EXODUS Frontman Says Upcoming Album Is 'The Best Record I've Done Yet' With Band

Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal of Metal Assault recently conducted an interview with EXODUS frontman Rob Dukes. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Assault: Talk a little bit about the upcoming album. I think it's in the post-production stage, isn't it?

Rob: Yeah, they are doing the final touches on the mix. I've heard the last mix and they're going to redo a couple of things that we want to change, and dude, it's awesome, man. I'd say it's the best thing I've ever done. It's fast, it's dark and I am not going to try to hype it up because people do what they always do anyway, but it's fucking awesome, man, and I think the thing that's really cool mostly is that I got to really expand my range I sing at. It's almost like my voice is different on every song. It's killer and so that was the best part, really, kind of trying new things, trying some different things and it worked out, which is great. The drumming is fucking phenomenal, the guitar solos are just amazing. Watching those guys do it is just amazing. So it was a lot of fun. It is a really good record, and it's the best record I've done yet with them.

Metal Assault: Gary [Holt, guitar] said in an interview that you guys didn't plan to film a DVD and it just sort of happened. But while on stage for that show you asked the crowd if they wanted to be on a DVD.

Rob: Yeah, the aim was to start creating something for a DVD in the future. We didn't really have a plan. What we really started out to do was, when you buy the CD, our new album, it was going to come with a DVD and it was going to be like 30 minutes. That's what we were going to do. But I had hundreds of hours of footage and I just went with what we had. I still have enough for a whole another DVD. We're going to continue our path in life here and I'm going to film as much as I can. The editing process, sitting through hours and hours of footage, was the first time I had ever done it, so it was kind of like, "Alright let me try my hand at this." I never put together a DVD before, so for my first time out, honestly, I thought it came out a lot better than I expected. It was cool to have full control because I produced and directed it and it was like, "I am going to do it as I see it from my point of the world." That's why we didn't really go into the Zetro [former EXODUS singer Steve "Zetro" Souza] years too much. We touched on Paul [late EXODUS frontman Paul Baloff] just a little bit to let people know who didn't know what the band was about. It was basically about what's happened since I've been in the band. I shot 98% of the footage and I was holding the camera. So that's the way it is.

Metal Assault: You guys played the whole "Bonded By Blood" album on tour in 2008. Do you think bands are doing it too often, or too many bands are doing it, with MEGADETH and TESTAMENT about to do it as well?

Rob: Band's music is the band's music. They can do whatever the fuck they want with it. Whoever doesn't fucking agree with it, go fuck yourself, don't come! If we wanted to re-record every fucking song we ever did we could, it is our right, it's our music and we can do whatever we want. Opinions are like assholes, man. Everybody's got one and they all smell like shit. You're never going to make everybody happy, so we really just make ourselves happy.

Metal Assault: Are you happy with the way "Let There Be Blood" [re-recording of EXODUS' classic 1985 album "Bonded By Blood"] turned out, in terms of the fans' response and on tour when you played it?

Rob: Absolutely, man. I feel totally grateful that I got to sing that album. I mean, technically, here's the deal. We could have done it live and made a live album of it recorded and it would have been the same thing. We just happened to have free studio time and went in and did it. It was just cool to do it and for me, being an EXODUS fan since I was 16 years old, it was like an honor. For people who didn't like it, sorry dude, go fuck yourself. I've got nothing to tell you except what would you do if you were in my position? Would you not do it? Unless you stood in my shoes, shut the fuck up. So, for all the haters who love the old album, OK, I get it. But you know, the old one didn't disappear and it can stand on its own any day you want. It was just something that we could do and it's ours, so we could do whatever the fuck we want. It didn't take much time at all and didn't interfere with anything in terms of the other new material we recorded after that. We didn't even have to rehearse, and it was like, "Let's just go and do it." Bam, it was done! No writing involved, obviously. I just sat there listening to the original over and over again. I didn't mimic [Paul Baloff], but I tried to keep some inflections that he used. It was just something we did and it could have been a live record, which is basically what it was. They went in and recorded drums in two days, guitars in one day and vocals in three days. Nobody has to make "live records" anyway. "Live In Japan" wasn't live, for example. Everything is re-recorded, so that's basically what we did!

Read the entire interview at Metal Assault.