With over three decades of blood-splattered gore metal, Exhumed still haven’t exhausted their extremities. Having produced some of the most sickening, chaotic tunes heard in death metal, the journey to create complete audible repulsion continues with the band’s latest Relapse full-length, To The Dead, out October 21.
Since forming Exhumed back in 1990, vocalist and guitarist Matt Harvey (also of Gruesome, Pounder, Left To Die, and many more) has been at the center of it all. With handfuls of demos and split releases, and a total of nine studio albums under his belt, Harvey looks back on some of the band’s earlier works as continuous learning experiences.
“It’s always been a process of learning,” says Harvey. “I feel like the band, since getting back together in 2011, it’s been easier to see the impact that the early records made in hindsight rather than when we were actually doing them. Around the time we were doing the first three records, it was just a real uphill battle, you know?”
He continues, “You change as a person, and you learn along the way, and it’s all a part of that experience. There’s tons of stuff that I would have done differently, but at the same time, what are you gonna do? The records are out there, and people like them, and that’s really neat. I think we’ve tried to walk the line between staying true to how we started and also being able to grow a bit, not to grow out of being a death metal band, but to grow within that, you know?”
With Exhumed being in a position that, in many ways, connects a bridge from the old-school to modern-day death metal, Harvey acknowledges the beauty of that. “I mean I was about 15 when I started the band. We’re not like the old-school death metal bands like Morbid Angel, Cannibal (Corpse), Obituary, and so on. We’re in this, like, newly-old category, where we’ve now become old (laughs),” jokes Harvey.
Being able to be at that level of headlining big death metal tours and bring newer bands out on the road, whether it be Creeping Death, Gatecreeper, Enforced, Arkaik, Necrot, etc., and attracting fans both young and old, Harvey finds it exciting. “It’s cool because there’s this cyclical or nostalgic churn, really in all popular culture, but specifically in metal, where people look back at things that were happening 25 years ago…You sort of see that things come out and they’re super exciting and then they’re kind of lame and uncool for a while, and then it sort of comes back around.”
“I think that being in a position to take out younger bands is really cool, and I think it’s important. Ultimately for the scene to survive, it can’t just be, like, 10 legacy bands, that’s fucking boring. This is the kind of music that if you get really excited about it, you do something. You get involved in photography, or journalism, or promotion, or playing… I think when you see younger people having that drive, then it’s a sign that the scene is quite healthy.”
Now, the masters of splatter return in the name of gore on To The Dead with 10 tracks of stomach-turning brutality. Harvey believes that the band has the best lineup they’ve ever had. “Not just as far as executing the songs and gelling creatively goes, but we all support each other. We all trust each other, and we can rely on each other,” explains Harvey.
To The Dead has some of the best sounding production on an Exhumed record, while still maintaining that raw intensity of the band’s earlier works-the best of both worlds. “With this one, I knew I wanted to have a little bit more space, but I wanted to make the production ugly sounding. I was like, ‘How do we make something sound ugly that doesn’t sound like shit?’ I think we struck a really good balance, and I think the guitar tone is really fucking ugly on this record,” says Harvey.
With not one dull moment on the entire album, the band took the time to create a collection of songs that combines all the elements we love from across their discography, and then some. Psychotic blasts and an abundance of razor-sharp riffs pave a path of chaos between each shredding solo performed by Harvey and the skillful Sebastian Phillips.
Meanwhile, Ross Sewage and Harvey’s vomitous and guttural vocal trade off runs rampant over some of the band’s most savagely executed songs. Whether it be the impaling hook of “Rank and Defile,” the filth and disgust of “Lurid,” the grinding shitshow “Defacted,” or the riffing frenzy that is “Disgusted,” it’s easy to see that To The Dead truly excels through the songwriting. Harvey attributes that to something especially unique to the record…
To go with the Exhumed 30th anniversary concept, Harvey had a bunch of former members of the band write songs for the new album, contributing to its completely dynamic sound.
“There’s a song by our old guitar player, Mike Beams, our old bassist and guitarist, Bud Burke, our old bassist and guitar player, Leon del Muerte, and our old bass player, Matt Widener. They all submitted stuff and then I sort of took it and some songs I made a couple tweaks, and a couple other ones, I was like, ‘let’s pull this apart and put it back together,’ kind of thing,” says Harvey.
He continues, “Ross and I co-wrote a song, and then Sebastian also wrote a song, so we tried to make it more inclusive and more collaborative, but at the end of the day, I also kind of have my hand on everything as the final edit guy.”
Further lending itself to the vibrancy of the string work on the record, Harvey recalls trying to break out of his old muscle memory patterns by utilizing a tablature program. “I ended up actually writing a lot of the music without a guitar. I sat down and used a tablature program, and I would hum a riff, and then I would tab it out and maybe change that and be like, ‘What would this sound like?’ I tried to come up with patterns that my hands don’t normally go in,” he explains.
Over the years, Harvey’s worked with and collaborated with so many talented musicians on recorded music and live music, especially within Exhumed.
“My favorite position to be in is when I’m the worst musician in the room because that means I’m the person who has the most to learn… I’m so fortunate to play with Sebastian (Phillips) and in Gruesome with Danny Gonzalez, playing with Tom in Pounder; I just really get excited to learn from everybody. Mike, our drummer in Exhumed, he pushes me physically as a guitar player… playing with him is like a sporting event. I feel extremely fortunate that I get the best of all worlds playing in different projects.”