Back when I was in college, while I was becoming enlightened
\nabout all sorts of music, I was able to expand my knowledge of
\nheavy metal a little bit. I started listening to groups that I had
\nheard of while in high school, but had never really heard or gotten
\ninto. One such band was San Francisco-based Exodus, a band who are
\nprobably better known for the guitarist they lost to another band
\nthan for their music.<\/p>\n
Of the three big California thrash acts of the time – Metallica
\n(who acquired former Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett), Megadeth and
\nExodus – only Exodus never really made it into the big time,
\nthrough no apparent fault of their own. But all three bands came
\nout with debut albums that were heavy on crunch and speed, if not
\non the best production values. This is probably the one limiting
\nfactor for Exodus on their 1985 debut
\nBonded By Blood<\/i>. (Thanks to eBay auctioner Dallas Peters, I
\nwas able to get my hands on the band’s first three albums.)<\/p>\n
After several listens to this tape, I kept wanting to citicize
\nthe singing of lead screamer Paul Baloff – namely, that he doesn’t
\ndo a lot of singing on this album. However, if compared to the
\nother debut albums from the previously mentioned bands, they too
\ndidn’t always sing, so it would be unfair to single Baloff out in
\nthis regard. Still, it sometimes feels like Baloff is just reading
\nfrom the lyric sheet at times, turning tracks like “Bonded By
\nBlood” into rote exercises. But that’s not to say that Baloff is a
\none-dimensional frontman; his work improves as
\nBonded By Blood<\/i> continues.<\/p>\n
The musicianship of the rest of the band – guitarists Gary Holt
\nand Rick Hunolt, bassist Rob McKillop and drummer Tom Hunting – is
\nsolid enough, and the songwriting is just as good as their
\ncontemporaries. Tracks like “A Lesson In Violence,” “Metal Command”
\nand “Deliver Us To Evil” all show the promise that Exodus had, and
\nmake one wonder why they didn’t reach the levels of success that
\nother groups in the same genre did.<\/p>\n
However, the overall sound of
\nBonded By Blood<\/i> is something that could have used more work.
\nI don’t know if the sound was fixed in any remixes, but on my tape
\ncopy, there’s room for improvement. I would have brought the treble
\nlevel up a bit, turned up the volume on McKillop’s bass lines, and
\nremoved the echo effect from Baloff’s vocals. The band’s sound has
\nenough natural bass, so one wouldn’t need to mess with that.<\/p>\n
\nBonded By Blood<\/i> is a decent first attempt that is undermined
\nby a less-than-stellar production effort, but is still an album
\nthat is worth searching out and experiencing. Interestingly enough,
\nBaloff was brought back into the band not too long ago, and the
\nword I’ve heard is that they’ve recaptured the old magic from the
\nearly albums. With metal primed to be the next big music genre
\nagain, it could be a match made in heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7343],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-38853","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-exodus","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38853"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}