Exhumed

Tab from the slab - more Exhumed tablature

2012-01-16T22:42:00.000-08:00

Well, one of my new year's resolutions was to post more downloadable stuff here on this blog, so I decided after the Exodus post last week, I should keep it coming. This week we have some tabs for a few Exhumed songs. First up is "The Matter Of Splatter" - the best-known song from the "Anatomy Is Destiny" record, written by departed axe-slinger Mike Beams. This has some signature Beams stuff, tons of rapid-fire non-stop alternate-picking riffs, and jumbled, chromatic note patterns that are a bit difficult to discern and make the fingers on my left hand stumble over each other on the verse riffs. Col and I really insisted that every song have a typical rock song structure - verse, chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus, and when Mike brought this tune to us, we immediately caught on to its structural simplicity. It was exactly what we wanted to hear, and exactly what the "Anatomy..." record needed. On an album weighed down by some of our longest, often needlessly intricate song-structures (see prime offender "Under The Knife"), "The Matter Of Splatter" sticks out by being nice and straightforward. It was the no-brainer choice for the video single from the album. If you want to work on your alternate-picking technique, look no further, but good luck jamming to the record, as the meter is very, um... "organic". Oh, and the other thing about this song is that the discerning listener will notice an uncanny similarity in arrangement to "Damage Inc."

The official music video for "The Matter Of Splatter" - I don't think anyone in the band actually liked how this came out, but what the heck.

The Matter Of Splatter

Next up is one from the first record - "Open The Abscess" - again, jamming to the record for this song is virtually impossible - not only is the timing completely by feel, but the guitar tone is virtually indecipherable. Even immediately after we recorded the record, none of us were happy with the production. But, what can you do? It's one of those "couldn't replicate it if we were trying to" kind of things. Anyway, this song is actually pretty similar to "Matter of Splatter" structurally, but the riffs are totally different. I was kind of trying to capture something like a Death / Grind version of Destruction's "Bestial Invasion" when I wrote this. The whole song is really built around the vocal hook, which is sort of unusual in this genre. Until "Anatomy...", this was pretty much our most well-known song, and we still usually use "Open..." as our set closer. Enjoy grinding this one out, kids.

I've posted this version of this song before, but in case you missed it - here's a little "Gore Metal" era nostalgia from the Western US leg of the "All Guts, No Glory" tour, as we're joined onstage by Monsewer Ross Sewage and Mike Beams...

Open The Abscess

Rounding out this post is a couple moldy oldies... I happened to have these already transcribed, so I figured what the heck. Nowadays instead of sitting around and showing the other guys older songs riff by riff, I just give them the tab, which they then ignore and I end up sitting around showing them the songs riff by riff. But - after that - they have something to refer to and I don't have to keep doing that. We used to do Septicemia in the set when we were touring with Danny, and we actually tried to re-record it as a bonus track when we re-recorded "Necromaniac" and "Forged In Fire" for "All Guts, No Glory", but after bashing out 17 songs in 2 days, Danny was physically and mentally burnt, which was totally understandable. We did however, dust off "Excreting Innards" for the first round of shows we did last year, which was pretty fun. "Excreting..." I actually wrote while I was still in high school, so it's pretty simplistic, which is probably it's second best quality, right behind its merciful brevity.

Excreting Innards

"Excreting Innards / Slaughtercult / Limb From Limb / Eruction (Wes' guitar solo) / Forged In Fire" live in Norway - my voice is shot to shit from watching Voivod the previous night, but you should get the idea...

Septicemia

Exhumed live at Baroeg in Rotterdam, Holland in 1997, leading off with an intro that should be familiar to anyone who has the new album, followed by the first two songs from the "In The Name Of Gore" split - "Horrendous Member Dismemberment" and "Septicemia" - back when we were the sloppiest band in the entire universe, and when that Possessed shirt still more or less fit me... Ah, the good ol' days!

If, for some very odd reason, you're looking for more Exhumed tab, check out this earlier blog here...

Crap From The Crypt: Exodus

2012-01-12T19:25:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post more downloadable stuff on here, so here you go. Don't say I never gave ya nuthin! Happy New Year, folks!
Cheers!
- Harvey

Youknow, like most folks out there, I get down on my life and myself andget frustrated and shit, but really I'm a pretty lucky guy. I've beenfortunate enough to get to travel all over the place playingatrocious, aggravating music for like-minded nutsos and becomefriends with some of my favorite musicians from the underground. On afew occasions, I've even got to play with them. Most folks know thatI got to play guitar for my favorite Death Metal / Grindcore bandRepulsion for a number of years. That was really a great time.Scott (Carlson) and Matt (Olivo) are both great dudes and taught me alot about music and provided me with a zillion anecdotes and insightsfrom the origins of the Death Metal scene. And, they also turned meonto Riot, for which I am eternally grateful. I dug their“Fire Down Under” record so much that when I started myMetalli-deth “Arena Thrash” band, Scarecrow weended up covering that tune. Playing in Repulsionwas a total Death Metal nerd wet-dream come true, and one of theeasiest jobs in metal. Basically, I just showed up, played myfavorite songs, and then got a couple beers and a few bucks. Itreally doesn't get better than that.

Scarecrow "Swords And Tequila" - and yes, I know this song is way out of (extremely limited) vocal range.

Iwant to take the opportunity here to set the record straight on howthat all came to be. I first met Matt and Scott at Maryland Deathfestin '03 when both Exhumedand Repulsion played.As far as I remember, that was the last Repulsionshow with the original lineup. A couple of years prior, I had,through my job selling records direct to stores for NecropolisRecords back in the '90s (when that was still a thing), happened tostumble upon the phone number of the legendary (at least in Flint,MI) Doug Earp (RIP) – the man who paid for the recording of“Slaughter Of The Innocent” - or as it's better known today,“Horrified”. Being a massive Repulsionfan, I kept Doug on the phone for the better part of an hour, soakingin every detail he could recall of the recording process, (mostly theengineer's disbelief at the band's sound) and any other bit ofRepulsion minutae I could wring out of this incredibly nice andpatient man. Doug was obviously bemused and stoked that someone wasso interested in the record and was nothing but a gentleman as wespoke. I mention that conversation because, by the time I actuallymet Matt and Scott I probably knew as much about the recording of“Horrified” as anyone who wasn't actually present possibly could.I think their reaction was a mixture of flattery, amusement andbewilderment when I proceeded to nerd out on their (very gracious andpatient) asses.

