Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. (47 page)

And, revealed the statement, Hanneman wasn’t just hurt. He had been knocked out of commission.

But Slayer had major concerts on the books in coming weeks. The clock was ticking.

The press release revealed news that was even more shocking.

The shows would go on without Hanneman.

“In light of this situation and Slayer’s upcoming participation in the Australian Soundwave Festival tour that is set to kick off on February 26,” the statement read, “the band has made the tough decision to play the dates without Hanneman, and will bring on a guest guitarist to fill in for him until such time as he has fully recuperated and is ready to return to the lineup. The band will announce details about the guest guitarist shortly.”
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Without citing signed contracts, the band spun the altered lineup as a preferable alternative to
no
shows.

"After everything that happened last year," King said in the statement, "we all agreed that we just can't let our fans down again. Jeff is totally on board with this decision, so we will tour as planned. At this point, we can't pinpoint exactly what day he'll be back, but he'll be back as soon as he possibly can. And we can't wait for Jeff to get better and get his ass back on the road."
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Blabbermouth deftly picked up on recent a Kerry King interview with Australian magazine 
Loud
:

“The front three people [in Slayer’s front line] never changed, and I think that's important,” King said to Cameron Edney. “I don't mean that as a shot on Megadeth, but at the end of the day, Megadeth is Dave Mustaine, and that's it. It's whoever Dave decides to play with on this record. Could you imagine watching Slayer without me, Jeff or Tom? It just couldn't happen! That's something to be said there, 'cause we're all irreplaceable.”
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In the
Loud
interview, King continued taking the hard line about band commitments vs. family developments, as he had since the ‘80s: “The last few years I've noticed people in bands are almost interchangeable. I've seen some of my friends stay home because their wives were going to have a baby and they'd have somebody replace them when they play live, and I think… How can you fuckin' do that?"
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King found a way.

It took some discussion and more adjustment before Slayer committed to finding a fill-in player. At first, Araya, King, and Lombardo did not unanimously agree that the band should proceed.

“For me, it was really difficult to make the decision to go on without Jeff,” Araya told Kitts. “They started naming names to take his place, and I’m like, ‘How can you guys even think about this? We can’t do this without Jeff.’”
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But King wasn’t quitting. Pulling the plug on the band wouldn’t help Hanneman. After some debate, Slayer collectively decided to continue. And then they decided whom to continue with.

Once again, Team Slayer drafted an inspired choice for a replacement player.

The band didn’t formally announce Hanneman’s temporary replacement. But days after they announced plans to find a fill-in, word was out.

After 30 years with the same three-man frontline, Slayer would play its first shows with another guitarist: Gary Holt, of renown for his long tenure in Exodus, one of King’s favorite thrash bands.

Holt’s track record was less distinguished than Hanneman’s, but even longer.

As he explained it to website Metal Rules, Lombardo had planted the seeds for Holt to join the outfit, a year and a half before they needed him.

Sunday, June 20, 2010, Slayer were in Clisson, France, for a headlining set at the annual Hellfest. Lombardo found himself hanging with King backstage. Word came that, before Slayer took the stage, Exodus was warming it up by playing the classic thrash album
Bonded by Blood
in its entirety.

The Slayer team hadn’t seen the Slay Team guys for awhile. They sidled up to the stage, and Exodus delivered a reviving metal injection.

“Wow,” Lombardo recalled. “Now I remember why I liked them so much, when I was young.”

Exodus were old peers and friends. They had partied together at the height of Slayer’s bad habits. And the two bands had even exchanged shout-outs in their early album credits.

Lombardo remembered the days fondly. As Exodus shredded through
Bonded
, Holt looked like he still had his chops.

“Look at that guy,” said Lombardo. “That guy’s an amazing guitar player.”

A year and a half later, when Slayer needed a guitarist, Holt was the first name — and, eventually, the last — that came to mind. Then and now, he was bona fide.

“I mean he was there, from the beginning,” Lombardo told Metal Rules. “He knows that style…. He’s part of the family. He’s from that time, and we have the common past.”

The band reached a consensus and penciled in Holt as its no. 1 draft pick. King reached out to Holt, catching him shortly after Exodus returned home from the 70,000 Tons of Metal concert cruise
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.

Exodus was enjoying a hard-won career renaissance. But King’s offer of steady gigs — and paychecks — on dry land was too good to refuse. Holt was in.

At Holt’s first rehearsal with Slayer, the prospect didn’t disappoint.

Lombardo told Metal Rules his audition was “Fantastic.  He’s very professional.  He did his homework.  He stepped up, big time.… He’s a fantastic musician.”
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Metallica had long ago poached another Exodus guitarist, Kirk Hammett.

“I think Gary Holt – I think Metallica took the wrong dude,” King told me 2007. “Gary Holt’s bad-ass. And that’s not to say Kirk Hammett isn’t. Gary is the one that, historically, I just like Gary’s playing.”

Now, as always, Slayer wouldn’t repeat Metallica’s mistake.

Holt wasn’t a big name outside the metal world. But he was a ranked shredder and recognized guitar hero.

In 2004 — when the Exodus brand was far from its premium worth —
Guitar World
awarded a spot on its Greatest Metal Guitarists of All Time list to the classic Exodus team of Holt and Rick Hunolt, ranking them as its no. 72 shredders.

(King and Hanneman, together, took the no. 10 spot. Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield placed at no. 2, behind Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi.)
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Achieving that recognition had taken Holt longer than most.

