ALBUM REVIEW: To The Dead – Exhumed
With Halloween – the undisputed spookiest time of year – fast approaching and hordes of scare fiends watching horror movies all month long in preparation, it seems apt that San Jose, California’s biggest gorehounds EXHUMED are bringing out a new album just in time for the macabre festivities. Each EXHUMED song is like a horror movie in audio form and those songs are still thrilling and shocking in equal measure 24 years after their perfectly titled Gore Metal debut album. In 2022, EXHUMED are still showing how they skilfully make their own audio horrors and they show no signs of letting up at all.
The band follow up 2019’s Horror (they do have a knack for naming albums with exactly what it says on the tin) with To The Dead and it’s another collection of brilliantly rendered blood soaked death metal with plenty of grindcore madness thrown into the mix too. The wonderfully deranged Puterscine And Cadaverine pulls you straight into the world of To The Dead and it is immediately clear that their bloodthirsty need for creating some of the most intense metal in the world is still there. If anything, the band seem even more energised, even by their own standards.
That energy is what immediately stands out and it seems that EXHUMED are out to prove a point with this album, even though their legacy is well are truly cemented in the extreme music world. The whole record flies by in a blur of deathly grinding noise in the most fun way possible despite the brutality that abounds.
Tracks like Carbonized, Lurid, Undertaking The Overkilled and No Headstone Unturned are classic EXHUMED but delivered with that extra energy to create an album that gets the blood flowing as if there has been an outbreak of multiple decapitations. The production is flawless throughout and the band’s gleefully murderous grooves sound electric all through To The Dead, especially as tracks like the intense Necrotica and the closing swirling blur of Disgusted spill from the speakers.
EXHUMED have intended To The Dead to be a celebration of the band and their music and former members Mike Beams, Leon del Muerte, Matt Widener and Bud Burke were all involved in the album, which despite all the brilliant horror and nastiness of the music, creates a warming family vibe. Of course, the core members of vocalist/guitarist Matt Harvey, bassist/vocalist Ross Sewage, drummer Mike Hamilton and guitarist Sebastian Phillips deliver the ten songs on the album with precision, passion and a true love for what the do in an inspiring fashion, and it all sounds as if they are having the time of their lives (or deaths) as they do so.
If you want an album to enthral and terrify in equal measure this Halloween and beyond, you don’t need to look any further than To The Dead, so put it on, turn up loud and listen gleefully as EXHUMED give you more treat than trick with their gloriously deranged music.
Rating: 8/10
To The Dead is set for release on October 21st via Relapse Records.
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