You can’t blame Steve “Zetro” Souza for sounding confident throughout the course of a recent interview. The Exodus vocalist has had an outstanding 2015 since re-occupying the spot early last year after the departure of nearly a decade of Rob Dukes’ tenure as mouthpiece. Exodus’ tenth studio album, Blood In, Blood Out, achieved the band’s highest Billboard chart position, grabbing #38 upon its first week of release in October of 2014, and the band has toured extensively over the past year, hitting major festivals like Australia’s Soundwave and Japan’s Thrash Domination – playing with and without guitarist Gary Holt, who has been successfully splitting his time between Exodus and a high-profile fill-in gig with Slayer.
Souza also has a unique position of being present for the very birth of thrash itself. Prior to joining Exodus for the band’s second album, Pleasures Of The Flesh in 1987 after founding vocalist Paul Baloff took his leave, the San Francisco Bay Area-based Souza was frontman for The Legacy – the band that would become Testament. Souza has left his mark on Exodus for sure, being back in the band for a third time now, after his initial 80’s/early 90’s run, and then coming back for an early 2000’s stint which produced 2004’s Tempo Of The Damned album.
Souza and Exodus are in the midst of a tour with the legendary King Diamond, playing several sold-out shows across the U.S., and moonlighting smaller clubs on off days from King’s tour. This current tour is notable in the fact that Exodus are really opening up the setlist a bit to include several choice cuts that haven’t been played live in some time – including many dusted off from the Dukes years. One thing is clear – Exodus is as vicious and vital as it has ever been. The band shows no sign of slowing down, and its mosh pits are a sight straight out of 1985 – the younger generation is really picking up on these godfathers of thrash, who still take their metal quite seriously, thank you. Souza checked in from the road recently prior to a gig at Atlanta’s Tabernacle to bring us up to speed on all things Exodus, as well as some thoughts on the past 30 years of debauchery.
Steve, this current tour with King Diamond – I’ve been told by King’s publicist that he hasn’t seen a demand for a metal tour like this in years. The fan reaction to this bill has been incredible. Has Exodus played with King Diamond before?
Souza: Yes. When he first split off from Mercyful Fate we did some one-offs. We never toured with him, but we’ve done one-off shows and festivals with him through the years. We’ve always stayed good friends. So, we knew that he had actually picked us to do this tour. He actually told me that personally on the first day. He said, “Yeah, when I saw that you guys submitted for this I got to it before all the other bands – Exodus and King Diamond in the States, it will be great!” I’m hearing from a lot of fans that this is like the dream tour come true – it’s two different types of music, but very, very heavy.
Now, you have Kragen (Lum, Heathen guitarist) filling in again on this tour for Gary Holt, right?
Yeah, Kragen is in because Gary’s in Europe with Slayer right now.
How is the chemistry when you play with someone else filling in – does it feel any different?
He’s got Gary down – every note. If you’re coming to the show, you’ll close your damn eyes and you won’t be able to tell the difference. Every lead, every rhythm, is right to the tee. When we’re not on tour, Kragen studies Gary – he’s not just playing leads in the keys that they’re supposed to be played in, he plays the leads right off the record. If you’re going to replace someone of the magnitude, the musician that Gary Holt is, you’d better damn well have your guns packed, you know? Gary’s the real deal – that’s why he’s in Slayer, that’s why he’s pretty much invented thrash metal, that’s why the music is still as violent as ever. He’s an amazing rhythm player, lead player, a great writer, lyricist – the full package.
Plus, there’s that connection with Lee (Altus, Exodus guitarist) and Kragen having been in Heathen together.
Yeah, that’s a great package as well. But, Lee and Gary play together great – Lee’s another one that’s very talented and just picks it up easily. That’s why I feel Gary and Lee are the full package when it comes to guitar playing. Usually, one guy plays lead, one guy plays rhythm, and the guy who plays lead isn’t always the greatest rhythm player, and vice versa. That’s not the case with Exodus – all players are very solid, on all aspects of playing this type of heavy metal.
When I was first approaching this interview, I was going to gear it towards a “wrap-up” of the past year since Blood In, Blood Out was released. However, a quick check of Exodus tour dates has you guys going string well into March of 2016. That really speaks to the demand for you being back in the band and the strength of the album as well. What are your thoughts on that?
