Rob McKillop

Rob McKillop was Exodus's bassist in the line-up that recorded Bonded by Blood (1985), a founding record of Bay Area thrash metal. His presence covers the band's early period, between 1982 and 1988, including also Pleasures of the Flesh (1987). These are the years in which Exodus established the rhythmic vocabulary the Californian scene would adopt: extreme speed, cutting riffs and a rhythm section that follows the guitars in absolute unison. That function is the hardest to notice and the most physically demanding in the genre. The bass has no line of its own — it reproduces what the two guitars play with a pick, at the same speed, across whole tracks. He left at the end of the 1980s and did not return in later line-ups. His subsequent path is thinly documented, a common situation among musicians from the early line-ups of bands whose importance was only fully recognised years afterwards.