Interview conducted on Saturday, May 16th by Jim Keller.
1986 was the year I first heard of Exodus and their debut album Bonded By Blood. It was yet another turning point in what would be the defining sound of Bay Area Thrash (as it would soon be called). The local High School radio station in Concord, Ca was all metal, all the time (well until 10pm when it had to shut down because it was run by high school students), and this station would become key to my submersion into all things Metal. Bonded By Blood was played endlessly on the station and the cassette never left my car stereo for long.
The San Francisco Metal scene was exploding with bands like Metallica, Exodus, Testament, Death Angel, Sadus, Vio-lence, Possessed, Forbidden, and Laaz Rockit, to name a few. Exodus fans were by far the most insane, loyal, rabid, and violent fans you could ever wish to have as a band, or be scared shitless of if you were any other band on stage on any given night.
The band, like their counterparts in Metallica were known to party hard and perform harder. Kicking your ass from stage with a ferocity few people had seen, and even few people escaped from without a broken nose, arm, leg, finger, black eye, etc, etc, etc. Their pits were notorious for being some of the most dangerous ever, and may the metal gods take pity on your poor soul and body if you were in an Exodus pit wearing another band's shirt!!! The band would even write a song about their legendary mosh pits on their third album entitled Toxic Waltz.
The band was started by their guitarist Gary Holt, and drummer Tom Hunting. Almost 30 years and several lineup changes later, both Gary and Tom are still together in the band. I had the extreme pleasure of sitting down with founding member Tom Hunting and discussing all things Exodus while the band was on tour with Kreator and had a stop in Raleigh, North Carolina at Volume 11 Tavern. Tom and I discussed everything from the early days in the bay area, to the seemingly revolving door that are Exodus band members (including himself), to Gary Holt's sanity, or sometimes lack thereof. Are you ready for some good friendly violent reading? Then here we go.
Away-Team: This is Jim Keller with Away-Team.com sitting here with Tom Hunting, from Exodus.
Tom Hunting: What's up?
Away-Team: Once again, I do appreciate for you giving us time for the interview.
Tom Hunting: Hey, no problem, man.
Away-Team: You're currently on the road with Kreator, War Bringer and Belfagor, how's the tour been going so far?
Tom Hunting: It's been going great. I mean, we're kinda sad that it's gonna be over tomorrow but, then again, we're happy to be going home too, you know?
Away-Team: Well, you guys have been on the road almost four years straight, besides taking time out to record albums and stuff. You guys have been touring pretty hard lately.
Tom Hunting: Yeah, pretty much lately. We did a lot of European stuff last summer and...we did like three European tours, and one American tour in January/February of last year. It's been going good.
Away-Team:So, you guys gonna have some down time now?
Tom Hunting: Yeah, well we got, we're doing two festivals. Europe this summer, then we're going to Japan in September. And we've got Puerto Rico coming up on June 20th.
Away-Team: As I said, basically, the last five years you guys have been going non-stop, you've released three albums and re-recorded the classic Bonded by Blood which have met with a lot of critical praise. The new albums are just brutal and skull crushing, with no real filler, what caused the prolific period of writing, or have some of these songs been laying around since '92?
Tom Hunting: Well after Tempo Of The Damned came out it's been pretty much a barrage of, you know, just new material and Gary's (Holt) been on a major writing binge and the lineup is strong so...We've just been hittin' it. *laughs*
Away-Team: So, are you guys pretty solid now, as far as lineup goes? I know over the last four years you've had singer changes, drummer changes -
Tom Hunting: Yeah. I've been in and out of this band three times now, but I mean, I'm happy to be back on the team and it's going really well. So I was there at the very beginning and hopefully I'll be there at the end.
Away-Team: At the end. Is there and end in sight? Hopefully not!
Tom Hunting: Nah. Not at this point. We gotta keep going. We're having a good time. Everybody is healthy, you know, free of their demons, so - * laughs *
Away-Team: Between '94 and 2004 you did a few small tours. You had some festival dates, a semi-reunion with Paul Baloff and did a live album. But there wasn't a lot of real steady band activity.
Tom Hunting: No, metal wasn't even really going as strong as it is now, in that period, you know. We were doing what we could, and we were one of the first bands to do that original lineup reunion thing, you know, minus Rob McKillop of course. Then Paul (Baloff former singer) dying kinda shocked us into shape and kinda helped kick us in the ass a little bit and made us, you know, realize...'Hey, we need to get our shit together and concentrate on this'. * laughs *
Away-Team: So, for that ten years, how do you keep your sanity without having this "outlet," full time? What do you do to keep busy?
Tom Hunting: Well, work. We all had jobs, you gotta eat... I mean, this is very important to us but it's not the most important thing in life. You know?
