EXODUS To Enter Studio In May

In a new video uploaded to his Zetro's Toxic Vault YouTube channel, EXODUS frontman Steve "Zetro" Souza offered an update on the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2021's "Persona Non Grata" album. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We're writing new EXODUS right now and I think we were originally supposed to be in the studio… We were gonna be in March 1st, but we can't just rush this stuff. It has to happen. So I think it's more like in the mid-May that it's going to happen now."

He continued: "We're going down and doing five shows in South America. We're doing Summer Breeze [festival] in Brazil, and there's some stuff in Chile and in Ecuador and in — a couple more things in Brazil that we're doing that will be kinda like right before we go in to do that. And then I believe Europe is the last week of July — around the 26th or the 27th of July to August 18th — so I don't think it will be much stuff in there that's going to collude that. But that's where we are at right now with EXODUS anyway."

As for the musical direction of the new EXODUS material, Zetro said: "I haven't heard anything that they're writing. It usually starts with Tom [Hunting, drums] and Gary [Holt, guitar]. So, it'll be music and then drums. And then when they have kind of stuff pasted together, then I'll hear bits and pieces of it. It kind of rolls like that, but within three or four weeks' time, what sounds like just riffs put together actually turn into full songs, with lyrics and everything. 'Persona Non Grata' went that way, for sure. And in the past we had done it like that. So that's what's actually happening as far as EXODUS is concerned right now."

Souza went on to say that Napalm Records, with whom EXODUS signed a new record deal last year, was anxious to start working with the band on promoting the upcoming LP.

"It's been 20 years or even more than we were on Nuclear Blast," Zetro said. "I mean, the first record on Nuclear Blast was 'Tempo Of The Damned', and so [it was] in 2003, 2002, I think, when we actually signed to them. And then everything that [former EXODUS singer] Rob Dukes did with them was on there. And then when I came back, [we did] 'Blood In Blood Out' and 'Persona' [with Nuclear Blast].

"[Napalm] seem very excited, and that's always a good thing," he continued. "We had such a great relationship with Nuclear Blast and they were really good to us. I think sometimes change is good and a breath of fresh air comes. And I think that we were due for that. So, it's worked out good. We've got, obviously, Napalm, their deal for us was really, really good and it's a three-album deal, so there's at least three more EXODUS records on the books there. So we just have number one that will start this year at some point."

EXODUS bassist Jack Gibson sat out the last four dates of the band's recent U.S. tour due to "a family emergency". Filling in for him at all the shows was Mike Schleibaum of support act DARKEST HOUR.

"Persona Non Grata" was recorded at a studio in Lake Almanor, California and was engineered by Steve Lagudi and EXODUS. It was produced by EXODUS and was mixed by Andy Sneap. For the third time in the band's history, they returned to Swedish artist Pär Olofsson to create the album artwork.

"Persona Non Grata" was the follow-up to 2014's "Blood In Blood Out", which was the San Francisco Bay Area thrashers' first release since the departure of the group's lead singer of nine years, Dukes, and the return of Souza, who previously fronted EXODUS from 1986 to 1993 and from 2002 to 2004.