Super7 Toys has released a new Paul Baloff ReAction figure in honor of the late EXODUS frontman who passed away 20 years ago, on February 2, 2002. Official figure description: "This year marks the 20th Anniversary of Paul Baloff's death. Baloff personified the violent energy of the early San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal scene of the 80s with the band EXODUS on their 'Bonded By Blood' album. Baloff's uncompromising lifestyle and attitude are immortalized with this 3.75" ReAction figure. Comes with a microphone and shattered baseball bat accessories." On January 31, 2002, Baloff suffered a major stroke and was brought to Highland General Hospital in Northern California, where he remained in a coma until he was declared brain dead. On February 2, 2002, his doctors shut off his life support, leaving him to die in his sleep. He had no previous known health problems, and the stroke was a complete surprise to everyone around him. On the fifth anniversary of Baloff's passing, guitarist Gary Holt stated about his late bandmate: "His contribution to metal lives on. How else can you explain how a guy can record one album (twice!) and still be remembered as a thrash legend to this very day?" In a 2015 interview, EXODUS drummer Tom Hunting said about Baloff's passing: "That was a rough time for us, 'cause we weren't really a good-functioning band at that time. We all had some drug problems going on, or most of us, anyway — myself included. And Paul had two strokes. And we knew something was going on with Paul, but we never realized that he'd had a stroke until he had the big stroke that killed him. And we got an education about strokes right then. But even his dying break our will to do drugs. It took awhile. Gary did it first… you know, he got sober first, and I soon followed, and the rest is history. We haven't touched the shit ever since then. I mean, there's a pretty cliché saying: you get to a point where you're a musician dabbling in drugs, and then you become a drug addict that's dabbling in music. And that's kind of where we were. We thought we were doing stuff, but we weren't really progressing. We were just kind of spinning the wheels." Last year, ex-EXODUS guitarist Rick Hunolt told Heavy Culture about firing Baloff and replacing him with Steve "Zetro" Souza before the release of 1987's "Pleasures Of The Flesh" album: "I think losing Paul was a big deal back then. I think that maybe we made a mistake by firing Paul. And this is just looking back on everything for me; this is just my personal thought. This is the stuff that I think about sometimes. What would have happened if we didn't fire Paul? I just think that maybe we would have gotten a little bit more traction if we didn't have that lag in between. "People love Paul," he continued. "And Paul was… he's a legend. He was going through a bad time in his life, and I guess, at the time, we felt that maybe he was holding us back; I think probably that's what we were thinking. I think that probably we might have thought about getting him better instead of firing him."
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