EXODUS Guitarist Talks About The Making Of 'The Atrocity Exhibition'

Jackie Smit of Chronicles of Chaos recently conducted an interview with EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Chronicles of Chaos: What were the circumstances surrounding Tom's [Hunting, drums] return to EXODUS?

Holt: If you had to put it in one word: time. He just needed time to get to grips with his own personal issues. He had been struggling with things like anxiety attacks, and things like that, and also trying to split your time between that and a band that's on the road all the time and takes up all your time; it's pretty fucking impossible. But he got back on his feet, got healthy, started playing and just found a level of health and vitality where he was ready to come back to the band. He was living up in the mountains about an hour and a half from where I live, which is about three hours north of San Francisco, and when he called I just chucked my amp and my guitar into my van, drove up to see him and we just jammed and I knew right then and there that this dude is ready to fuck shit up.

Chronicles of Chaos: How did you manage the situation with Paul [Bostaph]? Was he always of the understanding that if Tom decided to come back, then he'd move on?

Holt: Yeah, he knew that when and if the day came that Tom wanted to come back, then the job was waiting for him. He knew that it was the best thing for the band, and he's both a good friend of Tom's and a huge fan. He's really an amazing guy and he always lands on his feet, so he wasn't really blown out into the cold. He wanted to try some different things anyway, and as it turns out he's playing for TESTAMENT now and he's also reunited FORBIDDEN for a couple of shows. So everything's worked out pretty well for everybody.

Chronicles of Chaos: Having Tom back in the studio and having him be part of the writing process; do you feel like his presence affected in any way how the songs ended up sounding?

Holt: Definitely. Other than during his time away from the band, he's the only drummer I've ever really played with in my life. I've got a buddy who I used to get drunk with and play blues songs, but he could barely play anyway, so that doesn't really count. Other than that, Tom is the first guy I ever played with, and I never played with another drummer until he had to leave the band for similar health reasons back in 1989. There's just this natural unspoken language between he and I over what needs to be done to a certain riff drum-wise, and it's just hard to put into words.

Chronicles of Chaos: You used Andy Sneap once again for the recording of "The Atrocity Exhibition" and I know that in the past you've had nothing but good things to say about him. What's been the secret to keeping this relationship as productive as it has been?

Holt: You know, we all love the music and we're all very, very good friends. I mean, a guy like Andy works with so many different clients that I suppose he has to try and get along with everybody to a certain extent. You obviously don't want to repeat working with a band who you don't like personally. But us and Andy really love each other in a non-homosexual friendly way. [Laughs] We have a lot of fun together and I think he has more fun with us than he does with a lot of other bands. He's actually said to us that working with EXODUS is like walking into a cartoon, because when we're in the studio and we're by ourselves we're out of our minds and there's no logic or sense to anything we do. He's a fan of our music dating back to the old days, and he's almost like a sixth member of this band. So I just can't ever see the day when we'd want to part ways, and I think that if that day did come, then it would probably be because we've exhausted every avenue creatively and because the band needs something new. But I don't see that happening until I'm in my fucking seventies.

Chronicles of Chaos: It's interesting what he's done with your music as well, because he seems to take a very different approach to each record. "Tempo of the Damned", for example, was really slick, whereas "Shovel Headed Kill Machine" was a far rawer, organic album and "The Atrocity Exhibition" is really bass-heavy and brutal. Typically I find that bands always go to a producer because they want a certain sound, but that doesn't seem to be the case here at all. Would you agree with that?

Holt: I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head, man. With every album that we do, we never want it to sound exactly like the previous record. It doesn't mean that we're intentionally trying to sound different; we still go through the motions of plugging in our gear and finding our tone. But we just want to make shit work with the songs, and on this album, we purposefully wanted to make the guitar sound super crunchy and abrasive, with the big bottom-end on them. With "Shovel Headed Kill Machine", it was more of a high-gain sound that we were after. With this one, we tried out different settings until we knew that we'd found something that was heavy as shit.

Read the entire interview at www.chroniclesofchaos.com.

Fan-filmed video footage of EXODUS performing the classic song "Bonded by Blood" on November 7, 2007 at Opera 1 in Curitiba, Brazil can be viewed below.