renamed to Shihad

Exit were renamed Shihad in mid-1988 when Geoff Duncan on bass guitar and Phil Knight on guitar joined. The new name was a misspelling of jihad ( Arabic for “striving” or “struggling”) as used in Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel, Dune (1965). They had heard the term when watching David Lynch ‘s 1984 film of the same name . Larkin later told John Grayson of Opus ( University of Newcastle, Australia ), “Well, see that’s the biggest cock-up out. When we were 15 we were all into this sci-fi movie Dune . See, Dune uses all these Arabic words throughout the movie and the end battle is a Jihad. We were stupid and thought it’d be a great name for a band so we called ourselves Shihad cause we couldn’t even spell it.”