“Unforeseen circumstances”: It’s a phrase metalheads have become all too familiar with this decade, as touring packages continue to struggle navigating a post-pandemic landscape. Groove metal pioneers Exhorder have experienced their fair share of these snafus, as 2025 saw not one, but two tours they were slated to appear on canned due to, well, unforeseen circumstances. However, as the old saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Exhorder are serving up an entire pitcher, kicking off 2026 strong with their very own jaunt, appropriately billed as the Unforeseen Circumstances Tour (Spinal Tap, anyone?). We sat down with founding frontman Kyle Thomas to discuss this latest run (which will NOT be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances), the early days of the NOLA metal scene, and the relevancy of Exhorder’s lyrics in today’s modern times.
Greetings Kyle and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Kyle Thomas: I’m great today. Thanks a bunch for having me, Joe.
Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Exhorder are about to hit the road on the Unforeseen Circumstances Tour, which includes a Chicagoland stop on Thursday, February 19th at the WC Social Club in West Chicago. How does it feel to kick off 2026 on the road? Furthermore, I can’t help but ask: Is this tour’s moniker a reference to the Six Feet Under run that was cancelled last year?
KT: I don’t know *laughs*! Let’s just say we’ve been a part of more than one tour that has been cancelled due to “unforeseen circumstances”, so it’s an inside joke for us at this point. Any time we see “unforeseen circumstances anywhere”, we get a little chuckle out of it. We figured we would complete a tour due to “unforeseen circumstances” instead.
An “Unforeseen Circumstances” Tour that is ACTUALLY happening!
KT: Yes, we will complete this tour due to “unforeseen circumstances” *laughs*.
Last year’s snafu aside, Exhorder are back on the road, and with some rather heavy friends at their side, starting with Luicidal, which features original members of Suicidal Tendencies. When did you first hear Suicidal, and how far back personally do you go with those guys?
KT: First off, let’s give a nod to Luicidal for agreeing to do this tour with us. Obviously, OG members of Suicidal. We are a band that came up on the punk scene in New Orleans, not the metal scene. We were rejected by the metal scene initially. For Luicidal to hop on and be a part of this tour, we’re honored as much as we’re stoked to see them perform. For me personally, I want to say I was about 15 years old when I started welcoming punk and hardcore into my life. I was a metalhead first and my brother started bringing punk and hardcore into the house. At first, I rejected it because my brother liked it *laughs*. That’s a natural course of action, I think. I did the same thing with a lot of the metal in my life too. If my brother brought it in, I didn’t want to hear it until I could no longer deny that I loved it.
I wanna say it was probably the Repo Man soundtrack, “Institutionalized”, that sort of thing. “Subliminal”, there’s so much good early Suicidal Tendencies, and really, it opened a door for me to a lot of that Venice area, west coast skate punk thing. Beowülf, a lot of the bands that were happening around that time definitely spoke to me quite a bit as a metalhead trying to find a way to bring punk into his life. I managed to finally see Suicidal Tendencies. They came through New Orleans a few times when I was young, in the early days of Exhorder’s development, and also, once we were out and a touring act, but I always seemed to miss them when they were around. I was either on tour or just couldn’t make it out to the show because I might’ve been too young and couldn’t go out on a school night *laughs*.
I managed to catch Suicidal when we shared the bill at a festival. It might’ve been Summer Breeze in Germany a few years back. I was just so impressed with the energy level that people at the same age as us, maybe even older…definitely older because I was a kid when they came out, but to see a version of it with other OG members in addition to having seen Suicidal a few years ago, I’m ready to see them. I know this much. I’ve seen video and Rocky George is playing guitar. If Rocky George is playing guitar, I’m gonna be doing cartwheels every night *laughs*. I’ll be thrilled to my toes about that!
Also appearing on a handful of dates are metalcore pioneers Ringworm and underground grind icons Phobia, who add a serious punk flavor to this metal affair. I take it you go back with these bands as well?
KT: To be honest with you, no. I possibly could’ve met some of these people throughout the years. Maybe we played shows together. I don’t recall that ever happening. I know Phobia are grindcore legends. I think they formed 4 or 5 years after we did, so they’ve been around a minute. Ringworm, I first started hearing about when I was in Alabama Thunderpussy in the early 2000s. They were starting to make a lot of noise in the Midwest. I’m just stoked that some legendary bands want to come in and help us bring a different flavor to the tour package that we’ve put together here. It’s very important to us to try and make a diverse lineup. I can’t stand it when I go to a show and there’s 4 or 5 bands and they all sound either the same, or just the same genre. It’s like, “C’mon, let’s do something different here.” I think we’re gonna have a really interesting, different show to offer throughout this whole package.