Repulsion with the original lineup at MDF '03

Fast-forwarda few months later and Repulsionwas offered a show in Spain, and for whatever reason, originaldrummer Dave “Grave” Hollingshead decided that he didn't want totravel overseas and opted out of the show. The first person Relapserecommended for the job was, of course, my best friend and long-timepartner in grime, Col Jones. Anyone who has heard the Cretin“Freakery” record can attest that Col has perfected and improvedDave's legendary drumming style, so he was the perfect fit for thejob. Since Matt and Scott both live in LA, Col needed someone localto practice with, so I set about learning the Repulsionset to rehearse with him so that he'd be primed and ready to jam withthe elder statesmen when the time came. It was sort of like helpingyour best friend get ready for a date with a girl you'd been in lovewith for years. You're happy for the guy, but you're also jealous ashell. Anyway, as the date of show drew nearer, guitarist AaronFreeman decided that he didn't want to do anymore shows with the bandeither. Well, luckily for me, I was already jamming with Col, knewall the songs, and was one of the biggest Repulsionfans on the planet... So Col graciously recommended me to the guys,and things went from there. Thanks are due to Col for helping me getmy foot in the door with the band, and congrats to my successors (Iquit the band after our shows with AtThe Gates,right before I moved to Hawaii), two of my favorite guitarists andpeople, my former partner in the Exhumedtwin-axe attack, Mike Beams, and one of my oldest friends, MarissaMartinez of Cretin,who has nailed the Repulsionwriting style better than anyone not named Scott, Matt, Dave, orAaron.

Repulsion with Col and I in LA at the Murderfest in '07. I think we all have much cooler hair now, except Col, who has always had cool hair - at least since 11th grade anyway.

Whata lot of people don't know is that I actually spent a night frontingone of my other favorite bands of all time, Exodus.When I was rehearsing for the first Repulsionshow, I had just started working at Alternative Tentacles Records,via the recommendation of their General Manager at the time, DaveAdelson (who now runs his own awesome label, 20 Buck Spin, fulltime). I was living in the South Bay and the AT office was inEmeryville (right between Oakland and Berkeley) so the commute washorrible, especially with the Bay Area's notoriously atrocioustraffic. I had some car trouble on the way home Thursday night and Iopted to take Friday off work to get my car fixed, since taking thebus or train would literally take several hours round-trip. I wasawoken by my phone that morning- a call from an unknown 510 area-codenumber. Since I am kind of a hermit and I hatetalking on the phone, I let it go to voice-mail and checked themessage an hour or so later once my car was at the shop. To say I wassurprised to hear Gary Holt on my voice-mail would be theunderstatement of the century. I called him back immediately and hetold me that Zetro had just quit the band, and,if I wasn't doing anything the next night, Exodushad a show in Mexico City and needed a singer. I had to think aboutit for a second, because to be honest I was intimidated as hell, butI knew I would be kicking myself for years if I didn't jump on thisopportunity.

At the airport with the Exo-dudes, I'm the idiot in the middle with the shit-eating "I can't believe I'm doing this!" grin.

Abit of quick background, I had met the Exodusguys in Europe in '03, when we had a day off in Austria and went totheir show with NuclearAssault, Grave,and Mortician. I gotsuper hammered, accidentally made out with a fat chick, threw up, andended up backstage partying with the Exo-dudes. They had a day off aswell and ended up seeing one of our shows or something, and theysomehow put it together that this kid that was at the front row 13 ormore times during the 2^ndBaloff era of the band, screaming every lyric to every song, was alsothe singer for this Death Metal band, Exhumed. In fact, a week before Baloff's death, Dekapitatorhad played a show with Exodusat the Covered Wagon in San Francisco. At any rate, they knew I was aBay Area local, sang for a Death Metal band and at least knew all thewords to the “Bonded By Blood” album. So as a last resort, theyrang me and asked me to fill-in for this show. All those years backin middle school screaming along to my favorite records were finallycoming in handy! Now, when is Voivod gonna call me when Snake has asore throat?!?!

Ihad a truly amazing time in Mexico City, and the whole show is reallya bit of a blur looking back, but it was an amazing night. One thingthat's really worth mentioning is the kids at the show. They didn'tcare that I wasn't Zetro or Baloff, they just really cared that aband that lost their singer 2 days earlier didn't cancel on them anddid whatever it took to come down and play for them. They werenothing but wonderful to me, and I can't thank them enough. I didn'tknow what to expect, I thought people were going to be really pissedoff or something, but mid-way through the first song, I looked downand saw a kid with a “Gore Metal” shirt on, and started to feellike everything was gonna be okay. The Exodusguys asked me about going to South America with them the followingweek, but I needed to be available for Repulsionand I didn't want to have just started a new job working for an oldfriend just to turn around and quit within the first month. If I hadjust gone for it, who knows what would have happened... My liver andbrain would probably have been destroyed several times over by now! When I heard “Shovel-Headed Kill Machine” a couple years later, Iknew that Exodus wasback to full-strength and then some, sounding better than they had inyears. In the meantime, I got to play in Repulsionfor four years or so, and years later, my own goofy band has a newalbum out that people seem to like, so I thinkeverything worked out pretty well all the way around.

I'vehad the audio recording of this show for years, but out of respect toExodus, I've beenhesitant to share it beyond a few close friends, but when I recentlysaw them on the Slayertour in Calgary last year (thank Satan they don't have to play atshitholes like the Covered Wagon these days) Gary and Tom (and Robfor that matter) gave me their blessing to post the audio from theshow. It's very raw, just a guy in the audience with a hand-held taperecorder, and my vocals are pretty shredded as the show goes on, butit's at least good for a laugh – or in case you need to rememberreally obscure, random Metal trivia facts, haha! If you want tonit-pick and critique my performance, go ahead, but keep in mind Ihad literally norehearsal with the band, and one day to learn the lyrics to (at thetime) new songs like “War is my Shepherd”, “Shroud Of Urine”and “Scar Spangled Banner”. We ran through those tunes and“Blacklist” at soundcheck, “Blacklist” was a little rough sowe dropped it. Everything else was just done on the fly. It was apleasure and an honor to share the stage with one of my absolutefavorite bands of all time and I want to thank those guys again forletting me do it, and for giving the go-ahead and share thisrecording with the fine folks of the interweb. That said, I would love to see any video of this show, if such a thing exists. This was before literally everything was on youtube, so I've never come across any footage of it. If you have it, get in touch!

So here it is:

Exodus in Mexico City, 9/11/04 Part 1

Exodus in Mexico City, 9/11/04 Part 2

And the tour recap continues...

2011-12-12T04:31:00.000-08:00

My exciting new shelf.
I needed somewhere to put my Shogun Warrior -
it really ties the room together.

Andso we continue with our seemingly endless saga of road warrior-ism... As those of you who have been following our story so far mayremember... We had spent the summer criss-crossing the western two-thirds ofthe US and Canada with Macabre , Cephalic Carnageand Withered- topping things off with a trip to Europe for a four-day,four-festival marathon. We got back from Belgium late Monday night,August 15^th, more than ready for a bit of rest. I have toadmit, I was pretty psyched about having a month and a half off theroad. While I was still in Orange County (after Rob kindly pickedMike and I up from LAX) I went out and bought a new amp, a Peavey6505+, a new phone that doesn't totally suck, as well as amuch-needed new bookshelf that actually fits all my records (for now,haha!). When you live on the central California coast, you're hoursaway from the nearest Guitar Center and Ikea, so I decided to makethe most of my proximity to mega-shopping during my Tuesday in SoCal.

Amp mod in progress.
Wes and Rob: Working hard. Me: hardly working.
Good times.

