In a recent interview conducted by Germany‘s Into The Pit, Vinnie LaBella, the original guitarist of EXHORDER who departed from the band four years ago, shared his thoughts on EXHORDER‘s choice to continue as a quartet. The band’s decision entails singer Kyle Thomas assuming the role of second guitarist and contributing significantly to the group’s musical compositions.
“Well, God bless his heart. He’s giving it the old college try,” LaBella said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “But I can tell you this: I did write… Some people will tell you and try and give you a different story about what happened, but you generally can’t go by what’s written on the publishing liner notes on these songs, ’cause back in the day our mentality was everybody split everything equally. So no matter who wrote what, [former EXHORDER drummer] Chris Nail got publishing, Jay [Ceravolo, former EXHORDER guitarist] — everybody got publishing equally, whether you wrote on the song or not.
He continued: “I can I can tell you this: 95 percent of what you hear from [2019’s] Mourn The Southern Skies [album] back to [EXHORDER‘s debut LP, 1987’s] Slaughter [In The Vatican] was written by me. And I can’t prove that now, because in print… Let me put it to you this way: Jay Ceravolo, my second guitar player back in the day, he didn’t join the band until 1988. All of the songs for Slaughter In The Vatican were written before 1987. So, how the f**k does Jay Ceravolo get publishing writing credits for songs that he wasn’t even around for when they were being written? Yes. So, that’s what I’m saying. So, I’m not lying when I tell you…
“That band can’t never sound the way it used to without myself or someone like a Jay — even though Jay didn’t write a whole lot of stuff; even on [1992’s] The Law, he didn’t put in a lot of work there. It’s gonna be tough for them to recreate that sound; there’s no way they can.”
Vinnie also discussed the musical trajectory of EXHORDER‘s upcoming album, Defectum Omnium, marking the band’s first release without his songwriting contributions. The album is set to be released on March 8 through Nuclear Blast.
He said: “The only critique I can say, man, and I’ve gotta be careful here because… But I’ll say this: okay, if you ever wanted to know what AGNOSTIC FRONT sounded like with blast beats and Phil Anselmo singing, you’ve got it. There we go. That’s the new EXHORDER for you. I don’t hear any f**king elements of anything we did when we were younger, and the reason why is because Kyle was never involved in that piece of the process.
“I would write a f**king song and Andy [Villaferra], my former bass player, and Jay, or David Main, my former guitar player from back in the day, might throw a riff or something in at me and f**king we’d piece it together. Kyle would sit there until it was time for him to sing. I mean, I would map this thing out and f**king we’d lay it all out and f**king he would come in and sing. A lot of places I would tell him, ‘Hey, we’re gonna put vocals here, but we’re not gonna sing here,’ and we would kind of produce him until he came into his own. And early on, I even had to write a lot of the lyrics. I mean, I wrote f**king three or four songs lyrically before he was even in the band, before Kyle was [in EXHORDER]. So he has no clue.
“Look, you can’t take a few f**king guitar lessons for a year or two and decide you’re gonna go out and f**king play like Vinnie LaBella and write like Vinnie LaBella — you’re just not,” he added. “Any more than I’m gonna go out and have f**king singing lessons for a year and think I’m gonna go out and sing like Kyle f**king Thomas on my band’s record. So that’s kind of where we’re at.
“And look, it’s smart for them to change the style of it, but it’s not smart to keep the name. I don’t think the band, what they’ve released, is horrible, but it’s not f**king EXHORDER.”
LaBella proceeded to criticize the musical abilities of his former bandmates, expressing his belief that the current EXHORDER lineup fails to do justice to the group’s classic material.
“I’m gonna say this because it needs to be said. They really don’t play that most of the old stuff correctly. They didn’t while I was in the band. [EXHORDER bassist Jason] VieBrooks and [former EXHORDER guitarist Marzi] Montazeri had their own way of doing things and not my way of doing things, which we put them on stage unprepared sometimes — a lot of the time. And a lot of the time they were just playing wrong notes. I mean, look, if you really go back and look at some of those YouTube videos from some of those festival runs and shows that we did and you really f**king listen to what’s going on, it’s s**t. And they’re still not playing the songs right.
“There’s nobody there to show ’em. I mean, yeah, you might get through ‘Legions Of Death’ or f**king ‘Homicide’ or some of the easier stuff pretty f**king steadily. But I can tell you right now that band is not playing ‘The Tragic Period’ correctly. There’s a reason why we didn’t play anything off The f**king Law in those sets. We played the easiest stuff that we could off of that album because that’s all they could f**king handle. There’s no ‘I Am The Cross’, there’s no ‘Un-Born Again’. There’s no f**king ‘The Truth’. All of the hard s**t was an impossibility to f**king play. And look, I was kind of taken by f**king surprise with that.
“These are professional f**king musicians, suppose[dly], that you hire ’em to do this job, and come to find out they can’t do the f**king job. And even three years after you hire ’em, they’re still f**king there doing what they’re doing. And they’re still there now not playing the f**king songs correctly. So I don’t give a f**k who you get. You can go get [ex-CANNIBAL CORPSE and current EXHORDER guitarist] Pat O’Brien. You can go get f**king Jesus Christ. I don’t give a f**k who you get to on guitar. But they do enough to get by.