I think both elements are definitely a factor to it; I don’t want to say it doesn’t have anything to do with me coming back – sure it does. “The original guy, the guy that sang for them when I was in high school,” that’s the mentality. Our fans are very loyal to that. When bands replace the singer, there’s big dynamic there that you’re used to. Does Arnel Pineda (current Journey vocalist) do a great job in Journey? Sure he does. But, how awesome would it be if Steve Perry came back, though? I look at it that way. When Blaze Bayley was singing in Iron Maiden – that’s probably some of the heaviest stuff Maiden’s done. But, Bruce (Dickinson) is Maiden. Same with Halford – I love “Ripper” Owens, Tim is my boy. But, when Halford came back to Priest, what was it like? It’s the same thing – I hear it night after night. People scream, “Thanks for coming back, Steve!” That makes me feel great. It makes me feel appreciated, and gives me motivation, knowing that we’re still relevant in the business. Thirty years after the first record, we are still relevant.
I think Blood In, Blood Out was the record a lot of Exodus fans were waiting for.
Oh yeah. This is a thrash record. I don’t want to say “back to your roots,” necessarily, but I would have to say this is a very fast album, and very brutal – leads are brutal, rhythms are brutal, lyrics are brutal. You’ve got these 50-year-old men and they’re still pissed off like they’re 21 – that’s our outlook. Now, the live shows are very important to us as well. Everybody sleeps a lot, no one’s hammered until 8 or 9 in the morning on drugs like the old days, where by 10am everybody’s drinking chocolate milk and eating pancakes (laughs). It’s a whole different dynamic. It’s not like we’re good boys, we still drink and we’re still rock ‘n rollers, but it’s not like it was, man. Night after night – sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll; in bold letters and underlined (laughs).
When you did come back to Exodus for this album, did anything surprise you about being back?
I joined this band when I was 22 – I’m 51 now. So, for me, even if you’re not in Exodus, you were in Exodus, you know what I mean? People will see you and go, “There’s Steve from Exodus.” You always have that, even if you’re not an active member – this is my third time around. It wasn’t like I expected it to be a certain way- I know these guys, I know their karma, are know how they are. I know what Gary wants, and I know how they want it to sound. I didn’t really fix much in the studio when I laid it down. They were like, “It sounds pretty good, we’ll send it off to Gary,” because Gary was on tour with Slayer – the beauty of technology, just email the songs. There wasn’t much they wanted done differently.
A lot’s been said over the years, of course, about Bonded By Blood (1985 Exodus debut). I also think that your first record (1987’s Pleasures Of The Flesh) was a classic in its own right – “Brain Dead” is one of my longtime Exodus favorites. What was the feeling back then about what you guys were doing? Was there a sense that this music was important at the time?
No. Because, here you had guys, very sparingly, that have traveled the world. I can go to a city now where I’m like, “Let’s go to this restraint” because I’ve been there a million times. Back then, it was all new to me – I thought every city had 15 thrash bands that were killer. We were just going for what we knew. Everything that came out was just who we were – metal. We were ruthless, we were youth gone wild, we were rebellious. It wasn’t “deliver us from evil,” it was “deliver us to evil,” you know (laughs)? We’re kicking in your face and rape and murder your wife when we come to town, are you kidding me? That’s what the mentality was – if its’ ruthless, do it. To me, I watched thrash metal be invented, and it was invented in the (San Francisco) Bay Area, by the guys who liked the rawness and ferocity of punk, and appreciated the intricacies of the guitar playing, with the vocals of hard rock of the time – Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, UFO, Rainbow, Black Sabbath. It wasn’t really coined “metal” until like 1980-81, when especially Saxon and Iron Maiden, Judas Priest came over – the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. It was like, “Ok, this is called metal now, or heavy metal.” It was fine with me, it sounded great to me, and I loved it.
I was always curious to ask you about another entry in the Exodus catalog – 1992’s Force of Habit. I’ve heard Gary always say it was his least favorite Exodus album. Do you think the album holds up at all?
