Bonded by Blood is the 1985 debut album by Exodus, the Richmond, California band often credited as the first Bay Area thrash band. Recorded in July 1984 with singer Paul Baloff and released in April 1985, it is the only Exodus studio album with Baloff on it. It is also where anyone new to the band should start.
The Short Version
- Recorded July 1984 at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California; released April 1985 on Torrid/Combat.
- Lineup: Paul Baloff, Gary Holt, Rick Hunolt, Rob McKillop and Tom Hunting.
- Start with the title track, then “A Lesson in Violence” and “Strike of the Beast.”
- As of October 2026, Exodus has no dates announced; its newest album is Goliath (2026).
Who Are Exodus?
Exodus formed in 1979 at a high school in Richmond, California. Guitarists Kirk Hammett and Tim Agnello and drummer Tom Hunting were in the first lineup. Gary Holt started as a roadie, took over a guitar spot and has been in the band since 1981.
Paul Baloff became the singer in 1982, after meeting Hammett at a North Berkeley house party the year before. Then the band lost its founder. In April 1983 Hammett left to replace Dave Mustaine in Metallica, on the recommendation of Exodus manager Mark Whitaker. Our Bay Area thrash guide tells the wider story of that scene.
Holt told Louder’s Dave Everley in 2021 that the band was “mad for a minute” about it. Hammett’s exit “put me in the driver’s seat,” he said, “and suddenly Exodus started going like that,” with a gesture for speeding up. Rick Hunolt took Hammett’s place, and Rob McKillop replaced bassist Jeff Andrews.
How Was Bonded by Blood Made?
Within a week of Hammett leaving, Holt had written “Strike of the Beast” and “No Love.” In March 1984 the band cut a five-song demo, The Turk Street Tapes, and all five songs went on to the album.
The album was recorded in July 1984 at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, north of San Francisco, reportedly in two weeks. Whitaker produced it. Robin Yeager mixed it at Tres Virgos Studios in San Rafael that August, and George Horn mastered it at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley.
One song didn’t make it. “Impaler” was dropped because Hammett had taken its main riff to Metallica, where it became part of “Trapped Under Ice.” Exodus first released it live on Another Lesson in Violence in 1997 and finally recorded it in the studio for Tempo of the Damned in 2004.
Why Was Bonded by Blood Delayed?
The album was finished in summer 1984 but didn’t come out until April 1985. Holt blamed the label in the Louder interview. Torrid Records, he said, was “two guys on a learning curve,” and “someone said the cover artwork was too extreme, and it wouldn’t get in the stores.”
“There was delay after delay, then these bad bootleg copies leaked out ’cos we weren’t so careful with things back then.”
Torrid co-founder Todd Gordon remembered it as a shorter hold-up. In a 2004 statement reported by Blabbermouth, he put it at “maybe six months.” He said the distributor felt “a lot of retailers would not carry the album with the original cover due to the PMRC climate at the time.”
The record had first been titled A Lesson in Violence, with a cover by Tad Hunter that the band disliked. Holt proposed the replacement: conjoined twin infants, one good and one evil. An advance cassette under the old title went around the tape-trading network and built an underground buzz before the LP came out.
On the finished cover the twins sit on a blue sheet under a red Exodus logo, one snarling and gripping a blade, the other pale and reaching upward. Our Bay Area thrash guide shows the original 1985 art.
Rick Hunolt still sounded sore about it in a 2021 Heavy Culture interview: “It took forever and ever and ever and ever for it to come out.”
Bonded by Blood, Song by Song
The album runs nine songs and about 40 minutes. In order: “Bonded by Blood,” “Exodus,” “And Then There Were None,” “A Lesson in Violence,” “Metal Command,” “Piranha,” “No Love,” “Deliver Us to Evil” and “Strike of the Beast.”
Holt wrote the music except where Hunolt co-wrote it, on “A Lesson in Violence” and “Deliver Us to Evil.” Baloff, Hunting and Whitaker wrote or co-wrote the lyrics, and Baloff wrote “Piranha” and “No Love” on his own.
Start with the title track. It opens the album at full speed, and a line from it gave the Bay Area thrash documentary Murder in the Front Row its name. Then play “A Lesson in Violence,” the song that was nearly the album title. Finish with “Strike of the Beast,” one of the two songs Holt wrote the week Hammett left. “Deliver Us to Evil” is the outlier at 7:07, the longest track by nearly two minutes.
Exodus
Richmond, California, 1979. Start with Bonded by Blood (1985) on Spotify, then hear the band now on Goliath (2026), which is also on Bandcamp.