SinceI'm talking about the gear I bought, I want to give you a brief ideaof how out of control my gear situation was when we did the “AllGuts...” record: for starters, I didn't even own an amplifier. Ihad three guitars in various states of disrepair (now at least one isfunctioning at 100%, another at about 75%, while there's still one inpretty bad shape), some pedals (noise suppressor, tuner, and tubescreamer) and a busted Marshall cabinet. While on the Macabretour, I picked up a Line 6 relay wireless system, a delay and EQpedal for a lead boost, a pedal board to organize my crap and a newstand case for the side of the stage. In early June, Wes set up myold Ibanez RGT-350 so I wouldn't have to keep using my shitty blue RG270 (that I used at MDF and our first few shows in Europe). TheRG-270 used to be my back-up guitar before the wiring in my RGT gotshot to hell and the bridge rusted beyond usefulness. I got a new,Gotoh bridge for the RGT-350, which totally rules and stays in tuneperfectly after Wes' expert set-up work. After the North Americantour ended, Wes also fixed my cabinet by removing the circuit boardand replacing all the wiring (I think he removed the circuit board –I really know next to nothing about all the technical stuff) as wellas doing a really cool mod on it. He and Rob lined the whole front ofthe cabinet with caulk that gave it a lot more bottom end and reallydarkened up the sound of the cabinet. I think it sounds better thanthe rectifier cabinets, to be honest, because it still has a bit ofthat Marshall warmth. If you're wondering how we recorded therecord... We recorded everything with Wes' and Ryan's (Butler atArcane Digital Recording) gear.

The bar whose name I have
forgotten. But I remember the pic
of Billy Dee Williams distinctly!

Ihad enough time in those six weeks to play a really fun free Gravehillshow in Los Angeles at a cool bar where I tried Johnnie Walker Greenfor the first time. It's expensive, but I highly recommend it! MattOlivo from Repulsion came out and hooked me up with an awesomeGenocide LP which totally made my night! The stage was about 6 inches high, and I totally got knocked flat on my ass by someone in the pit - always the sign of a good evening.

I also went up to my oldhometown of San Jose for Labor Day weekend to hang out with my oldExhumed and Scarecrow band-mates and managed to get aDUI, which was a bit of a drag to say the least. Luckily, my licensewouldn't become suspended until after we were supposed to leave fortour so I was free to roam around and get whatever needed to get donein the interim. One thing that was a bit of a sticky wicket about theDUI was that my court date was set for October 18^th –the day we were scheduled to play in Ljubljana, Slovenia, so I endedup having to spring for a lawyer to go to court for me... Which meantthat on top of the thousands of dollars for the DUI + classes, I hadto fork over another $1500 for a lawyer. Awesome. Needless to say, Ididn't buy anymore gear during / after the Goatwhore / Havoktour we finished in November... But more on that later.

Now that is a cool record!
My Death Metal nerd status:
Assured!!!

Ourplan when we did the record was that we would just concentrate ondoing a couple of festivals and then maybe add a few dates dependingon what the vibe was with the band and the reaction to the album,etc. etc. Needless to say, things grew beyond our expectations prettyquickly with “All Guts...” and we ended up kind of piecing tourstogether around the festivals we already had booked – so our NorthAmerican tour ended up being two separate three-week tours, ratherthan one five-week tour. Europe was sporadic in a similar fashion.Having already played a bunch of places with Atheist in April,and a few more in June, we had some pretty wide swaths of uncoveredground there. So we made plans to trek back to Europe in Septemberand October with Cephalic Carnage. As things were a bitslow coming together logistically, the tour ended up kicking off inOctober. In the meantime we decided to hit the California DiscordFest, since we had been talking about doing a “punk rock” styleshow in Los Angeles anyway. Several scenarios were discussed, mostlyrevolving around Exhumed + Despise You at theBoulevard, but this festival featuring Dropdead, Rattus,Ghoul, Magrudergrind, Lack Of Interest,Despise You and many others seemed to cover the sameground more effectively, so we opted to do this instead. Then my oldfriend Joe Axler (drummer extraordinaire for Splatterhouse,Book Of Black Earth, etc.) hit me upabout the Discord weekend. It turned out that his new band, thekiller Theories (click the link to download their record for free, dude!) was playingsome shows on their way down from Seattle with the also excellentTransient and waswondering if we'd like to do a bay area show in addition to thefestival. A few emails to our intrepid agent, Dan Rozenblum at thePantheon Agency (who not coincidentally is Theories'agent as well) and we had managed to squeeze into a last minute spotat the Uptown in Oakland. I made sure we got my former band-mates'new band Mortuous (featuringCol Jones on drums and Mike Beams on guitar) on the bill as well andthings were set for a pretty fun weekend. Wes flew to Orange Countyfrom Arizona and he and Rob arrived in time for a couple days ofrehearsal. We worked in a few different songs to the set, adding newtracks “Distorted And Twisted To Form”, “Death Knell” and“Necrotized” as well as “Torso” from the Hemdalesplit. After a couple of rehearsals (and the aforementioned cabinetrepair / mod) we were ready for a weekend of grind.

Rehearsing in SLO. With any luck, we may have actually
been in tune and playing the same song in this photo!

Hammy blasting away at rehearsal.

Sinceall this stuff was more or less local (San Luis Obispo is about fourhours south of Oakland and four hours north of Los Angeles), we weredoing the drive in our own cars, my SUV and Mike's pickup with aminimal amount of gear. Foolishly, the night before we left, Rob,Wes and I drank some hash-infused rum. I failed to take into accountthat the longer hash (or weed for that matter) sits in alcohol, themore potent it becomes. The last time I imbibed this feloniousconcoction, I had a pretty tall glass mixed with Grapefruit juice –the vitamin C from the juice supposedly makes it hit you a bitharder. It was pretty intense. With this in mind, I fixed us each apretty small glass with ice – about the size of a generous “onthe rocks” drink. Well, it had been a couple of months at leastsince the last time I had indulged in this particular libation, so ithad plenty of time to steep in the rum and it hit even harder thistime. This is worth mentioning because when the three of us woke upthe next morning, we were all still very much under the influence.When we met up with Mike that morning at our jam space, he could tellwe were a bit sideways. Okay, let's be honest: we were stillhigh as fuck. Rob, Wes and I aren't particularly habitual stoners, sowe were pretty spaced out as we drifted through the trip to Oaklandin a heavy haze of stupefaction. I was still not quite right when Iate a burrito around 5:00 that evening or so, but the food reallyhelped a lot. I was slowly coming back to a state resemblingnormalcy, which was a relief since I did not want to have to play theshow stoned. I've never done that before, but it doesn't seem like agood idea and I am stoked that I didn't have to start in 2011.

Alittle bit about this Oakland show: The Uptown is not a rock / metalclub – it's more of a “club” club. Cover bands and dance nightsand shit. So most metal people don't really like going there. StrikeOne. Also, Hammers OfMisfortune wasplaying the same night in San Francisco. Strike Two. The club alreadyhad a cover band booked for that night, so our show was schedule tostart at 5:30 PM and run until 9:30. If you know anything about theBay Area, the traffic there is terrible, so if you're off work in SanJose / San Francisco / Concord at five, there's no way you can be inOakland by 5:30. Strike Three. Oh yeah, and we had just played apacked show in San Francisco a month ago, which usually hurts yourdraw in a city 8 miles across the bay. So, there goes my baseballmetaphor. The point of all this is... this wasn't looking like it wasgoing to be a good show.

