The last two Exodus albums took the Bay Area thrash legends into firmly progressive and contemporary territory, with a bewildering number of riffs piled up like bones on a funeral pyre. While those records confirmed the band’s ability to move with the times, it’s hard to deny that Blood In, Blood Out’s wholesale return to the vicious thrash simplicity that Exodus helped to define 30 years ago is a joyous and welcome development. The return of vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza – absent since 2004’s Tempo of the Damned – certainly helps too, his rasping cackle adding bug-eyed intensity to the hostile refrains of Black 13, Collateral Damage and the gleefully gruesome Body Harvest. What really shines through here, however, is just how much feral energy these haggard veterans still have. Guitarist Gary Holt seems incapable of writing a dud riff or a misfiring chorus, and so while this is an album aimed squarely at diehard metalheads, it’s also an imperious display of succinct songwriting that bulges with moments of refined catchiness … albeit of the variety that also seeks to shatter your jaw.
