Scion Audio Visual celebrated San Diego's enormous comic and entertainment convention with iconic METALLICA guitar player Kirk Hammett and his namesake toy company Kirk Von Hammet Toys with an exclusive, RSVP-only celebration dubbed the "Fear FestEvil After Party" that showcased a performance by legendary Bay Area thrashers EXODUS this past Friday, July 25 at F6IX located at 526 F Street in San Diego, California. This special EXODUS performance was highlighted by Hammett joining the band on stage for a few songs.Fan-filmed video footage of the "Scar Spangled Banner" performance from Friday night's EXODUS show can be seen below."Fear FestEvil After Party" marked EXODUS' third show with singer Steve "Zetro" Souza since he rejoined the band a month and a half ago; EXODUS played on July 11 at the Bang Your Head!!!festival in Balingen, Germany and on July 12 at Antwerp Metal Fest in Antwerp, Belgium. EXODUS has set "Blood In, Blood Out" as the title of its new album, tentatively due on late October via Nuclear Blast. The CD will be the band's first since the departure of EXODUS' lead singer of the past nine years, Rob Dukes, and the return of his predecessor, Souza, who previously fronted EXODUS from 1986 to 1993 and from 2002 to 2004."I'm very excited to be back," Souza told Chile's Radio Futuro on July 8. "I'm really looking forward to this next adventure with my brothers in metal these guys I spent 30 years with, on and off. So it's very exciting."Speaking about how being in EXODUS is different today than it was when he first joined the band in the '80s and even a decade ago, Souza said: "I think everybody's matured quite some bit, and I think, as we all get older, we all realize things that we do wrong, especially myself, we realize our faults and our mistakes. And it's great that everybody can come to a meeting of the minds and be able to work forward and be mature enough to work forward."He added: "The whole reception to me being back with the guys has been really, really great."EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt who has been pulling double duty with SLAYER for the past four and a half years shot down Internet speculation that the split with Dukes was motivated by financial reasons or that it was masterminded by EXODUS' new so-manager, TESTAMENT vocalist Chuck Billy, who co-founded the management company Breaking Bands LLC. "It isn't for the money [and] Chuck did not orchestrate this," Holt said. "There were issues behind the scenes and we came to a conclusion." The guitarist, however, refused to go into the details of EXODUS' decision to part ways with Dukes, explaining: "All will remain internal. I see no need to air the laundry for anyone."During an interview with Rock Hard magazine at the Bang Your Head!!!festival, EXODUS bassist Jack Gibson said about Dukes' departure: "You know, we [Rob and the rest of EXODUS] were just kind of both going in different directions, what we wanted in the band. We were doing the new record, so it was important, and we were just kind of having different ideas about what album we wanted to make. So we just decided that it was time to part ways with Rob.""I love Rob, and I love his singing, and I really love everything that he did with us [but] Rob is a little more punk rock, kind of New York hardcore, and we're West Coast thrash, long-hair, patched vest-type stuff. So we were just kind of clashing a little bit with ideas and the way the delivery should be, and just different things like that. You know what I mean!? So come album time, that was important."Dukes joined EXODUS in January 2005 and appeared on four of the band's studio albums "Shovel Headed Kill Machine" (2005), "The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A" (2007), "Let There Be Blood" (2008, a re-recording of EXODUS' classic 1985 LP, "Bonded By Blood") and "Exhibit B: The Human Condition" (2010).
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