Andit wasn't. Things were already off to a rocky start when two of theMortuous guys werecaught in traffic (I'm not gonna name names, but Mike Beams is onethat comes to mind, haha!) and didn't make it to the venue in time toeven play their set. They ended up setting up half their gear, andthen tearing it down 30 minutes later without playing a note, whichwas a bummer. Transientwas up next, and played an awesome set of powerviolence to a prettyempty house. Theoriesfollowed and also sounded killer, despite the lack of much of anaudience. By the time we got onstage, some folks actually startedfiltering in and the place had gone from sparse to not that bad(although by no means great). I got to meet Mike's family which wascool, and we tested out our new set, which went pretty smoothly.There was another show in Oakland at a warehouse that Mortuoushad jumped on (which probably didn't help the draw either), so weheaded over after we loaded out to actually catch their set thistime. They played their killer take on early 90s Swedish / Finnishdeath metal, and sounded heavy as hell. Since we had to be in LA thenext day, we headed back to San Luis for some proper sleep and gotback about three or four am.

Exhumed drummers past (R) and present (L) -
Mike and Danny at CA Discord Fest (the 1st venue)
Truly a meeting of the grinds...

Thenext day it was nice to wake up sober. We headed down to Los Angelesstoked that the set had gone well, and feeling ready to rock. We gotto the site of the festival, a huge warehouse space, and despite theshow being sold-out, the crowd was a bit sparse. Of course, it wasstill early. Since there was no alcohol at the festival, as soon aswe finished loading our shit in, we decided to head to a bar. Theshow was in a really industrial area, so it was about a 2 mile walkto the nearest place that served beer: a bikini strip bar (inCalifornia, it's illegal to sell alcohol anyplace with full nudity,so there are a bunch of topless / bikini bars that try to split thedifference). It was not a cool MotleyCrue type of stripbar where chicks that dress like Kelly Bundy dance, but a fancy 21^stcentury hip-hop style one. They had just opened and the place waspretty much empty – which was cool because we didn't feel quite soout of place, but not that cool because we were the only people therefor the dancers to harass with their lap-dance sales pitches. After acouple of drinks we started getting texts from various LA friendsthat were arriving, so we headed back to the venue with a plan to hita liquor store and drink in someone's van / car / etc.

Wegot back and ran into a bunch of friends, procured beer and headed tothe rear parking lot where we were joined by our friend Deedee, whohad done our merch on the Macabre/ Cephalic tour. Aswe were proceeding to get inebriated, Aimee from Progeria/ Bastard Noisehappened to walk by and told us that the show was being broken up bythe cops and that everyone was getting all their shit and leaving.Needless to say, that got our attention. We got back to the venue,explained to the police that we were one of the bands and we had toget our stuff out of there. They seemed cool with that, and I didn'tsee them beating anyone up or anything, but there was a lot ofconfusion. In the hubbub, we managed to lose a toolbox, Wes' backpackand something of Mike's I can't recall at the moment. I managed tofind the promoter, who didn't have much information for me, butassured me that steps were being taken to get something going thenext day (Sunday) where us and a few other bands would still play. Ofcourse we agreed and exchanged numbers so we could (hopefully) playthe next day.

You know it's a party house when this is the
clock on the wall.

Therewas quite a bit of confusion as to what to do next, as there was ahouse show that Magrudergrind was playing, a party nearby, and someother stuff going on. We opted for the party house, because we didn'twant to try to see Magrudergrind and end up being at yet another show police were going to shut down that night. Luckily for us, we're touring Europe with them in February so we'll have ample opportunity to see them soon. More on that later... Apparently that show went off without a hitch, which is cool,but we ended up going to the Poor Kids' Radio house in LA. Every Saturday they have a party there while they do their online radio show,spinning killer punk, metal and crossover. We grabbed some burgersand more beer and headed over. It ended up being a prettyhappening scene there with a lot of folks cruising by and a lot ofbeers drained. We had a bottle of Jack Daniels whose appearancedictated that we would remain there all night getting stupid. We thenproceeded to get totally blitzed. Wes crashed out in my car aroundone, and later, Rob got a bit riled up (as he sometimes does whenthings get really alcohol-soaked - hence his nickname "Wild Card") and almost fell over into a bunchof guitars, which was unilaterally frowned upon. After trying to keep Rob fromfighting people for about 30 minutes, I finally decided I was tootired to care and passed out on a picnic table outside at about 5:30in the morning. I woke up cold at some point in the early morninglight and wandered into the house and passed out on the floor, whichdemonstrated some comparably sound judgment. I discovered later when Iwoke up that someone had punched my windshield and cracked it prettybadly. I suppose that's a lot better than our gear getting stolen outof the back of my car, but still... C'mon man. Anyway, it was Sunday morning (okay, morning-ish), so we headed to Rob's housein Anaheim for football and see if there would actually be ashow to play.

Hijinks at the Poor Kids' Radio House. There was no
lampshade, so Wes made do with a frisbee.
Rob in pre "Wild Card" mode...

Ihave to admit that I was very skeptical about our prospects forplaying that day, but my cynicism was unfounded. The Discord folkshad found a place in Fullerton called the Riffhaus (which was conveniently verynearby Rob's place) and were having two mini-shows. I missed theirfirst call somehow or other, so ended up on the second show of theday with Dropdead, Ghoul (who played both sets) andMange. We found the place pretty easily and had a few hours tokill once we got there, so we headed to a nearby bar called Bananas (the name alonetotally sold me on the place) with Leon, Danny, and Ross. It was likean Exhumed reunion party in there, and we all had a laugh,several drinks and caught up. We totally missed Mange, and headedback in time to catch about half of Ghoul's set, which wasreally, really fucking good. I was grinning ear to ear the wholetime. The place was tiny and was totally packed – you would'veneeded a shoe-horn to get another person in there, and we had a greattime grinding it out for the kids. Dropdead followed and werefucking great, I hadn't seen them in years, and they are still one ofthe deadliest pure Grind bands out there. I think everyone was glad that there actually was a show toplay and the vibe was good all around. Wes stayed down in OrangeCounty with Rob for a family wedding the following weekend, andMike and I headed back to SLO to rest up for the European run withCephalic Carnage we had looming in our very near future – a mere thirteendays later.

To be continued at this blog in the same sense-shattering, pulse-pounding manner in which you have become (hopefully) accustomed...

Tour recap, Part One of many

2011-12-06T21:37:00.001-08:00

Tourrecaps are always tough... It's hard to remember everything thathappens, for many reasons. First off, we're usually drunkmost of the time anything interesting is going on. Secondly, thelonger you're on tour, the more things blend together into onecontinuous stream of sitting in the van, loading in, sitting in thevan, sleeping, sitting in the van, getting on a plane, hanging out inan airport, sitting in the van, loading out, sitting in the van,trying to fix things that get broken (strings, shoes, drum hardware,boxes, etc.), sitting in the van, eating, waiting to eat, sitting inthe van, well, you get the idea. Oh yeah, we occasionally play musictoo. Basically the average day consists of the following: 9 hours ofsleeping, 1 hour total of loading gear and merchandise in / out ofthe venue, 1 hour of eating, 1 hour of playing, 1 hour ofsoundchecking, and 11 hours of either driving in the van or waitingaround to do any of those other things. Of course, that's stillplenty of time to get into trouble when you're hanging out at a club/ bar with access to a large supply of alcohol, so we manage to makethe best of things. Sometimes the other guys ask me how I rememberall of the crap I write about in these blogs, and really it's the actof writing it all down that jogs my memory more than anything, sowhile some of the stuff in here is doubtless boring or tremendouslyunfunny, it at least helps me to make sense of what the fuck I'vebeen doing. So thanks for reading these little travelogues andhelping me clear all this shit out of my fairly damaged brain.

