STEVE 'ZETRO' SOUZA: METALLICA Came Up From Los Angeles To San Francisco To Emulate What EXODUS Was Doing

EXODUS singer Steve "Zetro" Souza was interviewed on a recent installment of HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta's official podcast, "The Jasta Show". You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below.

Speaking about EXODUS's influence on the early thrash metal scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, Zetro said: "I started [the pre-TESTAMENT outfit] LEGACY, or Eric [Peterson] and Derrick [Ramirez, Eric's cousin] and myself, we put LEGACY together to emulate what EXODUS was doing. METALLICA came up from Los Angeles to emulate what EXODUS was doing. Regardless of who ended up on top in the end, EXODUS did it first."

Souza went on to say that he would "love to" one day see EXODUS land the opening slot on a full METALLICA arena tour. "We're waiting," he said. "I'm sure one of these days, they're gonna go, 'You know what? Fuck it. Let's bring 'em out and do it.' That would be great. It would be so much fun."

According to Souza, the "metal community" would "love" METALLICA if they ended up taking EXODUS out on tour. "[The fans] would be, like, 'See what METALLICA is doing? They're taking out fucking EXODUS. They're not taking out some… They're not having Andrew W.K. DJ before they come out, they're actually taking legitimate thrash bands that they used to play with back in the day.'"

Souza then recalled the last time he saw the James Hetfield-fronted band perform near his hometown, saying that the experience made him realize that the METALLICA "crowd is not necessarily our crowd anymore. So the demographic has changed, but I will say this: they mesmerized the crowd — mesmerized them," he said. "It was when they were in the round. I think MACHINE HEAD was opening for them — 2010 [or] 2011. I'd seen them in San Jose, and that's when James had a mic on [each side] so he could sing all the way round. And I'm watching people just, like, entranced by him — I mean, Jim Jones fucking entranced by that band. And I was, like, 'Wow!' And I had not seen them in the longest time — since pretty much, I think, Day On The Green with BODY COUNT and GUNS N' ROSES in '93, was the last time I saw METALLICA until this last time. I hadn't seen 'em in years."

Original EXODUS guitarist Kirk Hammett, who has been a member of METALLICA for the past 34 years, contributed a solo to "Salt The Wound", a song on the latest EXODUS album, 2014's "Blood In Blood Out".

Back in 2014, Hammett was asked by U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine if it's strange to him how much METALLICA has eclipsed the other "Big Four" bands in terms of commercial popularity. "I try not to spend too much time thinking about stuff like that because whatever I think of is still not going to be a satisfying enough explanation," he replied. "It's just the way things are and how the chips fell. EXODUS in the '80s had some bona fide problems, but I think their first album [1985's 'Bonded By Blood'] is just as good as [METALLICA's debut] 'Kill 'Em All'. We were just playing the music we wanted to hear because no one else was playing it and it wasn't being played on the radio. It was only a small group of people who knew about it and it was almost elitist in that 'No posers allowed!' thing."