No. There are songs that I love on that record, but it’s the only Exodus album where there are songs I truly fucking hate. I think what it was, is that we were signed to Capitol Records, and you always hear those stories where they’re going to tell you what to do. After we’d done our initial record for Capitol, Impact Is Imminent,” which was so heavy and in your face, so guitar-driven, they were like, “You guys need to go back and write a record that we can market.” They made us demo every song. I think we spent a quarter of a million dollars recording “Force Of Habit.” It’s one of those things where you’re trying to get all this support and publicity, and you’re writing songs that just aren’t us. People love “When It Rains It Pours;” I hate it. “Climb Before The Fall” – I hate it. It’s not Exodus. “Tempo Of The Damned,” that’s Exodus. Blood In Blood Out, that’s Exodus. Even the records they did with Rob – that’s Exodus.
When we got to “Tempo,” we didn’t even have a record deal. We borrowed money to do it at a friend’s studio who agreed to let us pay him later. Nuclear Blast heard that record and they were like, “Holy shit, we have to have this album, we’d love to have Exodus.” At that point in time, he had all been through the ringer – we had no money, we were broke. I had money because I was working union construction, but I had to look myself in the mirror, and I was this “legendary entity of thrash metal” going “Where did you fuck up, pal (laughs)?” We wrote that album out of the rawness of writing an album – be what you are. I think ever since that record Exodus has exemplified that, especially on the new record. Blood In, Blood Out is my favorite out of all that I’ve done.
Blood In, Blood Out has that wall of sound that just punches you in the face.
Andy Sneap (album producer/engineer). That’s all you gotta say, is fucking Andy Sneap. He’s got Exodus down to a science at this point. He’s a great producer; we have to thank him for everything.
I’ve been looking at some current setlists and I see the band is playing some new songs from the Rob Dukes era. Were you familiar with Rob’s stuff?
No, I wasn’t. But, when I re-joined the band, I wasn’t going to let the history of the band die with me. I sing Paul Baloff songs, so why wouldn’t I sing Rob Dukes songs. I’ve been on my own to learn them, and I don’t have a problem with them. I think I have about eight or nine of his songs right now, on a call – I keep my rolodex up to date. I study them as well. I’ll be in the gym two months before a tour and I’ll start listening to stuff – just to remember it. I don’t use a teleprompter.
I just saw you guys a year ago in Bethlehem, PA, and I can attest to the fact that the band really puts the work in.
We’re still fans of the music. When you’re a fan of the music that you play, you can only put out good stuff, because you know what sounds good to you. If you’re like, “Ah, I play metal because I get paid to, and I listen to something else now,” it’s not going to carry through.
I wanted to touch on Hatriot a bit – the band you began with your sons. They are monster musicians…
They are, they really are. Cody is the singer now, because I’m so busy with Exodus and I really don’t have time to play with them anymore. I had to step down, and he’s been singing. They’ve done about ten gigs now with him singing and he sounds great – just like the old man. I made a demo with him of some songs off the records I did with them, just to see if he had it – and he did. When I’m home, he and I are actually writing lyrics, He’s not really a writer yet – you have to learn that, so I’m teaching him how to do it. That’s where Hatriot’s at.
Did you see Hatriot as a direct precursor to you coming back into Exodus?
I haven’t really thought that. For me, personally, if I hadn’t done Hatriot I wouldn’t have been in tune, vocally, to pull this off for Exodus. I would have been that guy with a beer in his hand, getting up off the couch (mimicking burp) “Yeah, I can do it.” I thought that if I hadn’t returned to Exodus, I’d be doing Hatriot still. I wanted Hatriot to continue, and they decided through themselves that they wanted it to continue without me because they want to keep playing.
I have to ask you, as thrash is synonymous with social and political commentary, and given the current world situation, do you have any harsh opinions that would really fit into new Exodus music?
You can write ten records off of an hour news show! I like to write tongue-in-cheek and parody – Exodus has always done that, and we’ve never been afraid to pull punches. There was some stuff on the Hatriot records about things like pedophile priests. The Hatriot song “Suicide Run” comes from this guy from the Bay Area that just got in his car and started running people down. Anybody what was on the sidewalk or in his way, he’d run you down – the finally caught him and shot him in San Francisco, but wouldn’t you call that a suicide run? I like to write a lot of social things that are still very violent – they’re very intriguing to me, I guess.
It really seems like the fire is still there for you, creatively.
Oh, there’s no end date. It’s not like I’m going to jump in and jump out – we’re doing this shit. It wasn’t a one-record deal – I’m down. We love what we do, and we know what we have here. We know the magnitude of what we are, and we make it work. So far, it’s all moving in an upward direction.