FourCountries, Four Festivals, Four Days, and Four Idiots

BrutalAssault, Jalo Metalli, Party San Open Air, and Ieper Festival

...Inwhich our heroes endure international travel at a withering pace,reunite with Leon del Muerte, become somewhat of a (bigger) laughing stock,and endure other pratfalls, trials and tribulations...

File under: miscellaneous shit to throw away next time I move.

Thelast tour recap I finished chronicled our Summer tour with Macabre,Cephalic Carnage and Withered. The weird thingis that we did that tour with the lineup of myself, the inimitableWes “Sunshine” Caley, Mike “Hammy” Hamilton, and Rob “WildCard” Babcock on bass and vocals. We played together for three anda half weeks and became a well-oiled, highly-trained musical killingmachine (well, as musical as Exhumed gets). Right after thetour, we headed to Europe for a marathon of four festival shows infour countries in four days, but with our old pal Leon del Muerte onbass and vocals. Even though our bass guitar is (lamentably) rarelyaudible, it was a bit of a weird dynamic shift playing with twodifferent bassist / vocalists, especially with minimal (and by that, I mean none) rehearsal time. Of course, I've known Leon sincearound '94, so personality-wise, there was no issue whatsoever, and we've all done this many, many times, so it's pretty smooth. Wes,Mike and myself flew out the Wednesday after the last show (3 days later) to Prague to get ready forour show at the Brutal Assault Festival in the Czech Republic. Leonwas at a convention for his job in San Diego and would join us in hte land of Pilsner Urquell and extremely hot women on Friday.

Wewere picked up by our driver at the airport, and again we used thegreat Czech company Fluffwheels, who provided us with a nice Sprintervan to kick around in as well as yet another friendly, highlycompetent driver whose name unfortunately escapes me at the time of this writing. Weheaded out to the town Brutal Assault was in and on to our hotel,which, oddly enough was on a golf course and was called "Nova America". Nothing like heading to eastern Europe for a taste of home. We wereone of the first overseas bands to arrive and looked / felt prettyout of place amongst the golfers, but the grounds were verdant, rustic and quite pleasant. Wes and I were assigned the “Arizona” room, whileMike and our driver had the “Indiana” room. There was nothingparticularly indicative of the states themselves in the rooms, butseeing places from our home country (and not particularly interestingplaces at that) re-tooled as something exotic was a bit weird. We atea late lunch, had a couple of beers, and then were asleep by 6 or 7pm. We were all exhaustedfrom being on the road for three weeks in the US and Canada andextremely jet-lagged, so we crashed out pretty hard. The next day weall woke up incredibly early and very, very hungry. I was up at about4:45 am and simply could not sleep anymore. Fucking jet lag. I went out in the hallwayand read a little bit until the sky started to lighten up about 5:30or so. I figured I might as well put on my headphones and go for a walk out on thecourse. In the pre-morning light, I saw a family of deer grazingpastorally in the meadow near the golf course, which was nice. I gotback by about 6:15 to find Mike wide awake as well. We were soon joinedby Wes, and the three of us proceeded to stalk the restaurant wherebreakfast would be served at 8. After an excruciatingly long twohours of waiting, we hit the continental breakfast with a vengeance.From what I could infer, the staff was not too stoked that we ate about four plates of food each and drank at least 5 or 6 glassesof water and juice. Full and relatively contented, we passed the nextfew hours changing guitar strings (Wes), reading and napping (me) andexploring the grounds and napping (Mike).

Thatafternoon we headed over to the festival to make sure our merchandisehad been shipped correctly. Not only had it been received, but it wasalready being sold, which was my main concern. We met up with anAmerican chick from New York who was our contact person for thefestival, and she gave us food / drink tickets, lanyards, and all ofthat good stuff that one needs at a festival. We dropped off our guitars and cymbals in theassigned area, and our driver headed back to Prague to pick up Leonfrom the airport. Our set wasn't until after 1:00 am that night/thenext morning, so we had plenty of time for him to arrive. Thefestival was organized by Thomas who used to do Bizarre LeprousProductions back in the 90s, and who I hadn't seen in quite a while,so it was nice to catch up with him. The festival grounds were an oldmilitary base – and I mean old. There were a number of weird backpassageways and a barracks-type area where there was a gypsy squat.Not your typical venue for a metal show. The whole place had a weird,in a cool way, vibe- even though there were some parts where you feltlike if you wandered off you would quickly stumble into something outof the movie “Hostel”.

Leonarrived on time and intact and we went for a meet and greet which was fun, and then headed to (surprise!) the artist bar. The artist barwas equipped with a tv that showed multi-camera footage of the actionunfolding onstage, so we hung out and had a few beers with the HailOf Bullets guys while watching Kreator and SuicidalTendencies on TV. Suicidal was surprisingly awesome. Motorheadwas on next, and being extremely lazy and tired from all thetraveling, I just stayed in the bar and watched their admittedlyawesome set. Then Morbid Angel hit the stage, and wewould be following them on the left-hand stage (the festival had two large side-by-side stages so that the audience could theoretically see every band, if they had the endurance) so we headed to ourtemporary dressing room and got prepared. Going into the show I feltlike it wouldn't really be much to write home about, considering theheadliners of the day had already played and we weren't even goingonstage until just after 1 in the morning. So I was a bit surprisedto look out at around 4,000 kids in the audience when we gotunderway. That was a great boost of energy that we needed,considering how tired we were that day. The sound on stage was a bitmuddy, but by the third song or so we were settled in and hitting onall cylinders. The festival set wasn't too different from what he hadbeen playing, but we cut out a few songs from the new record, since “As Hammer To Anvil” was the only new song that Leon had really played with the band extensively. We sent out “Decrepit Crescendo” to our old friend Curby fromObscene Productions to close things out and returned to the dressingroom exhausted, but psyched that so many people in the audience werestill up and functioning (let alone cheering) at such a late hour. Wewent to grab a Doner Kebab in the food area and ran into our oldfriend Jim Mack (who is from San Francisco, so his presence there was an extremely unexpected surprise) on the festival grounds which roundedout the night nicely. Finally we gathered all our shit and hit theroad back to the hotel so that we could wake up early the nextmorning to drive to Frankfurt so we could make our flight to Finlandthe following day. Sound convoluted? Probably because it was.

"Necromaniac" live at Brutal Assault.

