EXODUS bassist Jack Gibson spoke to the "Dabghanistan" podcast about the band's plans to enter the studio to record its long-awaited new album. The San Francisco Bay Area thrashers' next disc will be the follow-up to 2014's "Blood In Blood Out", which was their first release since the departure of the group's lead singer of nine years, Rob Dukes, and the return of Steve "Zetro" Souza, who previously fronted EXODUS from 1986 to 1993 and from 2002 to 2004. Jack said (see video below): "We're just starting to talk about the pre-production for the new EXODUS stuff. It doesn't look like we're gonna be recording it until September maybe. And who the fuck knows when it's gonna come out? Everybody's records are on hold. There may be such a backlog of stuff by then. Who even knows?" Asked if the new EXODUS songs are already written, Jack said: "Gary's [Holt, guitar] putting 'em together right now. Gary always does that — he whips it together right before it's time to do business." Gibson also discussed EXODUS's songwriting process in more detail, explaining: "I used to wanna be there all the time, and then I kind of realized that not only was I wasting a bunch of my energy but I was wasting a bunch of Gary and Tom's [Hunting, drums] energy by stopping and trying to get the… You know what I mean? When it's just Gary and Tom, it's an efficient thing. It's, like, 'Try this.' 'Do that.' 'Oh, yeah. I've got an idea.' 'Do this.' So I kind of realized, I think, either on the last record or the record before to just leave then alone and then when it's done, then I learn it. But the last couple of albums, instead of just sitting and spending all these hours learning it, I just take one of my basses and put it in Gary's hands and go, 'Play the song for me,' and just film him, and he'll play it, and that's 90 percent how he's gonna want me to do it anyway… Now I let him kind of show me what he thinks the bassline is, and that's mostly what I do." EXODUS's next album will be released in 2021 via Nuclear Blast. This past April, Souza confirmed that Holt's COVID-19 diagnosis "put a damper" on EXODUS's ability to move forward with the songwriting process for its new LP. "By now, we would have been working together for probably a good month on it," Zetro explained. "Gary's got many riffs and many things that he needs to put together. It starts with him and Tom [Hunting, EXODUS drummer], basically. Everybody knows, drummer and guitar, and that's how EXODUS has always done it. But because of this distancing, that's been kind of impossible to do, so that's put a damper on it. But I can guarantee you, I did hear some of the stuff that they were playing around with in soundcheck on [the recently completed] 'The Bay Strikes Back' [European] tour, and EXODUS fans are gonna be very pleased. Again, I'm not hearing full songs — I'm just hearing riffs and pieces and stuff like that — and I'm [like], 'Wow!' I'm not saying — it's just pretty damn heavy." Holt joined EXODUS in 1981 shortly after the band's formation, and has been its main songwriter ever since. Holt has performed on every EXODUS album, and is considered highly influential in the world of thrash metal. In 2011, he began filling in for Jeff Hanneman at SLAYER live shows, and became the band's full-time co-guitarist as of 2013, while remaining a member of EXODUS. In October 2014, EXODUS released its tenth studio album, "Blood In Blood Out", on the Nuclear Blast label.
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