Away-Team: Gary has been known to predominantly do most of the song writing, now that Rob (Dukes singer) and other new members are in, is it still pretty much, predominantly Gary or is it more of a collaborative effort now?
Tom Hunting: No, it's a little bit more collaborative now. And, Lee (Altus) brings a lot more riff writing to the table and Rob is a very capable lyricist, so it takes some of the pressure off of Gary so he can concentrate on his riffs and make them stronger.
Away-Team: When The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A was released; I think it was Gary that said in an interview, that this year would be The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit B, and then you guys went back and did Bonded By Blood and released it as Let There Be Blood. What was the impetus for going back and redoing Bonded By Blood?
Tom Hunting: Well, that is something that we had talked about with our former manager, who runs a record label also, and at the time we were doing that, when we agreed to do that was before we even recorded Atrocity but it was something, you know, we wanted to put those songs out there...not...not as a competition with Bonded By Blood, the original, but just more like a companion record and to kind of show what the band sounds like now and what they could expect to hear those songs to sound like live now because it's with the current lineup. And, I mean, we're happy with it. It came out great and we didn't spend a lot of time on it like we did on Atrocity because, you know, we like to spend more time on the new material obviously, plus we should know them songs, we've been playing them for, fucking, twenty-seven years now or something crazy. I really do this, my personal...I really do this for the creation of the new music. I like when a riff is first spat out to me, to the time we record it, you know, it's like building a sandwich.
Away-Team: There's been a lot of bands that are going back and re-recording their old albums, or when they go back and remaster them, like Megadeth going back and completely redoing the arrangements of most of every song, and the lyrics, to a lot of their albums. With Bonded By Blood, you said this was more of a companion piece. It was just going into the studio and ripped it out -
Tom Hunting: Yeah. You can tell that it's different, especially here technology is concerned because when we did the original, it was, we didn't do anything to a click track or anything like that so, on the re-recording I think some of the slower stuff sounds slower, you know, making it more heavy in my opinion and some of the faster stuff is way faster. * laughs *
Away-Team: A lot tighter, a lot more cohesive there.
Tom Hunting: Yeah.
Away-Team: And a lot less demons too, during the recording, I would imagine.
Tom Hunting: Not so much. There was not so much drug use going on back then, it was more drinking and stuff like that. The demons didn't come along until later.
Away-Team: Are you guys still going to release Exhibit B, or now that you've released ...
Tom Hunting: Yeah, we have four tracks leftover from the recordings on A and three of them will probably make it on to B, after we rearrange some lyrics and stuff on one of them. The fourth one might be a b-side on a Japanese release or something. I just don't think it's strong enough to compete what's being written right now for part B, so -
Away-Team: So, you're still going to release it as Exhibit B?
Tom Hunting: Yes and we should be recording it, we're hoping October, November at the latest.
Away-Team: So, mid 2010 then -
Tom Hunting: No, more like early. I'm thinking like February or March. Hopefully early spring at the latest. Then follow that with an American tour.
Away-Team: Good, we'd love to have you back here again. The lyrics for Exodus, again, predominantly written by Gary, have varied from political, social, anti-religion -
Tom Hunting: Anger issues? * laughs *
Away-Team: Yes. To straight up pissed off at the world. Now, sitting here, you guys are, say, roughly 40-something, and 27 years into this band. How do you guys keep coming, keep the fire stoked to continue writing such aggressive songs, lyrically and musically?
Tom Hunting: You know, you'd have to ask Gary that one, but he's obviously, I won't try to answer for him but the boy's got problems. * laughs * And this is his personal soap box to vent such problems.
Away-Team: Well, then I'll ask you this, being, you've been in and out a couple of times from the band. Being here now, today, how do you - especially because like these last three albums, more so than your earlier work I think this stuff is some of the best stuff you guys have done. I love the early stuff, but this stuff is so brutal and so heavy -
Tom Hunting: Thanks man, I appreciate that, and I agree with it.
Away-Team: At this time in your life, at this age, how do you get up there and just beat the living shit out of the crowds every night? It's gotta take its toll.
Tom Hunting: It's what we do man, it's what we love to do. I mean I can't complain, I do something that I love for an hour and a half a night, the rest of the day, I just -
Away-Team: Put up with idiotic questions from people like me.
Tom Hunting: Yeah, yeah. * laughs * No, there not idiotic, this is actually really been good questions so far.
Away-Team: Well, thank you.
Tom Hunting: But, I mean, it's what we love to do, I mean we beat the shit out of them, they beat the shit out of each other, and it's like a big, you know, festival of violence.