Critics agreed early. Bernard Doe of Metal Forces gave it 10 out of 10 and called it “a classic album in the thrash metal sense.” AllMusic’s Eduardo Rivadavia called it “an album whose influence far exceeds its actual notoriety.” Rolling Stone ranked it No. 45 among the 100 greatest metal albums in 2017, and Metal Hammer put it at No. 6 among the greatest thrash albums in 2021.
Paul Baloff and the 1985 Tour
Baloff was born at Highland Hospital in Oakland on April 25, 1960. He liked to tell people otherwise. Holt told Loudwire in 2025 that Baloff claimed he “had immigrated out of Russia on horseback with his family.” After Baloff died, Holt said, the birth certificate showed he was born in Oakland.
In 1985 Exodus went out with Venom and Slayer on the Ultimate Revenge tour. Decibel later named it the best metal tour of all time, and Holt looked back on it for Decibel’s Greg Pratt in 2017.
“Our behavior was exactly what you could expect from a Paul Baloff-fronted Exodus back in our innocent-looking-but-not-so-innocent prime.”
Soon after the album’s tour, Exodus fired Baloff. “Paul’s strength was never musicality, it was personality,” Holt told Louder. Steve “Zetro” Souza replaced him in 1986, and Pleasures of the Flesh followed on Combat in October 1987. Hunolt said in 2021 that “maybe we made a mistake by firing Paul.”
Baloff went on to front Piranha and sang with Hirax and, for a few months in 1989, Heathen. He rejoined Exodus in 1997, which produced the live album Another Lesson in Violence. Holt told Louder the two “became best friends again.” Baloff had a stroke on January 31, 2002, and died on February 2, at 41.
Let There Be Blood and the 40th Anniversary
In 2008 Exodus re-recorded the whole album as Let There Be Blood, released October 28 on Zaentz Records with Rob Dukes singing. Holt and Hunting were the only players left from 1984. Holt called it a homage to Baloff, not a replacement for a record he called “a classic.”
Not everyone bought it. AllMusic’s Cosmo Lee wrote that “this remake smells like a cash-in,” and Hunolt called the re-recording a waste of time. The one real reason to hear it is the closer, “Hell’s Breath,” a song from a 1983 rehearsal tape with Hammett that had never been officially recorded.
The anniversary did better. Exodus played Bonded by Blood in its entirety at the UC Theatre in Berkeley on April 25, 2025, Baloff’s birthday, and at the House of Blues in Anaheim the next night. Death Angel supported both. Holt called it a “once in a lifetime moment,” and told Loudwire the Berkeley show sold out in three weeks.
The UC Theatre Open
The downtown Berkeley hall where Exodus played Bonded by Blood in full on Baloff’s birthday in 2025, a few miles from Richmond, where the band formed. It still books thrash and other heavy bands.
Photo: Alex Valenzuela via Google
Exodus Band Members Today
Exodus is Rob Dukes on vocals, Gary Holt and Lee Altus on guitars, Jack Gibson on bass and Tom Hunting on drums. Dukes sang from 2005 to 2014 and returned in 2025 after Souza’s departure that January. Hunting, back since 2007, is the only remaining original member.
Goliath, the band’s first album for Napalm Records, came out on March 20, 2026. It reached No. 9 in Germany and No. 16 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart.
Bonded by Blood in Texas
Holt filled in for Jeff Hanneman in Slayer in 2011 and replaced him for good after Hanneman died in 2013, while staying in Exodus. On November 18, 2014, he pulled a double shift at ACL Live in Austin. The Austin Chronicle’s review named him as “Gary Holt of openers Exodus,” the band on before Suicidal Tendencies and Slayer.
Texas bands had the record in their blood long before that. Rotting Corpse’s live tape from the Cameo Theatre in San Antonio, July 18, 1986, opens with “Strike of the Beast,” followed by the band’s own “Evil Slaughter.” The full set list is on our media page, and the night is on the shows page.
The Cameo Theatre No longer a venue
A 1940 Art Deco movie house near St. Paul Square that reopened as a live room in 1980 and hosted the July 1986 bill that people who were there still call the band’s best show. A church owner renovated the building in 2016, and Google now lists the Cameo Center as permanently closed. Our venues page has the 1986 flyer and the full story.
The building at 1123 E. Commerce St. Photo: Danny Cady via Google
The band’s first demo, cut at Pantego Sound in spring 1986, drew the comparison directly. One European fanzine editor panned it as an Exodus rip, as the history page recounts. Jim Mulqueen’s vocal on it has been compared to Baloff’s, and the discography lists what’s on it.
