“It’s just fucking huge and gargantuan and colossal,” Exodus guitarist and co-lyricist Gary Holt tells Apple Music of how the Bay Area thrash veterans’ 12th album earned its title. You can hear that power from the jump. Opener “3111” kicks Goliath off with booming, ominous chords from Holt and fellow guitarist Lee Altus, who saw off prime thrash riffs throughout the album. Meanwhile, drummer Tom Hunting and bassist Jack Gibson deliver death-defying rhythmic turnabouts and monster low end. The man at the mic is Rob Dukes, who returns to Exodus after an 11-year absence. “We knew we were going to go back to Rob,” Holt says, referring to the 2025 departure of vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza, his third since originally leaving the band in 1993. “We don’t like change, which seems odd coming from a band that has created a couple changes. We would joke about finding some 25-year-old with 12-pack abs instead of a 12-pack of beer to jump off the drum riser, but Rob’s been one of our closest friends all along, and having him back has been a blessing.” According to Holt, Goliath is the band’s most collaborative album to date. “We just set about writing the best songs we could, and we weren’t afraid to try anything,” Holt says. “Lee wrote almost half the music on this album. He was so motivated that we’ve got 80 percent of the next album done as well.” Below, Holt talks about each song on Goliath. “3111” “The song is all about narco wars. The number is how many people were murdered in Juarez in 2010. It was Rob’s concept, and then him and I wrote the lyrics. The original chorus was all in Spanish, but now it’s just one line. I did a ton of research, and that’s where the title came from. And then everything snowballed into the video, which got banned from YouTube because it’s all real footage. The hypocrisy of it is that all that horrific footage came from YouTube and Google.” “Hostis Humani Generis” “That’s Latin for ‘enemy of all mankind.’ I wrote it from the viewpoint of a preacher who’s preaching a sermon of hate, because that’s what we’re living in right now. That was the last song written during the recording session. I just felt we needed one more furious song, and this one’s furious as fuck.” “The Changing Me” (feat. Peter Tägtgren) “Lee and Rob wrote this one, and it’s about dementia. Lee knew what he wanted in the chorus, and we’ve collaborated with Peter before. And then Peter and Rob are having like a screaming match at the screaming Olympics at the end. Tom Hunting added some clean vocals to the chorus as well, and it’s just one of my favorite songs on the record.” “Promise You This” “To me, this song is like if Blackfoot and Discharge had an illegitimate child. It’s got that Southern rock swagger but also this punk feel and a super anthemic chorus, plus my favorite solo on the album. Lyrically, I’m reflecting on some of the lessons my father tried to teach me. He was a really wise man, and he always had these sayings that I reflect on now, but maybe I didn’t listen that much when I was young.” “Goliath” (feat. Katie Jacoby) “Katie Jacoby is another close friend of ours. She’s like a little sister to us. She jammed with us on violin when she was like 14 years old. She was a prodigy back then, and she’s currently the violinist for The Who and Roger Daltrey’s solo tours. When I laid down that harmony section in the middle, I felt like it needed to be orchestrated.” “Beyond the Event Horizon” “That’s another Rob Dukes/Lee Altus track, and it’s about the black hole TON 618 swallowing us up. Maybe we deserve it, the way the world’s going right now. We should just have a big reset, just swallow up the Earth and shit it out anew. The event horizon is the scientific term for when you’re past the point of escape from the black hole’s pull. If you’re beyond the event horizon, there’s no turning back. You’re gone.” “2 Minutes Hate” “It’s about George Orwell’s 1984, and it’s another Rob/Lee song. When Rob wrote it, I was like, ‘Shouldn't it be “2 Minutes’ Hate” or “2 Minutes of Hate” or whatever? It sounds like incorrect English.’ But that’s a term from the book. I haven’t read it since high school, and probably early high school when I actually went. But it’s a great song. Super driving and killer.” “Violence Works” “That’s one I wrote, and lyrically it’s one of my favorites. I love a play on words more than anything. And then musically it’s just funky. When people hear the first 10 seconds of the song, they’re gonna think we lost our minds. But it’s also got a crushing riff and one of Rob’s best performances on the hook.” “Summon of the God Unknown” “This is about John Allen Chau, the missionary who went to North Sentinel Island to spread the word of God and was killed by the natives. It’s illegal to approach the island because these people are the last uncontacted tribe that we know of on the planet. Airspace is controlled over it. The first time he was dropped onshore, he fled for his life. He tried again a day or two later, and the last sighting of him was his corpse being dragged along the sand. It’s a sad story, but it’s also about the narcissism of feeling like everybody has to believe what you believe.” “The Dirtiest of the Dozen” “It’s the story of our band, from being a bunch of kids from the ghetto stealing equipment, which we did, to death [of former lead singer Paul Baloff] to now. Tom worked really hard on that, and the only thing we asked him to change was a line that went, ‘The gang of super heavy destruction absolute.’ We said, ‘You’ve got to change “destruction” to “dysfunction,” because we’ve had our fucking huge share, and let’s embrace it.’ The song starts off jubilant, but then when it ends, it’s really sad and morose.”