Away-Team: "Good friendly violent fun". The Bay Area Thrash scene made quite the comeback in 2001, with the Chuck Billy Cancer Benefit, a lot of bands, yourself, Death Angel, Vio-lence, Testament, Heathen, Sadus, I could go on and on. A bunch of bands got together and kind of reunited in one form or another to do this benefit for Chuck Billy. Out of that we've seen you guys, Death Angel, Testament all release several new albums over the last six years, and tour for the past few years with varying degrees of success. For me, alone, to see all of these bands that I grew up around, and watching when you guys first started, showing today's kids what the Bay Area scene is all about and still sound relevant and put out some of the best music you guys have done so far, is just huge. To what do you contribute the resurgence of the Bay Area thrash sound, and why aren't the other 80's styles of music doing the same thing?
Tom Hunting: Well, I just think that metal, in general, has come around circle again. You know, I think Nirvana killed it *laughing * in the early 90's and it needed to be killed. You watch some of those old Vinnie Vincent, not Vinnie Vincent, wait, yeah, Vinnie Vincent videos, it had to be killed. Somebody had to do something about that shit, and out come Nirvana and crushes all that, Pearl Jam and all that. Also great bands, musicians. I love Alice in Chains. I think it was just time for music to be different, but I think thrash came around, I mean, it never really died in Europe. They still love that shit over there. Always have and always will. But, it's interesting because there's a new phase of, especially whenever we play southern California; it's like 17 year old Hispanic kids. We call them like the Satanic Hispanics because they all have denim vests, and these Nike high tops. I don't know where the fuck they're getting these shoes, but, you know what I mean...
Away-Team: Still being made in Mexico, somewhere?
Tom Hunting: Maybe.*laughs* I think it's a resurgence, cause like all those bands, the musicians in the bands you just spoke of never went away, they just weren't doing anything because, metal being dead, there was nothing to do. You know what I mean? But, in Exodus, aside from them breaking up in 1994 after Force of Habit, we never really broke up, we just kind of drifted off, you know, and got into other stuff, sometimes bad stuff, but -
Away-Team: But you're back again.
Tom Hunting: Much better now.
Away-Team: So, the Bay Area Thrash scene, again, seems to be still inspiring new bands today, most notably Warbringer, which you're on tour with, Municipal Waste is another one that is compared to the, kind of the Bay Area Thrash sound of old, an up and coming Lazarus AD, which has been compared a lot to Exodus directly, and a lot of others -
Tom Hunting: The future torch carriers of thrash, cause they'll be doing this shit when we're too old -
Away-Team: Exactly.
Tom Hunting: That's when I move onto Bluegrass.
Away-Team: Which would explain the last song on, was it Tempo of the Damned or Shovel Headed Kill Machine -
Tom Hunting: No, Atrocity. It was the Bonded remake, yeah. Our bass player, Jack (Gibson), has been taking up the banjo the last four or five years and he's gotten quite good at it, so - Him and I actually have a bluegrass project on the side -
Away-Team: Oh really?
Tom Hunting: Coffin Hunter.
Away-Team: Coffin Hunter?
Tom Hunting: Yeah.
Away-Team: Are we gonna see -
Tom Hunting: Like trucker music, C.W. McCall meets Jerry Reed meets Earl Scruggs, you know what I mean?
Away-Team: Nice. I grew up on that type of music.
Tom Hunting: And the parallels between playing that and heavy metal are amazing -
Away-Team: Are they really?
Tom Hunting: As far as from a drummer's standpoint.
Away-Team: Oh, really. How so?
Tom Hunting: Well, in heavy metal drums you go, [makes drumming noises] Blue grass you go, [different drumming noises] It's the same shit. * laughs * Just accented on the snare drum instead of the bass drum.
Away-Team: So, these newer bands coming along, it must be great to see, what I call, almost the third generation of Bay Area Thrash sound, now, coming out and 20, almost 30 years later being influenced by what you guys did and going out there and showing the kids what it's all about. They don't sound retro by any means; they're very relevant to today's sound -
Tom Hunting: They're doing their own thing, they're incorporating blast beats and stuff that we still don't do -
Away-Team: Right, but it still has that old Bay Area Thrash kind of feel to it. What you guys, Metallica, Death Angel, Testament all kind of invented back in the early 80's or mid-80's. What your signature kind of sound was for that time period is being done now by what I call the third generation, and that's gotta be kind heady to think that thirty years down the road there's people still playing what you guys started and created.
Tom Hunting: I don't know what to attribute that to. For me, personally, I was born in 1965 and I guess, maybe those kids researched what was going on when they were being born and dug it, so now their doing it, you know?
Away-Team: Sticking with the Bay Area Thrash scene, what is one of your fondest memories of the old in the Bay Area music scene, when you guys were still coming up, starting out?
