New interview on Metal Maniacs site

Check it out!

Normally, I would post an "unabridged" version here, but the whole enchilada is up at the Metal Maniacs site. Mike said he wanted to talk to me about "all things" Exhumed, and he wasn't kidding. It's a bit lengthy and very in-depth, so there's your warning. Enjoy!

Blast Beats From The Past

Our original guitarist, Derrel Houdashelt (aka D. Attacker of Dekapitator fame) has been posting a few pics on Faceback that take me way, way back and I thought I'd share 'em here for your viewing pleasure along with a little context on these gems.

This one on the right here is the Marquee for our first show ever, way back in October 24th, 1991 - to put it in perspective, this was five days after my sixteenth birthday on a Thursday night at the legendary San Francisco Rock club The Stone (R.I.P.), as made famous in the Cliff 'Em All video and some really cool black and white footage of Kiss in the 70s. Anyway, there were about 5 people in the audience that night, including Col's parents, Max Ward of Plutocracy / Spazz / Capitalist Casualties fame, Rich, guitarist of Immortal Fate, and Mark Smith, who later did vocals for Exhumed on the "Cadaveric Splatter Platter" tape(s) and was in a Gilroy-based band called Burial with some guy named Mike Beams on guitar, who ended up fitting into this story a few years later. Needless to say, fame and fortune did not come a knockin' after this inauspicious beginning. We had completed our rehearsal tape about a month before and this night was our indoctrination into the infamous "pay to play" business practiced by The Stone and its sister clubs in the East Bay (the Omni) and the South Bay (One Step Beyond) where we would spend the next two years slugging it out in various support capacities to many of our favorite bands like Morbid Angel, Master, Cannibal Corpse, Entombed, Autopsy, Sadus and many, many others.

Here's the August 1992 calendar for The Stone, the month we played with Morbid Angel and Master for the first time of many. As you can see our fortunes by then had improved considerably, as 4th-rate thrash bands like Skeletal Bliss were nowhere in sight on those bills. Armed with extremely limited musical ability and an overload of enthusiasm, we grinded our way through those first few years penning ditties like "Oozing Rectal Feast", "Ziploc Body-Bag" (a title suggested to us by some dude in line outside the Omni in 1991 whose name has long since escaped me), and "Festering Sphinctral Malignancy", and playing incredibly sloppy grinding Death Metal while having the time of our lives. While other kids in high school were undoubtedly enjoying milestones like their first prom night, we were hanging out backstage and learning about the underground from guys like Chris Riefert and Alex Webster. I think we definitely came out ahead there. I may have been a loser with the girls at school, but knowing that I was going to be opening for Entombed or whoever it happened to be that month in a few weeks made all the boredom and stupidity of high school completely bearable - that and the fact that I pretty much slept through most of it anyway.

Here's a pic from our first band photo shoot - from left to right- Derrel Houdashelt, guitar, Col Jones (seated), drums, Jake Giardina, vocals, and yours truly, guitar and backing vocals. Derrel and Jake were a little older than Col and I (I was defintiely 15 here, Col may have been 16, Jake was 16 or 17, and Derrel was 17) and at least had the good sense to wear pants. As you can see, Exhumed has always been the paragon of orignality, doing a photo shoot in graveyard was of course as cliche as a Death Metal band could possibly get. Apparently no one told me not to wear athletic shorts that don't even go to your knees in your heavy metal band photo. But we were Californians, and wearing shorts every day was pretty much the norm. I don't remember who took this photo, it may have been Stephanie Dean, a girl I had a gigantic crush on in high school, who is actually now an accomplished photographer, but I don't know for sure. At any rate, only Col stuck with the tradition of putting all of one's hair in front of one's face all the way though to his recent days in Cretin. Always, the purist, that guy.

Here's a shot of Jake (foreground) and Derrel (background) at the Omni in Oakland with Kindred of Plutocracy in the background in full SF Giants regalia. The Omni was always our favorite place to play back in those days, huge stage, relatively good sound, and always the best turnouts for Death Metal shows there. Plus the owner used to give us all the free soda we wanted. We were real party animals in those days. Jake is seen here sporting some sweet skull jam shorts sewn by Col's mom. For some reason we took it upon ourselves to wear ridiculous bermuda shorts with even more ridiculous patterns on them onstage. Everything from the relatively "cool" skull pattern seen here to crayons, dinosaurs, fish, and anything totally stupid you could think of. There was one particularly cringe-worthy occasion in 1992 at One Step Beyond with Phobia, Plutocracy, and Morgion where Derrel played in an "Ernie" shirt (as in Seasme Street) and Jake was wearing fuzzy bunny slippers. Col's mother Mary, truly one of the most wonderful people I've ever known, was sweet enough to sew our shorts for us. And yes, we picked out the patterns at the fabric store, not her, so don't blame a sweet woman for five teenage idiots wearing dino shorts. I usually stuck with my plaid or checkered Mervyn's-bought "surf" shorts, but I rocked the skull jams a few times myself.

To the left here is yours truly with my good friend Kris Berlin's Gibson Explorer (I seemed to always be borrowing someone else's guitar in those early days) - he played in one of our favorite local bands back then, Enucleation (guess where we got the song title for that song on "Gore Metal" from? - I told you earlier we were incredibly original) and for some reason, I thought a good fashion statement would be putting a Napalm Death sticker (not patch, sticker) on my shorts for this show. Unfortunately, our hilariously amateurish banner can't bee seen in this shot. Maybe when I get all my stuff out of storage and a scanner, it'll make an appearance. Anyway, had a few minutes to kill and those pics got me a bit nostalgic. Next update will be current and informative- and will be 99% dinosaur-shorts free.