Atany rate, we made it to the airport in time to fly to Finland, but after our driver dropped us off, wewere informed by the Finnair guy (who was a real dick about it) thatwe could only take one carry-on per person, or we would have to payover 300 Euro total to check our “extra” bags. Who the fuck everheard of one carry-on?!?! Anyway, we called our driver, had him turnaround and come back to the airport and consolidated our baggage,since we'd only be in Finland one night. We got back and boarded theplane without further incident aside from some dirty looks when thesame asshole took our tickets when we boarded. Once we were inFinland, everything seemed a lot nicer. The JaloMetalli festival isin Oulu, in the north of the country (yeah, in the north of thenorth) so we had to catch a connecting flight from Helsinki to Oulu.The Helsinki airport was ultra-modern, ultra-clean, andultra-expensive. It was everything that an American thinks of whenthey think of Scandinavia- modern, forest-y, sterile, polite, and very, very blonde. I have never seen so many people with allnatural platinum-blonde hair in my life. On the flight from Helsinkito Oulu, we were basically the only people on the flight who weren'tblonde. I have never felt so not-white in my life! Oulu is abeautiful tourist town in the north of Finland where people go to skiand relax – kind of like Aspen or Lake Tahoe from what I could gather. We were picked upfrom the tiny airport by van and drove into town to a very nice hotelwhere we immediately went upstairs and went back to sleep. By earlyevening we were up and showered and headed to the festival. JaloMetalli is a bit of a smaller festival, maybe 1500 people total inattendance, and we would end up missing basically every band wewanted to see there (but I did pick up a sweet Ozlongsleeve – “Turn The Cross Upside Down” still totally rules!)but we got there while Sepulturawas onstage.

Justlike at Brutal Assault, we were playing afterthe headliners, which wasn't really all that cool, but what can youdo. This night our time slot proved to be more of an impediment than in theCzech Republic, as the crowd was beginning to visibly thin out by thetime we actually played. The crowd that stuck around was a bitlifeless, until we ended the set, when they suddenly got really loudand enthusiastic and demanded an encore. Of course, since we hadn'trehearsed with Leon at all, we basically had prepared our festival set(40 minutes) and that was it. We all said the same thing when we leftthe stage - “where was all that energy for the first 39 minutes?”If you want to check out pictures and a recap of the whole day we played, you can check it out here

After our set, we met up with the Evildeadand Napalm Deathguys backstage and made plans to hit the bar in town. We werescheduled to leave the hotel for the airport at 5am the next day, andsince it doesn't really get too dark in Finland during the summer,the bars are open until 4am. It seemed pointless to try to sleep for4 hours when we could be drinking, so we went back to the hotel whereI took a really quick shower and we hit the "Nuclear Bar". Yes, that is the actual name. How badass is that? Several "Nuclear Girl" jokes were made by Wes and I to the amusement of nobody (unless you have the "Drawing Down The Moon" record by Beherit you won't know what the hell we were talking about, and even then you probably won't think that's particularly funny) . The "NuclearBar" is basically the city's rock bar, and it was pretty full of folksfrom the festival. We met Antti Boman of my personal favorite Finnishband, Demilich, andhung out with him for a while, as well as our aforementioned friendsfrom America (I say America, since Mitch and Danny were the only Napalmdudes that made it out to the bar).

Eventually4am came around, and we headed to all night food truck to grab somefood. By this point, we were all pretty wasted and feeling good. Weended up standing in line for well over a half hour with all theother folks that had let out from the various bars. A really nice local Finnishdude whose girlfriend oddly lived in Hayward of all places was ourguide around the city. Somehow we ended up talking to some locals whowere also really drunk and found us hilarious. I remember asking“What is Finnish food anyway? Is it just the shit that Swedendoesn't want that washes up over here?” Or something incrediblywitty and culturally sensitive like that. A woman behind us was notamused (her boyfriend seemed to think it was funny, but couldn't showit) and let us know in no uncertain terms. I apologized and told herthat I knew I was being rude and I didn't mean it, and that of courseeveryone knows that the national dish of Finland was “penguinshit”. This didn't go over too well either. I forget exactly whathappened next, but I think one of us was riding some random Finn'sbicycle around the small park where the food truck was located, andthe woman was eventually dragged away yelling and screaming by herboyfriend. Of course we all thought we were exceedingly funny andclever (in our defense, some of the people around us were laughing aswell). We finally got some sandwiches that I have to think tasted considerably betterthan penguin shit and we headed back to thehotel to gather our belongings and get back to the airport. By 7:30am wewere dead tired, sleeping on the floor of the terminal. We wearilyboarded the flight back to Helsinki and sleep-walked our way onto theconnection to Frankfurt. The Sepulturaguys were on the flight as well, but we were so out of it we didn'teven make their acquaintance.

Nothing makes you feel like a proper band douche than copious amounts of lanyards - the fancier the better.

Wefinally got back to Germany and piled in the van to head out to theParty San Open Air festival. I don't think any of us remember thedrive there at all, we just slept the whole way. We woke up in asmall town called Bad Berka where our driver was having a bit of ahard time finding the festival. Usually these European festivals arein relatively small towns, where there's enough room to set up big stages, tents, etc., so you end up in weird little out-of-the-wayplaces more often than not. One thing that is a good indicator thatthe festival is actually happening is that you'll see a lot oflong-hairs wandering around a small town with patch jackets, and there was adistinct lack of long-hairs and patch jackets on the streets of BadBerka that day. Our driver frantically consulted his notes to doublecheck the address... And lo and behold, we had two sets ofinformation, one indicating that the fest was in Bad Berka, andanother indicating that it was in Schlotheim... But the most recentinfo we had indicated Bad Berka. A few phone calls and texts later,we discovered that the fest was indeed in Schlotheim – about 45minutes away. Of course, the road we were supposed to take was closeddue to construction. This was a night when we were scheduled to playat around six in the evening – so time was running very, veryshort. We had already cancelled the meet-and-greet we had planned for3:30 that afternoon and it was already after 4:00 when we had arrivedin Bad Berka. The folks at the festival were kind enough to swap ourspot with Taake (who were total gentlemen about it) so wewere still able to get onstage and perform, but they had alsoannounced to the entire audience that we had driven to the wrongtown. Which, needless to say, did not reflect well on our competence.As soon as we rolled up, people started ribbing us, asking how BadBerka was, etc. Whoever thinks Germans have no sense of humor, thinkagain. It's not that funny, and it's moderately humiliating, but itis a sense of humor. We got there as Taakewas taking the stage and we had about an hour to get our passes, sort out merchandising,our backstage, beer, catering, change clothes, tune our instruments etc. etc. So... it was not the most relaxing day. But by the time we got onstage,everything was fine and we came out and had a pretty kickass set. Iwant to again thank the Taakeguys for switching with us at the last minute so that we were able toget out and play this killer fest. I got to see HailOf Bulletsagain, and they had sprung for pyro (which was way out of our budget)so their set was complete with flames and explosions, making it extraepic. Luckily, despite the fact that it looked like it was about torain the entire day, precipitation was not forthcoming and we wereable to enjoy our day there in the mud without getting drizzled onthe whole time. We headed to the bar for a while and hung out for awhile, then hit the merchandise tents where I got a sweet Witchfyndehoodie and grabbed a Scorpions“In Trance” shirt for Wes. By the time At The Gateswas playing, we were all incredibly tired and split a little early tohead to the hotel, which was a bit disappointing, but very necessary.We finally got to shower and get a bit of sleep before grabbingbreakfast and heading out to Belgium early the next day.

