In a new interview with The Dan Chan Show, EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt opened up about the recent departure of singer Steve “Zetro” Souza and the decision to bring Rob Dukes back. Asked how it is having Dukes in the band again, Gary said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It’s totally awesome. We’re laughing all day long. It’s good times. And Rob’s one of my favorite singers in the world. And when people hear what he does on the [upcoming EXODUS] album, they’re gonna shit their pants. [There’s] so much variety to his voice now. And he always has had the gift to keep us laughing. He is funny as fuck, his sense of humor. And we’re thrilled.”We wish Zetro well,” Gary continued. “Every band relationship is like a marriage, and sometimes marriages end and they don’t always end in a acrimonious divorce. Sometimes they end on some fairly good terms. And just considering the past history, we’ve all grown up and become much more mature now. I’m 61 years old. I don’t wanna do this anymore unless everybody’s on the same page.”Holt also elaborated on his recent revelation that he and his EXODUS bandmates were recording two albums’ worth of new material for future release. He said: “[We are tracking] 19 songs. And they’re all killer. I mean, in the past, you read about this band, ‘Yeah, we went in the studio. We had 39 songs,’ and I’m, like, ‘How do you have 39 great songs?’ To me, you usually have maybe 20 and some ideas. But I realized that it is possible — at least 19. ‘Cause Lee [Altus, EXODUS guitarist] was really active as a songwriter on this album, and he contributed, like, six songs — something like that. And we had 19 songs, and they’re all awesome. The hard part is figuring out what to put on the record. And so we figured we can tour for the next album and then take a break in between releases and have it already in the can.”Asked if EXODUS is currently “in post-production” for the two new albums, Holt said: “We still have some vocals left to do. We ran out a little bit of time. Not a whole lot. A couple of songs. A couple of things we have left to do are on songs that we know we’re gonna put on the next album, so we could sit on that. And I’m sure by the time we get to thinking about releasing the second one, I’ll have something new I wanna record. And Lee will have something. We’re, like, ‘Damn, well, I got something way sicker.’ But then we go in the studio for two weeks and not two months.”Regarding how he and his EXODUS bandmates will go about choosing which songs to put on the first album and which to save for the follow-up, Gary said: “We’re still working on it. [Laughs] We’re letting vocals dictate a lot of it, and there’s a couple of songs that still don’t have vocals on it. And sometimes, once you put the vocal melody on it, a song comes alive. So some of ’em we know we want on this record. Like I wrote two epics, longer ones, so we’ll put one on this and one on the other. I fluctuate back and forth over which one all the time. But, yeah, everybody else wants to put this one. So I said, ‘Cool. We’ll save the other.’ There’s a big variety of music on it. Some of the shit’s so lightning fast and some of it’s almost doom — like, slow, slow, slow, [but] über fucking sinister.”Holt also talked about his creative process, explaining: “I’m always writing a riff when I have a guitar, but as far as songwriting, I keep telling myself I wanna do more of it all the time, not just when I have to. ‘Cause you get 61 years old and you start thinking about stupid shit, like, if anything happens to me, I’d like to be like Prince and have a vault of material to release. His final works. So you literally start thinking about shit like that.”I get in the writing mode,” he continued. “When we record, we leave the drums set up the entire time. We don’t go in and do drums and then they go away. We’re prepared to record a new song at any day. And the fastest fucking one on the album — it’s just ridiculous — I wrote it in the last two weeks of recording. I sent it to Tom [Hunting, EXODUS drummer], and he had a panic attack when he heard how fast it was. And then when we [recorded it], he realized it was fine. [Laughs]”Souza joined EXODUS in 1986 after previously fronting the band LEGACY (which later became TESTAMENT). He remained in the band until their hiatus in 1993, but rejoined them for two years from 2002 to 2004. Dukes had joined EXODUS in 2005 (following Souza’s departure) and remained until 2014, when Souza rejoined.Dukes previously joined EXODUS in January 2005 and appeared on four of the band’s studio albums — “Shovel Headed Kill Machine” (2005),”The Atrocity Exhibition… Exhibit A” (2007),”Let There Be Blood” (2008, a re-recording of EXODUS’s classic 1985 LP, “Bonded By Blood”) and “Exhibit B: The Human Condition” (2010).EXODUS played its first concert with Dukes in nearly 11 years on April 5 at the Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Philly at the Fillmore in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Although EXODUS rarely gets mentioned alongside the so-called “Big Four” of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — the aforementioned “Bonded By Blood” LP inspired the likes of TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL, VIO-LENCE and many others to launch their careers and is considered one of the most influential thrash metal albums of all time.[embedded content]