eonMusic spoke with Exodus singer Steve “Zetro” Souza at Download Festival about his rejoining the band. An excerpt from the chat follows…

Q: Was your re-joining just a case of the timing was right, or would you have liked to have been back say ten years earlier?

A: “Probably. There’s a lot of reasons that led to that, and in my thing, I couldn’t do it at that time, but within five years’ time of that, I could have probably. By 2009, I was kind of ready to do this again, but it was long standing with us and them; it was a kind of a mudsling that went back and forth. We were not the best of friends when I was not at the helm, and that was a bit of working shit out. But I think that honestly, this run, out of all of them, is the best run. Even the initial run in ’86 to ’93; this is better than all of them.”

Q: Is that simply due to everybody being older and wiser now?

A: “Obviously, that just comes. If you’re still alive, and you’re still at this level and you’re okay and can do it, then you’re all right; you’ve got enough wisdom. You could never have made it this far, and you wouldn’t do thirty-two years if you didn’t look at everything objectively. Back in the eighties it was; let’s fuckin’ do all the coke you could put on a mirror and fuck everything that moves. Now it’s like; nobody could be bothered with that shit, either one. Everybody’s married, we’re all in our fifties now, and it’s not like that now. You’re older, you’re wiser, you know how the business works, and you know how the cycle works in every aspect of the game.”

Read the full interview at eonmusic.co.uk.

Exodus perform next on July 1st at San Manuel Amphitheater in San Bernardino, CA with Iron Maiden, Kamelot and Ghost. Find the band’s live itinerary at this location.