Don’t sleep on Slowhole, the opening band. They’re playing the entire tour with us. They’re an up and coming band from down this way. We played a show with them in Shreveport, Louisiana last year. They really knocked it out of the park. I was so impressed. I told them after their set, “Ya’ll made me feel like ya’ll were the three-way bastard child of Butthole Surfers, Eyehategod, and Sonic Youth.” That’s the vibe that I got, and I really, really enjoyed their set. I’m so glad that they wanna come out with us. They’ve been slugging it out on the DIY circuit for a long time. I think they deserve the break. I know they did some shows with Eyehategod, and perhaps some other bands from around here that are doing pretty well that have been around for a minute. Any time I can help a younger band that’s hungry get into a situation where they can expose themselves to a bigger crowd, I’m happy to do it. We had a lot of people help us out in the beginning and I never forgot it. This is that punk rock mindset of lifting people up in unity instead of trying to keep people beneath me. I’m not a fan of that.
I was going to say, I wasn’t familiar with Slowhole prior to their inclusion on this bill. Upon further investigating, your description, strange as it may sound, certainly fits. Are there any other new metal or punk bands out there who have caught your ear as of late? How does it feel for you, over 40 years since Exhorder formed, to see young NOLA bands continue to pop up and carry that heavy torch?
KT: It’s really nice that things aren’t dying. In fact, it’s quite contrary these days. There was a minute where I felt like everything was basically on life support. A lot of that was our fault too because we weren’t active *laughs*, so we weren’t doing much to help things. There is a surge of youth in, not just extreme metal and hardcore and punk and all that stuff, but doom metal also. I noticed it when I’ve been out with Trouble. 10 years ago, the audiences for Trouble and Exhorder were more or less just older people. It was like, “God, this is gonna die. It’s just gonna die if the kids aren’t embracing it.”
Over the last 10 years or so, I noticed at the festivals in Europe, people are starting to bring their children, their grandchildren. There’s a lot more all ages opportunities for people today than there were 10, 15 years ago. That always drove me crazy. We started out doing all ages show in the ’80s. In the ’90s, it just seemed like it wasn’t a possibility for whatever reason. I think that was a big reason things started gravitating away from the youth. If you’re not including the youth, why would they give a shit? Who cares? I’m just noticing the bands are younger. The attendance and the crowd are a more diverse mix of people. They’re more unified.
My daughter sometimes sells merch for us. We did a show in Baltimore. She pulled me over to the merch table and was like, “Take a look around. Look at this couple right here. They look like they just stepped out of a Whitesnake video. They’re standing next to the punk rocker with a mohawk and a battle vest with spikes and Doc Martens. Next to them is a guy who looks like he’s dressed for tee time at 7 o’clock golf the next morning.” *laughs* Back in the day, you put those three people in the same room and 15 minutes later, somebody’s in a fistfight. Today’s it’s just not like that. I really admire the younger generations for this, for being more inclusive and wanting to allow each other to be different without flexing on each other. I think it’s a great thing. It’s going to help everything for everyone down the line.
Back in 2020, you picked up guitar duties in Exhorder, and have been doing so ever since. Growing up, what did you pursue first, guitar or vocals?
KT: In 3rd grade, I started with trumpet. I wanted to play the sax. My dad cringed at the price of the saxophone *laughs*. I wanted to play it so girls would be interested in me, so I got stuck as a trumpet player reluctantly, but I wanted to play music. I had 5 years of trumpet lessons. That really gave me the foundation of being able to pick up different instruments and do as I will with them. I picked up the bass, started taking lessons. That was where I wanted to be. I did not want anything else. Singing found me by accident. I ended up joining the school chorus as part of my curriculum and went to chorus class everyday for two years. I ended up excelling. I didn’t know that was something I was even good at. It’s nothing I sought out. It just found me by accident. Iwent to one semester of college and joined the advanced chorale there. I ended up singing Beethoven’s 9th for the New Orleans Symphony for two nights at a sold out theatre for a weekend. It was amazing, the greatest musical experience of my life. That’s the journey it took me to get to singing. I never looked for it. It found me.
And now you’re singing and playing guitar!
