EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt was recently asked if original EXODUS and current METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett was involved in the songwriting process for the band’s debut album, 1985’s “Bonded By Blood”.
Speaking with the “Put Up Your Dukes” podcast, hosted by ex-EXODUS singer Rob Dukes, Holt said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “There were riffs that I had written while Kirk was still in the band, and he tried to adapt them, tried to change ’em a little bit — the old, ‘I changed it a little bit. I’m a co-writer on this riff. And that was, like, two riffs, I think. And the rest of ’em were written after he left. We never used a Kirk Hammett riff, ever, until [2004’s] ‘Tempo Of The Damned’ [album] when we recorded [the early EXODUS song] ‘Impaler’.”
Holt explained that “the first two [EXODUS] songs finished post-Kirk Hammett were ‘Strike Of The Beast’ and ‘No Love’. The biggest talent I have, if you wanna call it a talent, is my fucking memory. I can remember fucking everything. I remember showing him… I can picture it as a film, showing Kirk the riff to ‘Strike Of The Beast’, and I can picture it as if I’m watching it on a film — in the jam room, me in my spot where I played him [the riff] and him wanting to change the higher note to a lower note; I remember it all as if I’m watching a movie of it. I remember all of it — every last minute of it. I remember details from fucking most meaningless shit.”
The original lineup of EXODUS was made up of guitarists Kirk Hammett and Tim Agnello, drummer Tom Hunting and vocalist Keith Stewart, with Holt joining in 1981. Hammett had left EXODUS to join METALLICA two years prior to “Bonded By Blood” hitting record shelves.