Here's an interesting video that kind of gives a sense of the whole vibe of Party San that some dude put to one of our songs. Pretty cool overview of a German Death Metal festival for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

Again,the entire trip to Belgium was spent fast asleep. The Ieper Fest wasa bit different, as it was primarily a Hardcore festival with a fewMetal bands sprinkled in for variety. Apparently the fest had beenstraight-edge until a few years prior, which would have been a majorproblem for us. I think beer was the only thing keeping us going forthese four grueling days. There was no meat served at the fest,though, which was kind of interesting. The fest itself was outdoorsin a muddy farm area, as it had rained the last few days. Again, wewere lucky weather-wise in that skies were blue and clear. We met upwith Anthony from Tombsand had a couple of beers with them and their tour-mates TheSecret, both greatbands and great dudes. I caught their set and they were fuckingmassive. We played second to last in the tent stage, right beforeDecapitated, and theshow went over surprisingly well with the hardcore crowd. It was atotally different scene from the previous day in Germany, where itwas an exclusively Death / Black Metal crowd, but it was a lot of funregardless. Our final night in Europe was spent in a bare-boneshostel, with all five of us (band + driver) bunking in the same room,which wasn't as cool as having three hotel rooms like we'd had the last three days but it was by no means terrible either. The only bummer was that there was no delicious European breakfast buffet awaiting us in themorning. I always love the Muesli, yogurt, fresh fruit, meat,bread and cheese that most European hotels provide. We left earlythat morning for the Brussels airport and eventually California.

"Forged In Fire" live at Ieper Fest

Wewere shocked when we went to check in at the Delta counter and theytold us that Wes' guitar was considered “oversize” and they'dhave to charge us $250 to check it. I argued with the really hotchick at the counter first, who then called hermanager over and then I got into with him and started swearing andgetting pretty hot under the collar, but it was all to no avail. Wewere stewing over this bullshit while we were getting ready to gothrough security and I was already planning on calling the airline toget the money back as soon as we got to America. I realized (having been fucked over by airlinesseveral times in the past) that I should probably get the names ofthe people I had talked to. They were dicks about that too, but Iwas pissed off and not to be dissuaded.We went through security and were waiting at the gate when Wes' namewas called to come up to the ticket counter. My only thought was“what now?!?” Having flown Delta (who I DO NOT recommend toanyone) several times this year, Wes had already had one guitar casetotally smashed by their baggage handlers, and had another bag of hissent to the wrong airport, and they had lost my guitar and a box ofmerchandise on two separate occasions (I eventually got both of themback, but it was still a major fucking hassle). I decided to go upthere with him, half in an effort to help him sort out whateverbullshit they were about to conjure, and half just to see what itcould possibly be. Instead, they gave us back the money we had paidfor the oversize charge, stating that they didn't realize his bag wasa musical instrument, which was exempt from the charge. Now, Wes'guitar case is literally shaped like a fucking flying V. And, three out of fourof us have long hair, and WE'RE ALL CARRYING MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, butsomehow, they "didn't realize" it was a musical instrument. What abunch of assholes. Anyway, feeling moderately vindicated (they hadsomehow managed to charge us an extra 40 Euro for some other bullshitanyway) we finally boarded the plane and headed back to the statesfor some serious rest. I for one was looking forward to having a couple of months off, buying some new gear and of course, catching up on some proper sleep.

To give you an idea of how much traveling we did, we left Wednesday from Los Angeles to Prague (with one connection) - about 5,900 miles, then we rode from Prage to Frankfurt Saturday, about 315 miles, then flew about 1600 miles from Frankfurt to Oulu (with a stopover in Helsinki), then flew out the next morning - another 1600 miles back to Frankfurt, then drove another 175 miles to Party San, played, got up the next day, drove 450 miles to Ieper, played, then drove 90 miles to brussels, and then flew another 5600 or so miles back to Los Angeles. All told, we traveled about 15,730 miles in six days. Gnarly. When we told our friends in America what we were doing everyone said - "That's awesome! You guys are so lucky!" When we told our friends in Europe what we were doing everyone said "That's insane! You guys are fucking retarded!" In the end I think they were both right.

Top 10 of 2011 list

2011-12-06T19:11:00.001-08:00

Obviously, this blog is mostly designed to talk about what's been going on (and what's going to happen) in the weird and wacky world of Exhumed, but since it's the end of the year, I figured I'd throw something a little different up here. People often ask me what new stuff I'm into, random people as well as "journalists", and I frequently draw a blank. Well, now that I'm home, rested and have my thoughts collected, here are my personal top 10 records of the past year - my opinions may not necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the band (or anyone else, for that matter) but here they are nonetheless.

Enjoy!

- Matt

Bestof 2011

WhenDecibel asked me for my top 5 records of the year, I was on the roadand was not only sleep-deprived and in desperate need of a shower,but I didn't really even have a particularly good guage for whatactually came out in 2011 (for instance, the Black Nasty “SharkTank” album I mentioned actually came out in 2010- whoops!). Soafter getting home and having access to my full music library, (andusing the “sort by year” function in iTunes) I decided to make amore thorough and correct list for the heck of it. I feel a littleweird about it since I haven't heard the new Bjork or Coldplayyet, and both of them usually put out stuff that I really love, buttime marches on and I should finish this list before the year isover. And no, I'm not kidding, I really dig Bjork andColdplay. That said, as much as I love Thrash and traditionalHeavy Metal, it looks like the Death Metal comeback is in full force,because most of my picks for this year are Death Metal. So here aremy top ten for the year and nine more honorable mentions. Enjoy andfeel free to add your own picks in the comments or tell me whatawesome / shitty taste I have.

#1.Deceased – Surreal Overdose

I'vealways loved Deceased, ever since our original drummer Col Jones bought the “GutWrench” EP back in '91. It took me a little while to get used tothe blatant Heavy Metalisms that started around “Fearless UndeadMachines” , but I grew to love that record, and its successor“Supernatural Addiction” slowly became my favorite Deceasedalbum – until 2011. A band is not supposed to make their bestrecord 24 years into their career, but, fuck, they just did. HavingKing back on drums injects a really intense raw, edge to the songs,with some really ferocious tempos. I listened to this masterpiece of“Death Metal From The Grave” for a week straight when I first gotit. Describing this album is kind of pointless – It sounds likeDeceased, but it effectively mixes the ferocity of the reallyearly stuff (the pre “Luck of the Corpse” era) with the refinedclass and confidence of “Fearless...” and beyond. And on thetrack “Cloned (Day of the Robot)” the robot voice from the song“Birth By Radiation” is back – how fucking awesome is that?!?!?Synthesizing the best elements of classic Voivod, IronMaiden and pre-1990 Death Metal, Deceased has createdwhat is hands-down the metal album of the year for me and Ican't recommend it highly enough.

