Paul Baloff — born in the United States in 1960, died on 2 February 2002 — was the singer on Bonded by Blood (1985), a founding record of Bay Area thrash metal. His voice is not technical: it is a torn shout, without declared pitch, played at the limit of hoarseness. And that is exactly what the record needed. Bonded by Blood works at the maximum speed the band could play, with cutting riffs and no melodic concession, and a singer of conventional register would have softened the effect. Baloff is also remembered for his stance. He embodied literally the ideology of purity of the 1980s Californian thrash scene — the declared rejection of anything considered commercial or affected — and that attitude, conveyed in interviews and onstage, set the tone of a whole generation of bands more than any technical aspect of his singing. He left Exodus in 1986 and returned briefly in the 1990s and early 2000s. He died in 2002, aged forty-one, from a stroke.
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