The insidious need to rant and rave about a nagging issue I have with Exodus has been gnawing at me for many months. For the sake of my very sanity, I needed to vent my spleen of frustrations in a very Festivus-appropriate way, by shoving this unadorned aluminum pole of a tirade up your asses. And because the name Exodus cannot even be whispered around AMG HQ without deranged fanboy Doc Grier popping out of absolutely nowhere like Candyman to stick his 200 cents in, I’ve pragmatically allowed him to desecrate contribute to my work by adding whatever he thinks passes for “color commentary.” I apologize in advance for what follows.
–Steel
As a metal-obsessed teen in the 80s, I fell hard for Exodus and their Bonded by Blood debut. It certainly wasn’t the first thrash album to hit my ears since it landed in 1985, but the sheer feral viciousness of the thing set it apart from the likes of what Metallica, Anthrax, and Exciter were doing. Those crunching, frenzied riffs on the title track, “Pirraha,” and “Strike of the Beast” were next-level insanity, with only Slayer’s debut residing in the same approximate suburb of Hell. 1 Bonded by Blood had a very dark, violent edge to it that was both intimidating and weirdly appealing to a young, impressionable me. It felt like something I shouldn’t be listening to and shouldn’t even have in the house. It was too adult, too hardcore, too dangerous.
Doc Grier: Fuck, you’re olde.2
Apart from the killer riffs that ran throughout the album, a big part of what made Bonded by Blood such an intense listen was the unhinged vocals by Paul Baloff. The man sounded like a complete psycho nutjob who would as soon kill you as give you the time of day. Reports of his general demeanor suggest this wasn’t too far from the case if he smelled the slightest hint of poserism on you. He screamed, snarled, made weird intonations, and just went nuts vocally, and damn if it didn’t work wonders. Sure, Paul was the ultimate everyman at the mic, but what he lacked in real vocal ability, he made up for in raw energy and infernal overkill. His weird, totally berserk performance makes Bonded a special piece of metal thuggery that can never be replicated, duplicated, or bettered.
Doc Grier: As an esteemed disciple of Zetro (even somewhat mimicking his voice and style when doing my own vocals), even I think Baloff is an untouchable gold nugget. Had he been less of a psychopath, who knows what other wild, unhinged beauties would have surfaced from his Exodus contributions. Unfortunately, we’ll never know, but Bonded stands alone as a unique, unlikely masterpiece.
We all know the history that followed. Baloff was replaced by Steve “Zetro” Souza, who led Exodus through the rest of the 80s and 90s, and was on board for the band’s big comeback in 2004 with Tempo of the Damned. Thereafter, Zetro left, and in came Rob Dukes for 2005’s Shovel Headed Kill Machine. Now, I’m not here to bash on Mr. Dukes, but he’s my least favorite Exodus vocalist. I always felt his style and abilities were a better fit for a punky crossover act like Biohazard than a thrash institution like Exodus, but he’s a competent vocalist and has his supporters.
Doc Grier: Tempo of the Damned might be my favorite (yup, I said it) Zetro-era Exodus release. This was the beginning of lengthier songs, that new Exodus tone that anyone can recognize, and more lyrics in a single song than there are people in California. And, Shovel Headed Kill Machine would have been just as good if it weren’t for the loss of Zetro. Dukes himself has even admitted that he finds it difficult to sing one of the most killer tunes on the record: “Deathamphetamine.” Though Zet might have been burned out with the band’s direction at the time, it’s difficult to say what this album would have been with him behind the mic. That said, Shovel is the best of the Dukes era.3
Where things really went pear-shaped for Yours Steely was when Exodus opted to re-record Bonded by Blood with Dukes on the mic in 2008, rebranding it as Let There Be Blood. It was a dubious decision on its face, as Bonded by Blood was and is considered a stone-cold classic, but Gary Holt does what Gary Holt wants. I listened to it a few times and was put off by Duke’s monotone shouting. But what really made me furious was how the slick, modern production sapped away every ounce of the original’s charm and scary, violent edge. Let There Be Blood is vastly inferior to the original, as most re-recordings are, and any reasonable person could have predicted that things would turn out this way. Thus baffled as to how anyone thought this re-recording was a good idea, I memory-holed it and moved on.
Doc Grier: I bought this fucking release because I had faith. I gave it more than its fair share of listens and have come to fucking despise it. This decision was obviously one of Holt’s, but the result strips everything (not just vocals) away from the original classic. The other band that comes to mind that loves doing this shit is Iced Earth, using old material to somehow spit insults back on previous vocalists who have left or been let go. Don’t get me wrong, Stu Block is a great vocalist, but no one should be on a recording of “Dante’s Inferno” except Matt Barlow. And that’s what Exodus did here.
However, bad decisions from the past have a way of coming back around to bite you in the ass. In my case, it was when I became a user of Stingray Music’s metal streaming service. Since I find much of what Sirius XM offers in the way of metal channels to be either half-assed or no-assed, Stingray Music’s metal channels were an attractive alternative. Their “Golden Age of Metal” channel is pure Steel bliss since it’s a time-locked stream of metal spanning 1980 through approximately 1995, with only the later works of that era’s artists occasionally breaking through and getting playtime.4 Curiously, Stingray decided that when something from Bonded by Blood gets played, it should be from 2008’s Let There Be Blood, and not the far superior 1985 original. Should this very minor first-world issue bother me enough to pen this lengthy, Unabomber-esque manifesto? Fuck yes, it should!
Doc Grier: I’d say the same thing happens with remastered material. No one agrees with me because you’re all simpletons,5 but I don’t want to hear the remastered, 800+ tracks of Metallica’s Load when streaming. I’m good with the original eight dozen tracks.
I can’t help wondering why Stingray would force a re-recording of a classic 80s album on listeners when the new version is so far removed from metal’s “golden age” and is but a pale shadow of the original. It makes no sense unless there are copyright issues that suppress the use of the original album. Every time I hear one of the Bonded tunes start up on Stingray, I experience a pang of hope that the Powers That Be will have seen the light and switched to the OG version, only to be bitterly disappointed again and again.6
Doc Grier: Dreadful.
I don’t begrudge Rob Dukes his time with Exodus, which is fortunate indeed since he’s once again back behind the mic, recording a new album. I just don’t want him or anyone else tampering with the beloved classics. Hell, I wouldn’t have appreciated Anthrax re-recording Spreading the Disease or Among the Living with Jon Bush on vocals, and I fucking LOVE Jon Bush! I’ve weighed in on this pet peeve before, and it’s still peeving me in 2025. I’m well aware that I’m a cranky metal purist, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that classic albums should be put on a pedestal and left to the ages. In short, stop with the fucking re-recordings and “re-imaginings” of older, highly respected albums, and stop pushing these cheeseball do-overs on us years after they crash and burn!
Thank you for listening to this Steel rant, and for tolerating Grier as he foamed at the mouth like a mindless mouth-foamer. I feel better now. Until I get Duked again, anyway.
The post Blood, Bonds, and Bitterness: the Perverse Pervasiveness of the the Re-Recording of Bonded by Blood appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.