Where to Hear It Live
As of October 2026, Exodus has no shows announced on its tour page or Songkick. Watch both for the next run.
The nearest thing in Texas this fall is Bay Area thrash of the same vintage. On Tuesday, November 17, 2026, Forbidden and Heathen, a band Baloff once sang with, play Come and Take It Live in Austin with Void. It’s all ages, show at 6 p.m., $35.64 in advance and $40.28 on the day. Tickets.
Forbidden
Bay Area, formed in 1985 as Forbidden Evil. Start with Forbidden Evil (Combat, 1988), then the new self-titled album out October 23, 2026.
Heathen
San Francisco, formed in 1984. Start with Breaking the Silence (1987). Baloff fronted them for a few months in 1989.
Come and Take It Live Open
An East Riverside room in Austin, and the closest place to catch first-wave Bay Area thrash in Texas this fall. Forbidden and Heathen play an all-ages show here on November 17, 2026.
Photo: Jimmy Mollet via Google
Further out, White Oak Music Hall in Houston lists a three-day pass for Hell’s Heroes IX starting March 18, 2027. Our Hell’s Heroes article covers the festival. Rotting Corpse dates are on our shows page.
Start with “Evil Slaughter” (1986)
It’s on the spring 1986 demo, and on the Cameo tape it comes straight after “Strike of the Beast,” so you can hear what a North Texas band took from Exodus that summer (lyrics on the lyrics page).
Sources
- Wikipedia: Bonded by Blood
- Wikipedia: Exodus (American band)
- Wikipedia: Paul Baloff
- Wikipedia: Let There Be Blood
- Wikipedia: Goliath (Exodus album)
- Wikipedia: Murder in the Front Row
- Louder: Dave Everley, Gary Holt interview (2021)
- Blabbermouth: Bonded by Blood 20th Anniversary Reissue Details Revealed (2004)
- Blabbermouth: Exodus Completes Work on Bonded by Blood Re-Recording (2008)
- Blabbermouth: Rick Hunolt, “Maybe We Made a Mistake by Firing Paul Baloff” (2021)
- Blabbermouth: Rick Hunolt, 2008 Re-Recording of Bonded by Blood Was “An Absolute Waste of Time” (2021)
- Blabbermouth: Exodus Frontman to Be Taken Off Life Support After Suffering Massive Stroke (2002)
- Louder / Metal Hammer: The 50 Best Thrash Albums Ever (2021)
- Austin Chronicle: Slayer at ACL Live review (2014)
- Decibel: Greg Pratt, That Tour Was Awesome: Ultimate Revenge Tour, Venom/Slayer/Exodus (2017)
- Loudwire: Gary Holt Reveals the Biggest Myth He Learned About Paul Baloff (2025)
- Loudwire: Chuck Armstrong, Gary Holt interview (2024)
- Consequence: Spencer Kaufman, Exodus Bonded by Blood 40th Anniversary Shows (2025)
- Exodus: official tour dates page
- Songkick: Exodus tour dates
- Come and Take It Productions: Forbidden, Heathen and Void, November 17, 2026
- Songkick: Forbidden tour dates
- Wikipedia: Forbidden (band)
- Wikipedia: Heathen (band)
- Cinema Treasures: Cameo Center, San Antonio
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation: Cameo Theater Renovations (2016)
- White Oak Music Hall: event listings
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Exodus release Bonded by Blood?
Bonded by Blood came out in April 1985 on Torrid Records through Combat. Exodus recorded it in July 1984 at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California, with producer Mark Whitaker.
Why was Bonded by Blood delayed?
The distributor worried that retailers would not stock the album with its original cover. Torrid co-founder Todd Gordon put the hold-up at about six months. The band changed the artwork and the title, which was originally A Lesson in Violence.
Who sang on Bonded by Blood?
Paul Baloff, the band’s singer from 1982. It is the only Exodus studio album he sang on. He was fired after the 1985 tour, rejoined in 1997 and died on February 2, 2002, after a stroke on January 31.
Who played on Bonded by Blood?
Paul Baloff on vocals, Gary Holt and Rick Hunolt on guitars, Rob McKillop on bass and Tom Hunting on drums.
What is Let There Be Blood?
Exodus’s 2008 re-recording of Bonded by Blood, with Rob Dukes singing. Holt and Hunting are the only players from the original. Holt called it a homage to Baloff.
