Exhorder recently announced their new record Defectum Omnium, which came with the revelation that former Cannibal Corpse guitarist Pat O'Brien was a full-time member of the band. O'Brien was let go from Cannibal Corpse back in 2020 after some legal troubles, but seems to be doing better these days.
In a new interview with Metallerium, Exhorder frontman Kyle Thomas touched on O'Brien's new position with the band, saying he's thrilled for him to be there. "Currently, the lineup that we have, fortunately, three of us — myself, Jason and Sasha — we've been working together now since late 2017. So, we're coming up on seven years that we've been working together.
"So, for Exhorder, that's a long time for anyone to work together because we broke up so many times in the past. [Laughs] It's hard to have consecutive years where people are happily working together. So, we've got Pat O'Brien playing with us right now. Pat is definitely our guy, and Pat seems to be really happy where he is."
Thomas continued, touching on O'Brien's legal troubles and how it affects Exhorder's touring: "The thing that's difficult working with Pat isn't a personal thing; it's just having to work around the difficulties that have come to be from him having some legal issues a few years back. So travel is a very delicate thing for him right now where there's a lot of places where we're not even sure that he can travel yet.
"So we've been fortunate to have people like Waldemar Sorychta and Apollo Xydias help us out with playing shows in Europe and Mexico. And Waldemar is about to join us in South America, since, Pat, unfortunately, cannot go. So we're playing in Mexico City, Central America, South America. We're really about to start hitting that.
"But, moving forward, to answer your question, Pat is the guy that we ultimately want to be playing all of our shows with us. We're happy with him, he's happy with us. He toured with us in the United States, and we really, really had a great time, got along well and the people just love him. People are so happy to see Pat back in action, and that makes me happy for him."
Exhorder will release their second reunion album Defectum Omnium on March 8. Pre-orders are available here.
