Looking at the schedule that Exodus have in front of them is exhausting. They are on the road until the end of May. Out with Megadeth and Anthrax in Canada, they then hook up with Kreator, Carcass and Nails for the European run before heading back to the States for the final Sepultura tour. On a rare night off, I catch up with main man Gary Holt before he heads back to the tour bus for the next transfer.
“It’s pretty exhausting, and it’s also cold as fuck this tour,” Holt says. “We’re moving into warmer temperatures, but just a few days ago it was like 18 below. So, it’s been Arctic, which makes it more tiring at the same time. But we’re having fun. The tour has been amazing.”
Gary Holt tells me that he is feeling well these days and that his home lifestyle helps when he is on the road. “I keep myself in pretty good shape for a 61-year-old dude. So getting on stage is the easy part. After a couple of shows, you get your win back, you know, but I live in the country. I’m constantly moving firewood and moving trees and shit. So, you stay in a little bit of shape just because there’s so much work required.
“But to keep the chops up is the most important thing, and you keep them up at home, but then on stage it’s different. You’re playing harder, playing a little more aggressive. So, it takes a few shows to get that going. On this tour, even more so because we’re only playing 30 minutes. So, if we’re playing an hour and 15, it takes half as many shows to really get your muscle strength at full capacity.”
I remind Gary Holt of an interview he did with H from Acid Reign for his Talking Bollocks podcast during the pandemic where Gary discussed his change of drink to non-alcoholic beer. Is he still off the booze? “I haven’t had a drink in, it’ll be five years on June 15th. I drink non-alcoholic beers, but you know, I drink one of them. I don’t drink 12. I drink two on a good night, like out to dinner. But you’re not drinking to get drunk, so the quantities are greatly reduced.
“But there’s really great quality non-alcoholic beers now. I was a beer drinker. It was my primary source of alcohol, so I still like the taste of it. But I don’t need it at home. I’ll go two months and have one, sure.”
With Rob Dukes back in the band following Steve Souza’s departure in January 2025, Gary Holt is keen to correct me about the big man’s return and his input into the new album. “He’s got three tours prior to this one already under his belt. But it’s awesome. The vibe and energy in the band right now is as good as it’s ever been.
“Everybody’s all smiles and having a great time, and it’s been amazing. Then he just went and killed it on the album. Just did the best job we could ever ask anybody to do.”
Having received the stream for Goliath a day or so before our call, I was familiar with the tracks, which vary from old school Exodus through to the eight-minute epic Summon Of The God Unknown. As Gary confirms, most of it was not written prior to Rob rejoining the band.
“We wrote almost all of it with Rob in the band,” Gary Holt says. “Like I had riffs. I’ve got riffs on my phone, throw the voice recorder in front of the amp anytime you’ve got something that you think you might even want to circle back to.
“But when we went into the studio for the album, I had five songs done, and we recorded 18. Lee [Altus] wrote almost half this album, Changing Me being one of them. The collaborative effort of this album was like nothing we had ever done before. Everybody had a hand in this record.
“I usually would write eight or nine songs on an album because that’s what I needed to finish the record. Lee is the first person to tell you he’s lazy. He would contribute one or two. He wrote six songs, and four of them are on the album. It adds an additional element of flavour and stuff.
“While we were doing the songs in the studio, it became apparent quickly that Rob was capable of so much more than we knew. We knew we could do violent aggro Thrash better than anybody. But you know, he developed this incredible range, this sense of melody on Promise You This. He puts his southern rock swagger on it, and this album is so diverse that there’s no one song that represents the whole album. It’s crazy. There are so many different vibes going on. Every song stands on its own.”
With the new album coming out on 20 March 2026, and Exodus playing lower down the bill for most of the tours, there is the challenge of fitting in some of the new material with the old classics that the fans want to hear.
Gary Holt explains the approach. “The album comes out the first day of the Kreator tour and we’ll introduce some more live stuff. We’re doing 3111 now because that’s the first single. Then the Sepultura tour, directly after that, our set’s even longer, so we’ll add more. We’re aware that always have to play Bonded By Blood and Strike Of The Beast and Blacklist and Toxic Waltz.
