As part of the “Alive & Streaming” YouTube series hosted by Death Angel’s Ted Agular, Gary Holt was one of the discussion guests, where the guitarist reflected on Exodus legendary New Year’s Eve gig in San Francisco along with Metallica, as the two bands rang in the year 1986 along with Megadeth and Metal Church.
Gary said:
“We crushed Metallica. And look, I’m not gloating — we crushed ’em, and they knew it. It was their big homecoming. They just finished recording ‘Master Of Puppets’, and we came out, and we had more amps, we had a bigger riser. We came out looking like the headliners. And we were partying hard after, and James [Hetfield, Metallica frontman] comes up, and we were just getting wasted. [And he said,] ‘That’ll be the last time you guys open for us.’ And it was. [Laughs] We never played with Metallica again until in the recent decade, and that was, like, festivals somewhere.”
About Gary’s relationship with Metallica members:
“I love ’em to death, and I’ll always support ’em and always give them all credit where credit’s due,” he said.
“I consider ‘Master Of Puppets’ the greatest metal album ever made. Nobody’s ever come up with anything close to it. Maybe close would be Judas Priest ‘Stained Class’. But I give ’em all respect.
”Even with ‘St. Anger‘, I always said, yeah, if they made it sound right, it wouldn’t be so bad. [I saw a thing] on YouTube, some guy re-recorded the whole album, but did it with a proper drum sound and guitar sound, and the songs are killer… I never listened to ‘Lulu’, because I don’t want it to sully my opinion of the band I admire so much. [Laughs]”