Older than Shit, Heavier than Time

Seen at the Stork Club, Oakland, CA

Today marks five years since Paul Baloff's passing. I'm a slow learner, and it took me a while to appreciate his contribution to metal. I grew up with Zetro-era Exodus, and shamefully didn't hear Bonded by Blood until long after the fact. When I did, I was initially underwhelmed. The riffs were cool, but the album was drenched in '80s reverb, and Baloff's vocals seemed so goofy and histrionic.

Recently, though, I put on the album, and I got it. One thing in its favor is the fact it's not too fast. It has the requisite double-time thrash, but it also has plenty of midpaced parts. Proper headbanging requires a certain speed, not too slow and not too fast, and Bonded absolutely nails it. With the guitars chugging away like locomotives, Baloff's voice was the perfect spark to put songs over the top.

As for the origin of the title -

"I think one of the best memories I have of Paul was one night when we were sitting around in his car drinking vodka, straight from the bottle, listening to Venom and Mercyful Fate, and we were drunk and we were just saying how much we loved each other and how great it was to finally have a band playing the type of music we wanted to play. And we all of a sudden decided that we should just immortalize it, and so someone whipped out a razor blade, and we started cutting up our hands...I cut my hand, Gary Holt cut his hand, Tom Hunting cut his hand, and Paul Baloff cut his hand, and we all rubbed the blood together and we were all bonded by blood."

- Kirk Hammett

Here's a great live clip of "Bonded by Blood" from Another Lesson in Violence. As he said at the show, "This one's older than shit, heavier than time." RIP Paul Baloff (April 25, 1960 - February 2, 2002).