,
no one cares about who wrote what“

You were quoted in the press sheet with the fact that this was „the most collaborative album to date“ from EXODUS. What was the contribution you were surprised about most?
Well, Lee writing six songs. (laughs) Because Lee’s the first one to tell you that he’s lazy! I mean, he’s a legend! All his years in HEATHEN, too. He’s a legendary songwriter, especially with really melodic Bay Area thrash. And in past albums, if I wrote eight songs, it’s because we needed eight songs and Lee would write two. But he wrote a lot of amazing material and some of my favorite songs. At this point of our career, no one cares about who wrote what, we just want to make the best album we can. You know, Tom wrote lyrics, Lee wrote some lyrics. Jack’s a big part of the arrangement and everything, even if he’s not an actual songwriter. And Rob and I wrote the rest of the lyrics. Everybody worked 24 hours a day on this!

A contribution that surprised me a lot was the violin, featured in the title track, which is quite special for a thrash metal album. So how did that idea come?
Katie’s a really close friend of ours. She’s like a little sister. She has played live with EXODUS before at like 14, 15 years old. She’s played „A Lesson In Violence“ on violin with us on stage. When I was listening to „Goliath“, your mind hears things, and I heard orchestration. I couldn’t avoid it, couldn’t hide from it. Katie is a violinist for THE WHO and Roger Daltrey, and she was on tour, so she wasn’t available at that time. So we brought in someone else, a nice lady and she did it. The performance wasn’t good enough, but it showed me the idea was good. Like when done correctly, this was going to be amazing. So we waited till Katie got home and I sent her a message and she was thrilled to do it. And she sent back like a full string section, like 18 tracks. The other lady was doing one, and it wasn’t good enough. And the only thing I told Katie is I wanted maximum sadness, just make it sad, make people cry. It’s got to be beautiful. And she did it just … it was glorious. We fucking literally shed tears over it, listening to this, like this is so special, right. And then when we were shooting the video, I was chatting with her and turns out she was going to be in L.A. two days before we start. So she just flew from L.A. to Arizona, so we got her in the video, too, which was special to have her be a part all the way through.

You have also a guest vocalist on the album, Peter Tägtgren from HYPOCRISY. How did that come about?
Well, Peter’s been one of our closest friends for a long time … since we toured together in Europe in 2006. It was an amazing, fun, fun tour. Lee wrote the song, „The Changing Me“, and it was his vision from the start: He knew he wanted this certain kind of multi track clean vocals, like overdubs. And he sent Peter an email and Peter did it just perfectly. And then Tom Hunting added some clean vocals on it as well. And then at the end of the song, it’s just Peter and Rob just screaming at each other. It was just perfect. Peter did it in like a day. It was amazing.

„When you hear Rob bringing new elements,
it will inspire you“

I think Rob sounds really a bit more mature on „Goliath“ compared to the older albums, but not less aggressive. So he really evolved his style of singing, I think, over the past years. Did that, on the one hand, surprise you and on the other hand, had an impact on how you wrote the songs?
Yeah, when we learned that there were all these different elements to his vocals … and if you listen to GENERATION KILL, his other band, you hear him doing some things that he hadn’t with EXODUS in the past. But the way we record, we could change anything at any time: We have the studio locked out the entire time with the drums set up. We don’t ever get rid of the drums. We could record new songs on the last day if we want. And when you hear Rob bringing new elements, it will inspire you to write things a little differently. And and then there were things, like on the song „Promise You This“ – when I wrote the lyrics, I always do like a „scratch vocal“. It’s terrible, you never want to hear it, but it’s just there to show where the words go. And he asked me, how do I approach this song? And I said, put some Southern Rock stank on it, you know, approach it like a fucking hard rock singer from the South, you know, and he did it perfectly. And and then on „Summon Of The God Unknown“, he was able to put so much range and melody in some of the stuff. We knew he could do aggressive, violent thrash better than anybody. But now we know he can do a lot of other things, too. It’s one of the reasons the album is so diverse.

If you say Rob is better than anybody else out there: Was it your only and first choice after the split with Zetro, or did you consider other options as well when you had to find a vocalist once again?
He was our only choice. I mean, we joked about finding someone who’s like 28 and has a flat stomach and can jump off the top of drum risers without leaving in an ambulance with a broken leg. But that was just kidding. We want to be with our friends, and Rob remained one of our closest friends. And right now, the vibe and energy in this band is better than it’s ever been. We’re having so much fun. Everybody is just smiles all day long. We spend all of our time together, even on days off. We’re always together. It’s like a band of brothers.