KT: Yeah, I’m glad to have it back in my hands. It simplifies things. We’re now a four piece instead of a five. That just makes things dynamically and logistically easier. I’m enjoying it! I feel like I’m where I belong. The guitar is back in the hands of an original member of Exhorder. Though I was never a guitar player back then, I am an original member. Who’s going to feel these songs better than me? *laughs* That’s just a natural course of action.
Nowadays, New Orleans is widely regarded as an underground metal hub, but it wasn’t always this way. Back in the ’80s, when scenes like those on the coasts and down in Florida were picking up steam, what was it like when Exhorder first formed? Were there any other similarly natured bands around at the time?
KT: The metal scene was hair metal, and that’s really all that it was back in ’85, ’86. We were the black sheep. We were the red-headed stepchild, however you want to put it. We tried to start out on the metal scene and they rejected us. The punks were the ones that said, “C’mon, we’ll give you shows. You guys are cool and different and playing things that I think would go right along with us.” We weren’t the first of the crossover type bands in New Orleans. There were a few happening before us. Shell Shock was more on the hardcore side, but they were starting to get into the metal delivery. Graveyard Rodeo were probably the first of the dark, mysterious, heavy bands from New Orleans. They evolved a little more towards metal, like Shell Shock, but they were definitely the mysterious thing, the scary heavy band. We started playing shows with these bands. I think we just ended up taking off and getting out of New Orleans a little sooner than those bands had an opportunity to. We couldn’t have done it without the groundwork that they laid, that’s for sure.
Punk rock is where my roots, as far as not just my roots, but Exhorder, that’s where we really came into our own. We’ve never really forgotten that punk rock mindset. It’s a little different from…back then, the metal scene was definitely more about a rockstar thing. The punk thing was more of a human thing. You noticed a lot of bands like Slayer and Metallica, they were wearing punk rock t-shirts, listening to punk rock, hardcore, whatever you wanna call it back then before there were 80,000 genres that branched off *laughs*. In the early days, for me, seeing Jeff Hanneman with a Verbal Abuse sticker on his guitar or James Hetfield wearing a Cramps t-shirt, these are things that, for me, made it like, “OK, maybe it is cool to listen to this.” I gave it a try. Next thing I knew, I fell in love with it and I’m all about Dead Kennedys and Fear and things like that, Butthole Surfers, all that stuff.
Something I’ve always been curious about regarding Slaughter in the Vatican is that the demo came out in 1987, but the album wasn’t released until 1990. What was the band up to in that time in between? Furthermore, were there any particular obstacles the band faced in getting those songs to the full length stage?
KT: There were always obstacles with Exhorder. Most of them were self-inflicted. We were a very, very complex unit. We had a lot of laughs together. We worked pretty hard in the very beginning as the original lineup, but we had a lot of personality conflict. Eventually, original members started leaving due to these conflicts. We tried to put it back together with what ended up being, eventually, The Law lineup. We did that until 1992. All of the really hard work we did in the beginning, I want to say we stopped working that hard by the time the ’90s were coming.
First off, one guy was in college, so it was difficult. We couldn’t really go out and tour. Partying took over. We were very prepared to do the Slaughter in the Vatican album when it came out because we’d been playing these songs for so long, but by the time The Law came around, we really hadn’t thought enough about, “OK, We gotta have enough material ready to go for a second album.” So when Roadrunner came knockin’ and said, “Hey, it’s time to put out another album.” We were like, “Oh shit!” We used a couple of songs that we felt weren’t good enough for Slaughter in the Vatican that were on our first demo, Get Rude. We also used our Black Sabbath “Into the Void” cover because we just needed more material. Then, we just slammed the rest of the songs together haphazardly.
That’s a very disjointed album. I know a lot of people love it. I’ve had people tell me they’ve molded their entire careers around that album. I’m like, “Why, why, why?!” *laughs* Taste is subjective, and I’m not gonna tell people they’re wrong for it. I just disagree. That was just a very chaotic period in the band. There was a lot of internal fighting, not just verbal fighting. We were up in each other’s grills, ready to kill each other half the time. Around that time, thrash was on its way out. We fit more of a thrash description even though we weren’t a true, pure thrash band. That scene was dying. Death metal was on the rise. At the time, like I said before, there wasn’t as much unity. It was a lot more genre-specific. I think a lot of the death metal folk liked us, but a lot of them were kind of like, “Eh, whatever.” It just fizzled out for us, so we fell apart and broke up. It took us 27 years to put another album together.