Tom Hunting: Um, just some of the shows, at Ruthie's Inn, and we wouldn't go on until, like, two in the morning so we were pretty shit-faced, you know. It was very innocent; it was just like a little scene. You see the same people at every show, but every show would be packed with those same people, you know what I mean? It was a formative time, for everybody, learning their chops. I have to say that, you know, I've never looked forward to so many gigs like that, I mean, that anticipation of having a gig. Oooh, we got a gig, you know what I mean? I don't mean to sound jaded or anything, cause I love playing still -
Away-Team: But there's a difference between when you're first starting out, and we've got a gig and people are actually coming out to see us. To now, it's, we hope there's people out there, da da da, we're gonna go out there and kick their ass. It's them coming to see us, instead of us putting on a show for them. It's a completely different feeling, I get it, I get it.
Tom Hunting: Yeah.
Away-Team: What drew you to play music, to begin with, what drew you to the drums?
Tom Hunting: Well, originally I played the guitar for a while at age 13, 14, and then around junior high I switched to drums. I've always wanted to play drums, I've always, would watch Keith Moon, old documentaries on the Who and shit. I listened to a lot of music, a lot of the drummers, early drummers that were influential to me, like, Heart's drummer on Barracuda -
Away-Team: Really?
Tom Hunting: Michael Derosier. He's a monster, was a monster. Hope he's still rocking, somewhere. I don't know, I mean, I've known that I wanted to do this since I was in the crib. I mean, if that sounds weird, it's like, I used to watch Glen Campbell in my diapers, sitting in a fucking baby pen. Glen Campbell had a variety show -
Away-Team: Yep, I remember it well.
Tom Hunting: And that was my first, my first recollection of music on television, and I was like, that looks pretty cool.
Away-Team: For me it was, I remember the Glen Campbell Variety Hour, Sony and Cher, Hee Haw -
Tom Hunting: Even the Dean Martin Show was killer.
Away-Team: Yeah! What's one thing left to do, that you've always wanted to do and haven't done yet?
Tom Hunting: I don't know. Make the cover of Modern Drummer? * laughs * No, I don't really care. I don't know, just leave a good mark, musically, on the world.
Away-Team: Do you think you've done that?
Tom Hunting: I think we've done that.
Away-Team: I think you've done that!
Tom Hunting: And I think, you know, I think maybe the best is yet to come, as far as material coming out of this band, cause we're all very focused and it's, the music seems to be getting heavier and better and it's really fun to create something and just go wow when it's done, you know.
Away-Team: I get it. Like I said, I followed you guys from mid-80's, like 83-84 through now and the stuff you guys are, I love the earlier stuff. It was kind of, it was a lot looser, a little more...some of it was kind of tongue-in-cheek at times -
Tom Hunting: Yeah.
Away-Team: But, just the aggression today is, it puts a lot of these new bands to shame. These people think they're hard, they're heavy...you put this Exodus album on and just shut them up. It's like, holy shit, that's what you need to strive for. So, absolutely, you guys have put out some great stuff over the last few years -
Tom Hunting: Thanks, man.
Away-Team: And, I'm really excited to hear what's coming up.
Tom Hunting: Yeah, it will be brutal.
Away-Team: So, I've kind of already touched on this but the last question is, after so many years of touring, night after night, how do you get yourself up to go out on stage and just beat the shit out of everyone for a couple hours?
Tom Hunting: Um, this is what we do, man. It's what we love to do. Well shit, I guess it's what we were born to do.
Away-Team: Do you have any pre-show rituals, anything that -
Tom Hunting: Well, yeah, Gary does, you know, Jager 30 about an hour before we play. He's socially inept until he gets a couple of shots in him. He doesn't want to talk to anybody in the world, but does a couple of shots and has a beer and he's all, yeah, let's go. In fact, he's getting his first tattoo as we speak.
Away-Team: Oh, really? From a local artist, or somebody on the tour.
Tom Hunting: Bob Tyrrell, he's a pretty well known tattoo guy.
Away-Team: Very cool. Well, Tom, I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Have a great show tonight. Looking forward to it, and looking forward to the new album, and many more to come. Many more to come.
Tom Hunting: Thanks man.
My thanks to Tom and Exodus for taking the time to give a great interview, Ross their Tour Manager for making sure it got done, Loana at Nuclear Blast for setting it up, and our very own Bam Bam for getting the ball rolling.Check out Exodus in a town near you, and go pick up an album or 10 of theirs. Early years, or late years, you won't be disappointed!!!
Tom Hunting: Maybe.*laughs* I think it's a resurgence, cause like all those bands, the musicians in the bands you just spoke of never went away, they just weren't doing anything because, metal being dead, there was nothing to do. You know what I mean? But, in Exodus, aside from them breaking up in 1994 after Force of Habit, we never really broke up, we just kind of drifted off, you know, and got into other stuff, sometimes bad stuff, but -