So was that the kind of feeling you had when you were back together in the rehearsal room from day one after the reunion?
Yeah … it was like he never left the better part of the era when Rob was first in the band. We immediately went to even a better place than that. I mean, we’re older and wiser now, and you learned how to appreciate the things you had and the things you have going forward. We all really feel very lucky to be able to do this still, for a living! That’s how I make a living. I’m not rich, but you know, it’s my job. And I love my job. It’s amazing. But I don’t take it for granted. Tom had to fight cancer for his own life, and he says every day is a gift. And it is! Every day you’re alive is a gift and you should appreciate it.

„We’re all wiser and we’re happy to have him back“

But was there some point when you guys had to talk about what went wrong in 2014, to clarify the situation? Because when you parted ways back then, it wasn’t really in a good way, I think …
Yeah, we had to discuss everything. For Rob, he was obviously upset when he was let go. And, you know, we didn’t want to let him go. I’ve told him since that he opened that door for Steve to come back, and he understands why. We’re all wiser and happy and we’re happy to have him back. And we’re having so much fun. We talk all the time, we send each other offensive memes, the shit bros do, you know: You send each other things you don’t want anyone else to see … or you might get cancelled. (laughs)

Looking back on the last ten years: Was it a good idea to warm this „relationship“ with Steve up again, so to say, or would it have been better for EXODUS to try out something completely different?
No, once again: I don’t like change. And the same thing happened when Rob was let go of the band. We joked about getting a young guy who could jump off the top of the drum riser. But, you know, Steve is familiar and he has a history with the band, obviously. And I don’t have any regrets over any of it. We made two great albums with Steve and we had some good times. In the end, the marriage wasn’t working out for us anymore, and facing our current age and not knowing how much longer are we going to do this … I don’t know, none of us knows. So we want to enjoy every moment of it, because it could all end tomorrow. My hands might get to the point where I can no longer play this shit. I don’t know. Right now, I’m already dealing with like joint issues and shoulders and knees and feet and fingers: My fingers hurt all the time, but they hurt less when I play. The more I play the less stiff they are. I come home and after a couple of weeks off, they fucking hurt.

If I remember right, one problem was that you said Steve did not enjoy being on tour anymore. Were you as surprised as I was that he went on a huge Latin America tour in late 2025?
As far as Zetro’s desire to tour, that’s a question more for him. I don’t want to answer for what he did and didn’t like, but if he wants to go out and like do some tours here and there, playing the songs he sang on, it’s perfectly his right: Go out and rock! I’ve had communications with this guitar player, he wanted to know if it was all cool. I said, yeah, it’s cool. Go ahead and crush it. Have a good time. I don’t care. I’m perfectly happy for you. But whether he wants to tour nine weeks straight, like what we’re about to do, I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. But I’ve never toured nine weeks when I was 25. So personally speaking for myself, I think I’m a little insane about that. Let’s see how I feel after five. We have a break at the nine weeks, we’re not going to play in European festivals this summer. So I got some time to recover. But yeah, nine weeks, it’s going to be tough. We just finished four and we’re home for ten days and then nine weeks. You know, it’s a lot.

„What a fucking killer lineup,
us with KREATOR, CARCASS and NAILS“

Talking about touring: You were used to do headliner shows with SLAYER and also with EXODUS you were mostly on headliner tours, at least at least in Europe. Now you’re coming as a support for KREATOR. Is that different or maybe also difficult for you to fit into this new role?
No, you know, it’s going to be fine. The tour is going to be great. What a fucking killer lineup, us with KREATOR, CARCASS and NAILS. And, you know, when the show’s over, I’ll have a little dinner and go watch TV. Mille and company will be like hitting stage and I’ll be on my bus watching a movie, getting ready for bed. (laughs)

When it comes to the setlist, will you focus more on the Duke’s era?
When EXODUS does a new albums, we want to play new songs. Some bands will put out an album and they go out and play one and then all the classics. And obviously we understand we have to play some of the classic songs every show, but we want to support the album. We want to play these songs. We’re going to spend our off time in the summer rehearsing, so that we can play everything from that album if we wanted to. Right now, there’s only a few couple of songs that we’ve had the time to rehearse as a band, but we’re going to get there and to where we can play anything.

Publiziert am 18. März 2026 von Moritz Grütz

Fotos von: Afra Gethöffer-Grütz und Moritz Grütz