Exodus guitarist Gary Holt has claimed the band “crushed” Metallica when they shared the stage at a New Year’s Eve gig in 1986. 

In an interview with Death Angel’s Ted Aguilar for the Alive & Streaming YouTube series (via Blabbermouth), Holt said Metallica “knew” Exodus had performed better than them at the time.

“We crushed Metallica and look, I’m not gloating — we crushed ’em, and they knew it,” he said.

“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! We never played with Metallica again until in the recent decade, and that was, like, festivals somewhere.”

In spite of himself, Holt went on to reveal that he considers Master Of Puppets to be the greatest metal album of all time.

“I love [Metallica] 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,” he continued.

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[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,” he joked.

Check out Gary Holt discussing Exodus performing alongside Metallica:

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