Gary Holt recently talked about the thrash-glam rivalry in the 1980s that led him to listen to the latter genre in secret during a chat with Ultimate Guitar.
“I mean, in the [Paul] Baloff era in Exodus, if someone showed up with a ‘Ratt’ shirt, we’d pull out the pocket knife and cut strips of the shirt off,” he shared with the outlet. “If you look at some of the old photos of Baloff, he’s got all these pieces of cloth, like, for three inches, tied around his wrist. Those are threads of a poser shirt!”
“But, at the same time, us guitar players were secretly coveting every Warren DeMartini riff, like the sickest, greatest guitar player on Earth with the best tone ever, him and Robbin [Crosby]. So, we were like, actively, sitting there listening to him and George Lynch.”
“But at the same time, the segregation between the two genres — we were like mutual enemies,” the guitarist added. “We needed one another; we both died out together, it seems, at the end of the ‘80s. Mutual beneficial enemies, y’know?”
Exodus is currently preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their debut album ‘Bonded by Blood.’ Holt hinted at a large-scale event during a chat with Loudwire Nights in October but kept the details under wraps.
“The 40th anniversary of the album actually falls on [Paul Baloff’s] birthday, so we’re planning something big,” he noted.
The band recently finished their 2024 tour in Los Angeles. Their next scheduled appearance is at Welcome to Rockville in Daytona Beach on May 15. They will also headline Tons of Rock 2025 in Oslo, Norway, on June 27.
