EXODUS — Bonded by Blood (review)

EXODUS — Bonded by Blood album cover Album · 1985 · Thrash Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Stephen
Putting an image of a siamese twins reflecting an angelic and devilish side on the cover album is definitely a genius idea and Exodus is no doubt a genius pioneer of the Bay Area thrash metal movement and "Bonded By Blood" is the reason why. Cited as one of the influential album, this debut is a groundbreaking effort which the dual Holt/Hunolt trade-off solos became their key strength which later inspired many newer thrash bands. The musical path on this album is aggressive and raw, pretty similar to Metallica and Slayer's early effort and the late Paul Baloff's vocal is sounded hateful and raging, standing comfortably on the terrorizing riffs and blustering drums.

The title track, "Exodus", and "A Lesson In Violence" are the examples of their brutal side while songs like "And Then There Were None", "Piranha", or "No Love" showed a softer side, slower tempo, but still throttled with lethal riffs and dynamic tempo arrangement. The balance between the ultraspeed and midtempo is an admirable attempt that smoothly avoided the album from sounding monotonous, but I found another weakness on their songwriting, particularly on those aggressive tracks, which is too similar with one another making me hard to distinguish them. Another thing is the huge echo effect on the Baloff's vocal is sometimes just too hard to handle. My fave tracks here are "And Then There Were None", "Piranha", "Metal Command" and the longest track of the album, "Deliver Us To Evil", featuring the stunning and greatest Holt/Hunolt duel here.

"Bonded By Blood" is a path opener for Exodus and with a lot of formation shuffling, the band is still going strong as ever, and later on, they re-recorded this whole album and released it as "Let There Be Blood" in 2008 with their modern line-up. Though I don't think it's a necessary attempt, hardcore fans might found it's interesting, but if you're new to the band or confused on which album to pick, I recommend to get this original version.
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