Launched in 1980, Exodus prefigured the Big Four bands. But the group didn’t release an album until after the Big Four made their debuts. Holt thought his band could hold its own against the bigger groups.

“I think it should be the Big Five with Exodus,” Holt told Metal Asylum’s Rich Catino in 2010. “Because we were there at the start of thrash metal with Metallica in the real early '80s.”
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Many a discriminating metalhead and musician correctly consider Exodus a great band. But the group never achieved the largest levels of commercial success: In thrash’s golden age, Exodus had major-label deal, but never went gold or platinum, and never headlined a tour in full-size arenas. (1989’s
Fabulous Disaster
tour topped out in venues with a capacity around 10,000, like Tampa’s Sun Dome — but more frequently played 5,000 seaters like Oakland’s Kaiser Convention Center and Atlanta’s Civic Center.)

Exodus would hit other heights, but the band peaked early, with
Bonded by Blood
, which remains Holt’s favorite selection from his extensive catalog. After that 1985 classic, the irreplaceable, volatile Paul Baloff was replaced with original Testament/Legacy singer Steve “Zetro” Souza. The group got some airplay on
Headbanger’s Ball
with 1989’s “Toxic Waltz,” an ode to moshing that felt like a novelty record.

From the get-go, Exodus had the strongest antisocial streak of the varsity thrash bands. Slayer and Metallica sang about fantastic murder and diabolical rituals, but Exodus specialized in realistic interpersonal mayhem (“Bonded by Blood”). The group wrote more evolved lyrics in later years (like the political “Children of a Worthless God”).

Following two major-label albums, Exodus split in 1993, after the grunge revolution relegated metal to the scrap heap. Holt and Souza worked at a roofing company, and other members took lucrative union labor jobs.

With Holt at the helm, Exodus reunited, reshuffled, and re-broke up. The group reformed in 2001, and the band gradually ramped up its activity until it was a regular presence touring and recording.

Exodus has hosted 19 members since its first album. As of June 21 2013, it had 3,895 references on Blabbermouth. Despite an eight-year hiatus, the band managed to record nine original studio albums (as of
Exhibit B
) — tied with Metallica, with just one less than Slayer and Testament, and five fewer than Megadeth.

In 2005, the group attained the dubious distinction of having just one member left from its debut album: Holt. So he knows what it’s like to wrestle with the issue of replacement players.

"Some people criticized it still being [called] Exodus, but I didn't go into that album planning on not having everybody there," Holt told me in 2008. “I think [it would have been different] if we split up and, 10 years later, I came back with four different guys and called it Exodus. I went into rehearsals as Exodus, and then all this shit happened. I'm not going to let the band die over it."
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A career after Exodus guitarists’ paths diverged, Holt wasn’t bitter about Kirk Hammett’s success in Metallica.
Master of Puppets
remained his favorite metal album
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. And Holt was content with his own body of work. With Holt as its captain, Exodus slugged its way through a respectable second career. Witness a decade’s worth of reviews at Blabbermouth:

Borivoj Krgin scored 2003’s
Tempo of the Damned
an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, with user reviews averaging 8.7
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.  Released in 2005,
Shovel Headed Kill Machine
received an 8.5, with user reviews averaging 8.0
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. Released in 2007,
The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A
received an 8, with users rating it 8.6
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. And
Exhibit B: The Human Condition
, released in 2010, rated a 7.5 from the site, with users scoring it 8.5
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.

Exhibit A
, the cream of the crop, was released in October 2007. Having covered the thrash renaissance exhaustively,
Decibel
didn’t rank
Exhibit A
among the year’s better albums — but still found it to be OK: The disc scored a 7 on a 10 scale
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. In a later feature, though, the magazine’s Adam Tepedelen gave the band’s 21
^st
century body of work a thumbs-up: “…we would fervently argue that said material kicked some serious fucking ass.”
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Led by Holt, 21
^st
-century Exodus has been more prolific than Slayer — four albums in seven years — and fans tend to like the band’s records more than Slayer fans do.

Through the years, Holt is the only member of Exodus to play on every album — though, eventually, he wouldn’t be able to say he had played every concert. He also produced a record by thrash revivalists Warbringer and authored an instructional video,
A Lesson in Guitar Violence
.

But Exodus remained his calling. He’s even more essential to his band than Hanneman was: Holt has contributed to every original Exodus song. He wrote nine of 10
The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A
songs solo, penning the lyrics and music. And he wrote 10 of 12 solo on
Exhibit B: The Human Condition
by himself. Then Slayer called.

Since Holt joined Slayer, he has been understandably mum on his position in the organization. When he joined, the group issued a release that conveyed his reaction. He didn’t address the decision to step away from Exodus; he just said the gig was a good opportunity.

“How can I put into words how excited I am to have been asked to play with Slayer? Hard to describe, for sure. Legendary band, check. Old friends since the birth of thrash metal. Check. Get to play 'Angel Of Death' live, priceless! I'll do my best to live up to the standard they've set for so many years, while we all wish Jeff a speedy return to health and his rightful place in Slayer."
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As the face of Exodus, Holt had the respect of his peers and fans, but high regard didn’t pay the bills. If your tastes ran to the old school, 2007’s
The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A
was one of the better albums from the thrash revival. But the band was still moshing its way through the club circuit, with tourmates half Holt’s age.

"All of the [big] bands from our era have money," he said in 2008. "They have houses. They have a level of comfort I don't know. So I'm constantly pushing myself to go back and reclaim what I truly believe is mine. And that's the crown at the top of the heap."
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