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Exodus is a band that got screwed out of a Legacy they assumed would be theirs. If only. Gary Holt at this point insists he doesn’t care, but let’s be real, if Metallica jacked your lead guitarist, and your label took over a year to release your debut album - that album being EXODUS - BONDED BY BLOOD- you WOULD care. Everyone knows the Bonded By Blood story I guess. Originally was going to be called A Lesson In Violence and have different cover art, but someone opted to change this. As it was to be the first release on the Torrid label, pretty much every mistake that could happen did, and by the time it came out in 1985, just about the whole Bay Area thrash scene had lapped Exodus, who were at one time the biggest band in that scene. Bonded By Blood is still a great album, but it came out in the same year as Ride The Lightning and Hell Awaits among MANY others. It’s the Blake Stone Episode 1 to Metallica’s “Knee Deep In The Dead”.

Vocalist Paul Baloff’s classic faux-singing vocal delivery has endeared itself many times over to metal fans, and the Holt/Hunolt guitar duo deliver with great economy and power big meaty thrash slabs but because of the late appearance and additional distribution problems it wasn’t enough to break them into the big leagues. It didn’t help that Holt (the defacto band leader), wanted to polish the group’s sound more, and after a demo session featuring a much more neutered sounding Baloff, they elected to eject him in favor of the more radio friendly Steve Souza (formerly of Testament/Legacy). Ugh. So many mistakes in one paragraph. Blame the band, blame Torrid, whatever. Bonded By Blood is still a masterpiece of straight up thrashing power, no matter what happened after it. R.I.P. Paul Baloff.

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