- Harvey

Exhuming Exhumed... Part 1

I figured since we have this blogsite up, I'd use it to update anyone interested (or bored at work) in the process of getting the new record together. Obviously this will be an ongoing process, so updates will come sporadically as shit gets done. So, read on and thrill to the titanic adventures of four idiots on a never-ending quest to make a new record.
Cheers,

Harvey

Part the firste:

Well, I was in Southern California the past few days (August 5-10) for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to get my proverbial hands dirty in the preparation process for recording album #4. Arriving late Thursday night for a rehearsal with Gravehill, plans are made to rendezvous with the inimitable Wes Caley (guitar) the following day. After dicking around with a few things, getting beer, Wes fixing my guitar (thanks dude!), etc. we set up in Wes’ recording room in Westminster (Orange County). Mr. Caley and I have been writing furiously for months now, coming up with over 20 songs, and 16 strong contenders for the album, that we have decided to focus in on. Due to the wonders of the information age, we’re able to email each other our respective demo tracks (his are infinitely better recorded than mine) and tablature to boot. However, there’s no substitute for sitting down face to face and playing together. So, in short order riffs are exchanged and taught, arrangements are discussed and tweaked, song titles and lyrics are beginning to be remembered by yours truly and associated with the respective songs they belong to, and things really feel like they are coming together at last. Since this is the first time that we’ve actually got together in the same room, it really drives it home that this album is really happening and all the shit we’ve been planning and talking about is now becoming actual events, not just email threads and phone conversations. It’s a really energizing feeling after months of talking about it from thousands of miles away (I was living in Hawaii for the first six months of this year).

After spending about four or five hours working through some tracks thoroughly, it’s off to the Makh Daniels benefit show that Gravehill is playing in Whittier - which also served as a birthday party for an old friend and true sister of metal, Lili! Beers are drained, tacos are contemplated but ultimately passed over in favor of more beer, and a good time was had by all- hopefully Mr. Daniels would have approved. Saturday was basically void of productivity - being hungover and watching cheesy comedy takes up most of my time and energy before Gravehill rehearsal.

Sunday, Wes and I meet up with the third member of our cast of characters, everybody’s favorite full-time asshole, Leon del Muerte (bass, vocals, Murder Construct, DIS, ex-Impaled, Intronaut, Phobia, etc. etc.). We get to Echo Park for the “Power of the Riff” fest around 5:30, unfortunately missing Nails and Black Breath, but well in time for From Ashes Rise and my old pals in Repulsion. Col (Jones, drums, Repulsion, Cretin, Dekapitator, ex-Exhumed) shares some pizza with Wes and I, as well as encouragement and feedback about the upcoming record (which he‘s already heard most of the demo tracks for), and not too long after that Leon and I somehow end up at a strange bar in Chinatown drinking Maker's Mark with a couple of attractive women. Then it's back to Echo Park to reunite with Wes and his lady, with several tacos in tow. More beers inevitably follow. With a work ethic like this, I’m shocked that it takes us years between albums. Very productive day indeed.

The next day, Wes and I leave Leon in Echo Park to spend the remainder of his day in bed trying not to vomit (having already called out of work the previous evening in a rare exercise of good judgment) and head to the Gravehill rehearsal space to crank up and go over more songs. Despite hangovers, we end up getting a lot done today. The only speed-bump in the road is that our fourth member, absentee drummer Danny (Walker, of Intronaut, Murder Construct, ex-Phobia, Uphill Battle, etc. etc.) has a scheduling conflict for the dates we’ve just booked to track his drums. Since he’s currently on the road with Intronaut (supporting Cynic), communication hasn’t been as good as it should be, and the fact that I have a new phone and number and I a) forgot to give him my new number, and b) forgot to program his number into my new phone, well, that hasn’t helped much either.

In short order, the dates are pushed back, which is a great relief as the rest of the recording is already booked in Phoenix Arizona with an old, and truly good friend of mine Ryan Butler at his Arcane Digital Recording studio. Our flights and hotel down there are already booked and paid for by our friends at Relapse, so it’s nice that the schedule change won’t effect anything else going forward. Now we just have one less week to prepare (after already pushing the recording up a week).

Wes is kind enough to stick around during Gravehill practice so we can re-up on the venom (get more beer) and head back to Westminster to drink ourselves into a stupor and get ready to practice yet again on Tuesday. After some discussion it’s decided that Wes will undertake the time-intensive task of recording a whole new set of pre-production demos with the new arrangement changes we’ve made so that Danny has the most complete set of tracks to learn the songs from before we rehearse. As much as this will streamline the rehearsal process, I have to admit that it makes me miss the good old days, when I’d just get off the school bus, walk over to Col’s house and then we’d walk to my folk’s garage and just try out riffs for a couple of hours before dinner. I especially miss the crappy little boom box we had in said garage to record our tuneless racket, but I digress. After going through the first seven songs with a fine-toothed comb for the past few days, we decide to get some work done on yet another new tune, which will be the first directly co-written tune we’ve whipped up. Hopefully we’ll finish this one in time for the record as well. By then, it’s high time to call it a day so I can meet up with the Gravehill guys one last time before I head back north to the Central California coast where I can return to the relative calm, cool weather and fog around 2am.

Stay tuned to this broadcast in the coming weeks for the next exciting chapter in the continuing adventures of the usual gang of idiots in Exhumed.