On Friday March 20, Exodus will release their 12th studio album, Goliath. Ahead of that, guitarist Gary Holt joined Loudwire Nights (March 12) to dive into everything happening in the world of Exodus.
Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.
“Exodus carries the world’s biggest chip on our shoulders — and it works to our advantage,” Holt shared Chuck Armstrong, host of Loudwire Nights.
“We’re never satisfied. The world’s against us and everybody looks down on us…we feel we don’t get the credit. We’ve had years of self-inflicted damage and dysfunction, but it keeps us motivated to prove ourselves.”
That motivation has driven Exodus to create their most collaborative album of their career and Holt is excited for the world to hear it.
“I’m biased, obviously, but in our 60s, we’re making some of our best music,” he said.
“Who says you have to mail it in? If you fucking love what you’re doing and you’re still motivated to explore new avenues in what you do, there’s no limit … I can’t stop.”
Over the course of two months, not only did Exodus write and record Goliath but Holt said the next album is already nearly finished, too.
“We recorded 80-percent of the follow-up,” he said.
“We just worked like two months. We live in a house together and we just write all day. When we’re not in the studio, we’re still writing, guitars and drums everywhere. We went in with like four songs done and recorded 18. We were experiencing an explosion of creativity. I’m super proud of this album.”
Though Holt isn’t sure when fans will hear the record after Goliath, he’s happy that they have completed so much of it already.
“Our goal was to finish it because we are getting older — finishing it and having it ready to go reduces time spent creating it,” he said about Goliath.
“By the time we get around to finishing the next one, Lee [Altus] and I’ll write another 10 songs. It’s just the way it is. There’s worse problems to have than have really killer, unreleased music.”
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As for the songs that landed on Goliath, Holt admitted he thinks about it a lot, but he’s not losing any sleep over it.
“I still have full on anxiety over which songs we didn’t put on this album,” he said.
“This shit is that good. It’s not like we picked the 10 best and ignored the others. Some of the strongest shit we ever wrote, we set aside … Most of my best solos that I personally like happen to be on songs on the next record.”
What Else Did Exodus’ Gary Holt Discuss on Loudwire Nights?
- Why he likes playing massive stages with both Exodus and Slayer: “In the case of Slayer, everything’s on fire. It’s like a teenage dream, you dreamed about that shit as a young teenage guitar player. You saw it in your head. It’s expensive, but you know, Slayer can do it. It’s awesome.”
- What it was like to be part of Back to the Beginning with Slayer: “It’s still kind of a pinch me kind of thing that I was able to be a part of honoring a guy who I’d seen live so many times before I ever played guitar. Just being there, all the musicians were all reduced to fanboys. I went down to watch, I think it was Tool, and there’s [James] Hetfield, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, and he’s behind my amps. So the first thing I do is go up and go, ‘Hey, don’t fuck with them amps.’ And he goes, ‘I’m dialing in some low mids for you.’ And then watching Tool, I never met Adam Jones, but he came over to fist bump me. I feel like that means a lot, it’s just kind of an acknowledgement of, ‘Thanks for coming down and watching it.’ I tried to watch everybody I could … The camaraderie around everybody paying homage to Ozzy and Black Sabbath was remarkable.”
- The moment he’ll never forget at Back to the Beginning: “The Ozzy part was more moving because the songs. ‘Mama I’m Coming Home,’ man. Zakk [Wylde] knowing that he had to help him out vocally and just moving everything over to get to the mic, it was just, it’s awesome. It’s just the show of love and support for a guy who gave so much. I mean, come on, what can you say? It was just, it was incredible. I still get goosebumps.”
Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below
Gary Holt joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday, March 12; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.
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