Exodus Frontman Explains Why Band Didn’t Get as Successful as ‘Big 4’ of Thrash Metal, Looks Back on Metallica’s First Music Video

“Everybody who was listening and had their eye up on you had forgot about you already.”

In a recent video on his YouTube channel, Exodus frontman Steve Souza brought up the band’s former guitarist Rick Hunolt for a chat. Talking about why Exodus never managed to reach the commercial success of Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer — the “Big Four” of thrash metal — he offered (via Blabbermouth):

“Between the release of [debut album] ‘Bonded By Blood’, which was May of ’85, and the release of ‘Pleasures Of The Flesh’, which was October 8, 1987, two and a half years went by. At those days, [any band which went] two and a half years without doing an album [was] killed.

“Everybody who was listening and had their eye up on you had forgot about you already. Although I believe ‘Pleasures’ was a very highly anticipated record because of what ‘Bonded’ had done.

“People were really, like, ‘Woah. What are they gonna put out next once they get a new singer?’ But [Torrid Records, band’s original record label] didn’t wanna let the band go, and nobody else wanted to take a chance on buying the band except for Combat, so Combat had to pay Torrid for us to go there, so it took a long time to get that to go before the record was [released].

“There was a lot of things to it, but I think as a whole, being my first record, I was very proud of that album — very much so…
“When ‘Pleasures’ came out, we did a couple of high-profile tours. Thrash metal was now still very, very new. We’re talking 1987, early ’88. We did that with Anthrax, and then we went out with M.O.D. headlining, and they were all very, very successful.

“And I believe people were starting to get this, ‘Oh, what’s this thrash thing? Mötley who?’ But this rode its way. Even ‘Fabulous Disaster’ we had not done a video for yet. And the very first video that any heavy band did was Metallica for ‘One’ off of ‘…And Justice For All’.

“So that was the only first band that was heavy. And that wasn’t until ’88. So we were doing something relatively new. And I think going from ‘Pleasures’ and writing ‘Fabulous’ really solidified it… We put out ‘Pleasures’ in ’87, October 8th, and we did a full world tour, and then we came back, and ‘Fabulous’ came out in January of ’89. So not even 15 months [later], really.”