Exhumed

Exhumed, based in San Jose, began sharpening their gore-fixated death metal style in the early 1990s, adding wry humor while drawing from the approach of Carcass, a group they have repeatedly named as a central influence. Founding guitarist Matt Harvey has steered the outfit through repeated membership shifts across the decades. Their savage riffs and viscerally grotesque lyrics grew steadily more extreme, producing unyielding albums such as Anatomy Is Destiny in 2003, All Guts, No Glory in 2011, and To the Dead in 2022.

The band formed in 1990 with Matt Harvey handling guitar and vocals alongside Col Jones on drums, Derrel Houdashelt on guitar, Jake Giardina handling vocals, and Ben Marrs on bass. In this configuration they cut their initial tracks, among them the Excreting Innards 7" issued by Afterworld Records. Giardina and Marrs departed within a few years, after which Matt Widener took over bass and Ross Sewage assumed vocal duties. Following the 1994 Horrific Expulsion of Gore demo, Widener exited and Sewage assumed bass responsibilities as well. This lineup recorded the split-LP In the Name of Gore with Ohio’s Hemdale; Visceral Productions released it in 1995, complete with its notoriously repulsive cover art.

Houdashelt soon departed and was later succeeded by Mike Beams. With that roster stabilized, the group signed to Relapse Records and issued their debut proper full-length, Gore Metal, in 1998, with James Murphy of Death and Obituary handling production. Sewage exited shortly afterward, leaving Harvey, Beams, and Jones to track the follow-up Slaughtercult. Relapse put the album out in 2000, where it found strong favor within the death metal community. Exhumed backed it with three full U.S. tours plus a European run that included co-headlining slots at Germany’s Fuck the Commerce Festival and the Czech Republic’s Obscene Extreme Festival. In 2003 they cut the more progressive Anatomy Is Destiny, again for Relapse and widely regarded as their strongest work to date; bassist Bud Burke left ahead of the ensuing tour and Leon del Muerte stepped in.

After U.S. and European dates the band suffered another setback when founding drummer Col Jones departed. Opting against entering the studio without a settled replacement, they instead issued the compilation Platters of Splatter and relied on temporary drummers for live work. Guitarist Mike Beams also exited around this time, after which Wes Caley and Matt Connell joined on guitar and drums. This incarnation followed Metallica’s model for a covers collection and released Garbage Daze Re-Regurgitated in 2005; they also prepared a concert film before stepping away from the scene for nearly five years.

The lineup of del Muerte, Caley, Connell, and sole remaining founder Harvey on guitar and vocals spent a year composing and surfaced with All Guts, No Glory on Relapse in summer 2011. Returning in 2013 with an entirely new rhythm section of Rob Babcock on bass and Mike Hamilton on drums plus guitarist Bud Burke, Harvey recorded the slower, groove-oriented Necrocracy. In 2015, with early member Ross Sewage reclaiming vocal and bass roles and Burke shifting back to guitar, Exhumed re-recorded their debut and issued it as Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998-2015. Retaining that same configuration, they tracked the band’s seventh album, Death Revenge, again for Relapse in 2017. Two years later came the eighth album Horror, cut at the group’s home studio and markedly rawer and less intricate than prior efforts. For the unrelenting ninth LP To the Dead, Harvey enlisted Mike Beams, Leon del Muerte, Matt Widener, and Bud Burke to augment the long-running gore metal act.