“But we’re a band that wants to play our new material, not a legacy act that does an album, goes out, plays an hour and a half and plays one song. We’re not that bad. We want to bust out the new material because we’re excited about it.”
I am fortunate enough to be going to Lisbon for that first date of the Kreator tour, which should be excellent. In terms of where Exodus sits these days, they are obviously in the veteran stage in terms of the bands of the Thrash era of the ’80s. I ask Gary Holt about the makeup of an Exodus crowd these days. Is it still the old school, or is it a younger breed?
“No, our crowd has for years now been really young,” he says. “I’m 61, and I don’t like going out to shows very often. So, I assume most 61-year-olds are just like me. They’re like, yeah, we’re going to go, and then you come up with some excuse, stay home and watch fucking TV.
“Lots of kids are at our shows. An entire new generation. We wouldn’t be anywhere without that, because old people behave like old people, just like myself. It’s amazing seeing these kids come to the shows.
“I remember many years ago, probably 25 years, 20 years ago, maybe, some kids of 14 came up to me and asked me, ‘ Is it true Paul Baloff used to destroy houses at parties?’ This kid wasn’t born yet, and he’s asking me about Baloff’s behaviour at house parties. It’s pretty amazing. Never would have guessed that you know.”
Having seen Crowbar playing to a packed house two days before, Gary and I discuss the seeming resurgence of interest in Metal. Gary laughs as he reassures me that old dudes still go to Exodus gigs. “The average age of our crowd is young, and all kidding aside, we do still get the old school guys there.
“But yeah, there is a resurgence. I mean, it’s been going on for years. When I’m on Instagram and I see some nine-year-old kid just… shredding on guitar, not rapping, not fucking around with turntables, but playing guitar and really good at it, it’s amazing. It’s good for the future of guitar-based music for sure.”
We trip into AI and social media as our conversation continues. Gary Holt is an Instagram user, which he finds quite amusing. “Yeah, Instagram bad influencer, I guess. Yeah. I have an unreasonable large number of followers, and I still don’t know why. I mostly post guitars and cats, you know. But I mean, I think it’s all in having a skill at writing a good caption. That’s as important as anything.”
Thrash in the ’80s was fuelled by a rage against societal injustice, and whilst topics have changed through the years, Gary agrees that what made him angry in those first albums is probably still as relevant today in terms of influencing his writing.
“Sure. I mean, once angry, always angry, you know. But the crazy thing is, I’m a super happy guy. I don’t walk around with a rain cloud over my head. But music is very therapeutic, and it’s a way to get a lot of things off your chest.
“The way that Exodus writes albums, we sequester ourselves into a house and live together and write. We’re able to subconsciously absorb everything that’s happening at that very minute into a song because, you know, it’s kind of like a South Park episode, without the humour.
“My daughter is in animation, and she knows how brutal working at South Park is because something will hit the news, and they create the episode in days. That’s why they can be so relevant to what’s happening now.
“Exodus writes our albums as we record. So lyrically, we’ll be really on top of something sometimes that’s happened because we didn’t write them six months prior.”
We move on to Thrash Metal as an evolving movement, which Gary Holt feels is necessary. “It should evolve,” he says. “There are always those people out there who think Exodus needs to make Bonded By Blood Part 2. But that would be the ultimate musical dishonesty if I tried to mentally turn myself back into a 21-year-old Gary Holt because that was me at that time. I’d just be faking it.
“I’m going to write riffs, and I write them the same way I did when writing the riffs I wrote on Bonded By Blood. I sit down in a jam. My process has not changed one iota, other than the fact that we write and record during the recording sessions. That allows us to pivot. We could have band discussions about a song and then go right in the studio and change it completely because the drums are set up all the time. They’re never finished until we say they are.
“But yeah, my process hasn’t changed. I still sit down and write a riff, but instead of using an old boombox to record them, I throw them on my phone.”
