Exodus guitar legend Gary Holt will celebrate a major personal milestone this summer as he officially reaches five years of sobriety. In a recent interview, the veteran thrash musician opened up about kicking his final vice, navigating rock and roll without alcohol, and the overwhelming support he received from fellow heavy metal icons.
During a sit-down chat with the “Metal Pilgrim” YouTube channel, the conversation shifted toward the topic of maintaining a healthy lifestyle in the demanding heavy music industry. The interviewer pointed out that Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford recently marked his own 40th anniversary of being clean, and asked if pioneering figures like him and Alice Cooper served as personal inspirations.
“Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I mean, I’m honored that like I’m like people like Halford reached out to like encourage me, you know, when I did it, you know, and and other friends in the in the business who’ve like gone through the same struggles, you know, like, you know, were really awesome with their like encouragement and advice, you know,” Holt shared (as transcribed by Metal Stop).
Reflecting on his past lifestyle choices, the guitarist explained that putting down the bottle was actually the final, and perhaps least difficult, step in a long process of eliminating unhealthy habits.
“And I mean, it’s not like I don’t know what Jagermeister tastes like. I’ve been there, done that enough times. I quit doing dr*gs long ago. I quit smoking long ago. Quitting drinking was like, was the easier of all three of those for sure.”
Addressing the old cliché that playing heavy metal requires a constant partying lifestyle, the musician joked about how drastically his backstage routine has changed over the decades. He also admitted that cutting out alcohol led to a brand new craving on the road.
“No, no, it’s like it’s it’s f**king sleep, a sandwich in rock and roll now, you know. Actually, you know, the downside of quitting drinking is you like you eat more desserts, you know, like, you know, there’s a lot of sugar in beer and you don’t get that anymore. So now I eat way too many cookies.”
When the host relayed messages of gratitude from viewers who used the guitarist’s public sobriety journey as motivation to get clean themselves, the musician expressed his sincere appreciation for the positive ripple effect.
“They’re all very welcome. Other people help me. And if I can help someone else, you know, that’s even better.”
Yesterday, March 20, Exodus released their highly anticipated new studio album, Goliath.
Taking complete creative control, Exodus produced the new album themselves. To dial in the crushing sound, the band enlisted Mark Lewis (known for his work with Whitechapel, Nile, and Undeath) to handle mixing and mastering duties. The final result strikes a perfect balance between modern precision and the raw, aggressive intensity that has defined the group since their groundbreaking 1985 debut, Bonded By Blood.
During the same interview with “Metal Pilgrim,” Holt revealed that the band adopted an immersive, old-school approach to recording the new material. By living and working together under one roof, the group was able to constantly write and restructure tracks on the fly.
“Well, this is the biggest collaborative effort the band’s ever done. We went in the studio with maybe four or five songs completed, and we recorded 18,” he explained. “We rented a house, and we live together. And so when we weren’t in the studio, we were still at the house writing music and still working around the clock for two months.”
The legendary musician also opened up about the remarkably dark origins of the record’s title track, “Goliath“. He admitted that the foundation of the song was written decades ago during a particularly bleak period of his life, creating a massive mental block that prevented him from finishing it for years.
“I wrote most of that song in 1999 when I was really f**ked up on dr*gs,” he recalled. “And Tom and I called the song creepy because it sounded creepy as f**k. And we knew it was killer. But once I got clean off dr*gs, every single album, I’ve tried to finish that song since Tempo of the Damned. And I just never could do it.”
He continued: “But I always tried. I never could get even a minute further, just [maybe] stuck. Your mind is stuck in an era when you wrote it and it was a bad time. It was dark times. The song is very dark. It is. And this time I tried again and I f**king did it. I sent Tom a text saying, ‘Check your email.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, my God, you finished creepy’. And but, you know, we’re fearless in doing whatever we want because we write for an audience of five, you know, us. You know, we only, our only goal is to satisfy ourselves musically. And when you do that, if you’re lucky, you’re lucky if someone else likes it, too. I mean, you want people like it, but we have to like it first.”
Furthermore, he confirmed that the new material was specifically crafted around the vocal abilities of Rob Dukes. The group took full advantage of the returning singer’s dynamic range to push the boundaries of their traditional thrash sound.
“The fact that we’re able to pivot and and and make a drastic U-turn on a song if we want to. And then we heard all these additional layers that Rob was capable of bringing vocally. It allowed us to utilize that, you know, we knew Rob could do violent, aggressive f**king modern thrash better than anybody. You know, we knew that, but we learned that there’s so much more he could do. And so we did it, you know, like we just able to like work with that and change everything, you know, and it was just his vocals on the album were just phenomenal.”
Goliath Official Tracklist:
- “3111”
- “Hostis Humani Generis”
- “The Changing Me” (feat. Peter Tägtgren)
- “Promise You This”
- “Goliath” (feat. Katie Jacoby)
- “Beyond The Event Horizon”
- “2 Minutes Hate”
- “Violence Works”
- “Summon Of The God Unknown”
- “The Dirtiest Of The Dozen”