That’s a good segue into the next question. I was listening to Slaughter last night, in preparation for this interview. One thing I couldn’t help but pick up on is, despite all the thrashing and grooving, just how deadly the riffs and atmosphere are. Did Exhorder feel kinship with the Floridian death metal scene, and did you ever correspond with those bands?
KT: Kinship, absolutely. We played a lot of shows with a lot of those bands over the years and became friends with many of them. Malevolent Creation were probably some of the first of those guys that I really got to know. We did maybe half a dozen or more shows together around that time. We instantly clicked with those guys on a personal level, musical level. They were about as great of a death metal band as there ever has been. When you start talking about the “Big 4” of this or that, Malevolent’s probably one of the bands that could easily be in that equation, but maybe aren’t, but absolutely worthy of it.
We did shows with Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, Obituary. I really got to know the Obituary guys more when I was in Alabama Thunderpussy because we did direct support for them on a tour. I just fell in love with the guys. They’re totally like neighbors of mine that I never knew I had that lived behind my house *laughs*. When I see these guys at the festivals, it’s always fun. It’s always great to catch up with them and have a laugh and a beer, same with a Cannibal. I’ve been friends with a lot of those guys for many, many moons. There’s a lot of similarities between all of our bands, even though there’s a lot of drastic differences as well. I think who they all are as people is real similar to who a lot of the New Orleans bands are as people.
When revisiting Exhorder’s back catalog, the lyrical themes, calling out corruption within the power structures of organized religion and politics, seem more relevant than ever over 35 years on. In this respect, do you view the band’s lyrics as somewhat prophetic, or rather a reflection of a never-ending societal cycle?
KT: I’m not a dumb guy, but I don’t that anybody’s ever looked at me as some kind of seer *laughs*. I really just lyrically wrote off the cuff. I wear my emotions on my sleeve a lot of the time. It comes out in my lyrics, whether it’s something that needs to be cathartic or, as you pointed out, hypocrisies. I grew up in the Catholic church. I was a practicing Catholic. Now, I’m a recovering Catholic. I went to school in the system, so I am absolutely 100% an expert on everything that I’ve written about, just from a personal experience.
Politics, I always say, there’s two types of politicians: You’ve got honest politicians and successful politicians. There’s no such thing as a politician who’s got your best interest all the time. Trust me, the left and the right are together at happy hour. That’s the truth. They’re drinking on our tax dollars, and don’t let anyone else fool you. That’s the goddamn truth. That’s just the way I feel. I’m not interested in being a part of any side or anything. To me, the only sides are right and wrong, and that’s it.
In closing, besides this upcoming tour, what does the rest of 2026 have in store for you and Exhorder? Being from Chicago, I can’t help but also ask, is there any update on the new Trouble album? Are the reports true that this will be the band’s swansong?
KT: See, that last question is a tough one because I just don’t know. Ultimately, at the end of the day, whether or not it’s the swansong, the answer to that lies within (guitarists) Rick (Wartell) and Bruce (Franklin). Rob (Hultz), Garry (Naples), and I, our job is to help Rick and Bruce carry the torch, honor the legacy, and do our best to add to the legacy ourselves. We are in the process of recording the album. I know for a decade or more, there’s been talks of, “The album’s coming out next year.” I still don’t even want to say that, but the music is almost finished being recorded right now, if it’s not 100% complete. I think it’s already been sent over to Bill Metoyer for mixing purposes. I am in the process of recording vocals and still trying to sort out lyrics. To me, it’s very important that this one is as good or better than any Trouble album that I hold dear to my heart. Again, that’s a subjective thing. That’s up to the fans more than anyone else. As a fan of the band, I can promise you I’m taking it extremely seriously and I’m not in any hurry to spit something out and leave it there that I wouldn’t spend money on myself.
Exhorder, also, (drummer) Sasha (Horn) and (bassist) Jason (Viebrooks) are together right now, working on new material before I get there next week for tour rehearsals. We’re thinking about the future. We’re trying to add to our legacy as well. We’re going to be doing a bit of touring this year. Not as much as last year probably, because we want to work on this new material, but we’ve got more trips in the US in the works for spring and summer. Not so sure about Europe. Europe seems like something right now that maybe we don’t need to be in a hurry to get back to. We’ve played there quite a bit in the last couple of years. We’ll see about that. Unless something really big pops up, probably not anytime soon.
Exhorder will be playing the WC Social Club in West Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, February 19th. For tickets, click here. For more information on Exhorder, click here.