With a more relaxed lifestyle away from the day job, Gary can divorce himself from it, though he notes, with a wry smile, that he needs to keep the wheels turning. “I will divorce myself from it at times, even though I keep telling myself not to,” he says, “because now that I’m getting older, I need to never stop writing.
“Because for one, I feel super creative. Number 2, like, fucking Prince died and left vaults full of material. Hell, if I left a lot of material behind, something tragic happened to me. At least I would have something to share with the world, give to my children, and leave behind for the family. Gary Holt’s last final works, you know?
“So you start thinking about mortality and shit like that, which is weird, considering I spent most of my life feeling like I was indestructible and trying my hardest to destroy myself.”
I reflect that as you get older, you still feel like you are 18 years old. Does he ever question how he got where he is, or is it a reflection on a crazy ride?
“No, what a great ride it’s been,” he says. “Even the bad. Even the years of drug abuse. It’s all part of what gets you here. And if that had never happened to me, maybe I wouldn’t be this creative now, because I still feel like I’m fighting a battle against the world. I still carry a huge chip on my shoulder.
“I’ve lost a lot of years. Maybe none of this would happen if I just skated along and continued. You had to hit bottom first. It’s hard to say, but I never dwell on the what-ifs. I’ll leave that to other lesser people who are not happy with their lives.
“I’m super comfortable in my skin, so I couldn’t give a shit. People are like, ‘Oh, what do you think about Big Four?’ I don’t care. Exodus should be there. I don’t care. Other people will sit there and, well, we should be part of one. No, you weren’t. They’re the four biggest-selling. That’s why they’re there.
“But I know where Exodus was at the beginning of this, and I know where these other bands were not. They did not exist. The Exodus was founded in the fucking ’70s.
“We could, by one year, be called a ’70s rock band.” Gary Holt smiles. “So I don’t trip on any of that. If other people feel like they’re slighted and nobody carries a bigger chip on their shoulders, then Exodus, it motivates us and drives us. But that’s not one of them.
“Maybe because we’re aware that we’re one of the two founders of this shit. Us and Metallica and Dave Mustaine, obviously, by his role in Metallica, invented this. No one else existed yet. I don’t care who you were. You weren’t there.”
I check in with Gary about Tom Hunting and his health. He sounds in fine form on Goliath, and Gary agrees. “Yeah, he sure does. Tom’s fine. It’s a miracle of science that you could live without a stomach, for one. His walking weight now, and Tom’s always been a large guy, 6-foot fucking two or whatever, he’s probably 40 pounds lighter than he used to be.
“But that’s just because your body metabolises your caloric intake differently. But he’s awesome. Every year, he goes for his cancer screening. And after a few years of like nothing to see here, they finally use the words cancer-free. Because after five years of no sign of it, they gave him the seal of approval.
“Tom’s the first to say his motto is every day is a gift. So we don’t take anything for granted. He’s my best friend, and he’s still here, and he’s still playing drums alongside me. Same as we did when I was 17, and he was 16.”
As we talk about life on the road, Gary tells me he’s back to meat eating after a foray with veganism. “No, I’m full of carnivore again,” he laughs. “But it did teach me to eat better, though, because I was a guy who never ate. I never ate broccoli until I went vegan. Now I eat it all the time.
“So, I eat a healthier, more balanced meal. I do still eat vegan food from time to time because I like it. But no, I had a hamburger for lunch. The Kreator tour would have been easy because Millie’s a vegan, so there’ll always be wonderful vegan options. I’m sure I’ll have some vegan food with Millie. I’m not opposed to going meatless quite often, actually.”
It is not every day you spend time chatting about the benefits of broccoli with one of Thrash Metal’s founding fathers. With the band out on the road for the next few months, I am sure Gary Holt will be looking after himself.
The new album is killer, one of their best for some time. Now, time for that flight to Lisbon. I cannot wait.
Exodus release their 12th Studio Album, Goliath, on 20 March 20 2026, via Napalm Records. Pre-orders are available from NapalmRecords.com/Exodus.
