EXODUS Mainman GARY HOLT Says He Welcomes Songwriting Input From Other Members

Imhotep recently conducted an interview with EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Imhotep: "Shoved Headed Kill Machine" was almost completely written by you. How about this time?

Holt: "I wrote most of the stuff, but Lee [Altus, guitar] wrote almost all the music to 'Children Of A Worthless God'. The follow-up album that is going to come out hopefully next year, 'The Atrocity Exhibition – Exhibit B', he has written the opening track in its entirety and he is working on two or three right now, so on the next album there is going to be even greater amount of songs that are not written by me, which I welcome, it makes my job easier."

Imhotep: What can you tell about "Exhibit B", just how much of that is already written and how would you compare it to "Exhibit A"?

Holt: "When we recorded 'Exhibit A', we had too many songs and none of them were your typical throwaway, b-side bonus songs. We had long debates, which songs should be on the album. Finally we just chose the ones we felt would work best together for this album and create the right kind of atmosphere. We chose four songs to save, so now we have four songs recorded and done for the next album and we have to finish the remaining songs. About the direction of the next album, I can only comment on the four songs that are finished, and they all stand on their own compared to the first album. There will be some themes, both musical and lyrical that kind of tie each album together, but it's not going to be like a two-album concept record, really."

Imhotep: How much did Rob [Dukes, vocals] write lyrics this time?

Holt: "Well, he wrote the lyrics on that one and he has already written two lyrics for the next album. Once again it came down more to just like everybody agreed on which songs to save and which to use, so he already has more credit on the upcoming album than one this current one."

Imhotep: There are also some clean melodic vocals on "Children Of A Worthless God", which was somewhat surprising.

Holt: "Well, you know, that was Rob's idea, and it was something we had never done with him. Lot of people forget that we have done the clean vocals before on songs like 'Seeds Of Hate' and 'Chemi-kill'. It was just something we had forgotten about and got away from, and I didn't know that was something Rob could do. So it was his idea 100% and he tried it on rehearsals and I said that we'll listen to it in the studio when we record and see what myself and Andy [Sneap, producer] think about it, because our rehearsals are quite loud, it's hard to pick out the subtle things because it's more like a fucking warzone in there. It turned out those clean vocals made the song better without overdoing it, so it's something we might use here and there in the future but it's also something we are not going to use so much it's getting ridiculous."

Imhotep: What else can you tell me about the lyrics on "The Atrocity Exhibition – Exhibit A"?

Holt: "'Funeral Hymn' is kind of like a tale or comment of reckoning, judgement day. 'Garden Of Bleeding' is just my own twisted little satanic fantasy world, haha. 'The Atrocity Exhibition' and 'Iconoclasm' deal with the myth of Christianity and organized religion, which are just a great way to control mankind. 'As It Was, As It Soon Shall Be' deals with this fucking mess in Iraq and 'Bedlam 1-2-3' is just trying to get someone in our audience to break someone's arm or something haha, you know, just to wind the crowd up into a fucking frenzy. 'Riot Act' is about revolution, anarchy and returning this world into an eye-to-an-eye society again."

Read the entire interview at this location.