ROB DUKES Is 'Bummed' About His Split With EXODUS But 'Grateful' For Last Nine Years

Rob Dukes, who sang for San Francisco Bay Area thrashers EXODUS for nine years before being fired from the band last week and replaced by his predecessor, Steve "Zetro" Souza, has released the following statement exclusively to BLABBERMOUTH.NET:

"I'm grateful for the last nine years.

"I've had the experience of touring the world playing music.

"I was just a regular guy, a fan, and I got the chance to front a legendary band while [having had] no prior experience of being a singer. I had no idea what I was doing and made it up as I was going along.

"I had the experience of making records.

"It was a great chapter of my life.

"I'm bummed it ended with [EXODUS], but I have another band, GENERATION KILL. So I will concentrate on that right now and continue to build hotrods and build a car to race in the Baja 1000.

"I will be riding my motorcycle all over this beautiful country every chance I get. That's the next chapter of my life."

Dukes joined EXODUS in January 2005 and appeared on four of the band's studio albums — "Shovel Headed Kill Machine" (2005),"The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A" (2007),"Let There Be Blood" (2008, a re-recording of EXODUS' classic 1985 LP, "Bonded By Blood") and "Exhibit B: The Human Condition" (2010).

EXODUS guitarist and main songwriter Gary Holt said that the decision to fire Rob and re-hire Zetro "was the most difficult decision of our lives, one the entire band made." He added: "I have had the honor of watching Rob go from unknown guitar tech to awesome singer and frontman and could not be prouder, and his future is bright as fuck, that's for sure. It doesn't end here. The world will see plenty more from Rob, this much I will bank on… Rob's contributions are some of the best stuff this band has ever did, a big part of this band's return, and we are grateful."

Dukes has released two studio albums with his GENERATION KILL project, 2011's "Red White And Blood" and 2013's "We're All Gonna Die".

In a 2013 interview with Metal Assault, Dukes stated about "We're All Gonna Die": "It was cool to make this album because we were paying homage to the music that we loved. If you listen to it and open your mind, you can hear everything from QUEEN, a little bit of RUSH and THE DOORS, a bit of [IRON] MAIDEN, [BLACK] SABBATH, [JUDAS] PRIEST, early METALLICA and all of those. We expanded upon them and made it our own, but we didn't reinvent the wheel. We just wrote songs that we wanted to hear ourselves."

He added: "I like listening to my own album because I'm proud of it, and it has good songs. You can't ask for anything more than that, right? If the album doesn't sell, I don't care. I mean, I'm hoping that it does well, because I would love to be successful, but if it doesn't, hey man, at least I know I made a good record."