#2.Hammock w/Steve Gibley and Tim Powles of the Church – Asleep InThe Downlights EP /

Hammock- Black Metallic Single

Whennot listening to metal (which is most of the time, let's face it) Ihave been delving deeper into the “post-rock” genre. While I'vebeen disappointed to discover that there are an army of bands tryingto simply out-Mogwai Mogwai, Hammock is one bandthat has really stood out as being amazing. Without the bleak,totally depressing vibe of the all the post-GY!BE bands,Hammock make music that is really beautiful and quiteemotional, while being very ethereal and spacey. They cemented theirplace in my current favorite bands list with their two 2011 Eps-first I got the “Black Metallic” single, which is a cover of theCatherine Wheel song. If you are into shoegaze /metalgaze / My Bloody Valentine at all, you owe it to yourselfto go back and get Catherine Wheel's “Ferment”album, it is a total masterpiece. Hammock did a great coverthat evokes the original, but is uniquely their own. The femalevocals add a totally different dimension to the song. Then on top ofthat, they went and teamed up with two of the dudes from TheChurch – one of my favorite depressing 80s bands (TheChurch are best known for the song “Under The Milky Way”which most folks nowadays think of as “that cool song from DonnieDarko that's not by Echo And The Bunnymenor Tears For Fears”)for their 4 song “Asleep in the Downlights” EP. This EP has twoquasi-instrumental tracks and two tracks with the guys from TheChurch doing vocals. Those two tracks are fucking amazing,beautiful, heartbreaking, and deep. Great, great stuff.

#3.Mortuous – Rehearsal tape '11

Ihave to admit a bit of bias on this one. Mortuous is the new bandfeaturing my old band-mates Col Jones (drums) and Mike Beams(guitar). It's also a bit unfair putting something in your “tophowever many records of the year” that no one can buy or hear.However, you can watch some halfway decent quality videos of thisband on youtube. This is good ol' fashioned Death Metal in theFinnish / Swedish / British tradition. Tons of murky doomy passages ala “Lost Paradise” or the slow stuff by Demigod orConvulse colliding head on with gnarly Incantationstyle fast parts – everything is dark, obscure and totallysickening. Of course, there's a hint of that “Sunlight” guitartone going on as well. Overall, this is really fucking morbidunderground Death Metal at its absolute finest – now these guysjust need to finish recording their actual demo and release somethingso everyone can tell me how cool I am for knowing about this bandbefore they did.

#4.Zombi – Escape Velocity

Thisband is awesome and so is this record. This CD stayed in my car formonths and months. The first track in particular is just amazing.It's music to drive a spacehip through the neighborhoods in “BladeRunner” on your way to a coke party in 1986. This record has beenthe soundtrack to many, many long drives from Orange County to SanLuis Obispo for me in '11. If you haven't heard this band, imagineVangelis, Tangerine Dream, and Goblinforming a band. But only the cool shit from those artists, none ofVangelis' “Chariots of Fire” stuff or Goblin'sweird (albeit occasionally awesome) pseudo-Eurofunk. This record, andreally everything that Zombi does is totally badass. And thecover gets points for having a levitating naked woman and a DeLoreanon it. Choice.

#5.This Will Destroy You – Tunnel Blanket

Anotherpost-rock find, this one courtesy of Pandora (thank you “SigurRos station”!), this record unmistakeably has that bleak,hopeless edge to it. Complete with ambient noise, almost unbearablesilences and slowly shifting instrumentation that makes me feel likeI'm watching a beautiful tree rot in zero gravity. Contemplative,layered, and depressing, this is a great album to sit and zone outto. Or to put on while reading extremely depressing books. That'swhat I did during all the drives on our European tour with CephalicCarnage: listen to this band, Hammock and Manualwhile reading The Possessed” by Dostoyevsky and a collection ofChekov's short stories. Good times! Their “Young Mountain” albumis a bit happier and more uplifting, and also killer.

#6.Cianide – Gods Of Death

2011was the year people finally started waking up to how fucking awesomethis band is and always has been. Most of my friends were all abuzzafter finally witnessing Cianide live at MDF this year, andwith good reason. I almost fell over the first time I heard the roughmix of this album at Scott's house in Chicago, because it seemed likeeach riff was somehow heavier than the last. It's fucking insane. Ilove Scott's weird wah-wah pedal solos that sound like an even morefucked up Autopsy. “DeadAnd Rotting” is the heaviest song of the year for sure.While “Gods Of Death” isn't drastically different from most oftheir records, that's what makes it so fucking great. With a soundakin to taking a Hellhammer 45 and playing at 33 RPM mixedwith the most brutal Master-style riffs since 1987 and arelentless barrage of ridiculous heaviness (even their fast stuff isheavier than most DM band's “heavy stuff”), Cianide is oneof the ultimate pure Death Metal bands today.

#7.Rotten Sound – Cursed

Swedish-style buzzsaw guitartone? Check. Incredibly pissed off vocals? Check. One word songtitles? Check.Totally unhinged drumming? Check. Best Grind album ofthe year? Check. Sure everything blurs together on this record, butit's a Grindcore record. That's what it's supposed to sound like.Fucking amazing.

#8.Bullet – Highway Pirates

Whilemuch has been made of the recent “return” of NWOBHM-influencedtraditional Metal, Bullet have been doing it for years. I gottheir “Heavy Metal Highway” EP back in '03 from their guitaristHampus Klang (ex-Hypnosia and Birdflesh) and haven'tlooked back since. This album is their most sophisticated yet – andit's not particularly sophisticated at all, haha! The guitars stillhave that pure Marshall / Gibson tone and everything sounds superlive and organic. The solos are noticeably more interesting than onprevious albums, but still firmly rooted in the pre-'83 Tipton /Downing school. Bullet simply synthesize “Restless &Wild”, “On Through The Night”, “British Steel” and “HighwayTo Hell” into a super fun, catchy, and energetic HM experience thatkicks ass from front to back. It's worth saying that these guys doAC/DC flawlessley – which is a lot harder than it seems. Infact they do it much, much better than Airbourne's secondalbum (check out Bullet's “Stay Wild” if you doubt me). Abig plus is the voice of Dag Hell Hofer – whose post-Udo / BrianJohnson wailing is certainly not technically brilliant, but bristleswith energy and personality – something lacking in so many metalsingers these days. The only band that I think is currently as goodas these guys at playing pure Heavy Metal is Enforcer (whoBullet did a split 7” with for Record Store Day that I wouldLOVE to get my hands on), but their album “Diamonds” dropped lastyear, so now it's Bullet's turn to get into my top albums ofthe year list. “Back On The Road” has got to be the ultimatepre-game partying anthem of 21^st Century traditional Metal– at least until the next Bullet album.

#9.Trap Them – Darker Handcraft

Iam a latecomer to this band (as well as the pretty similar - andlikewise excellent - Black Breath)and I am gonna call bullshit right now. This band is not really Hardcore.It's mostly straight-up Death Metal in the old Entombed way with somecool Tragedy / D-Beat stuff going on that's played by Americans withshort hair. And it's fucking awesome. There is some D-beat stuff, but it just ends up sounding like Dismember due to the production, whichmakes it really awesome. Bombastic riffs and inventive drums providea nice template for some seriously pissed-off vocals – which arethe only thing that's truly “Hardcore” about this band to myears. I guess if a dude is screaming and angry sounding it'sconsidered HC now and you have to make a monster voice for it to beconsidered Death Metal? I'm too old for these kind of distinctions at this stage in the game, and I couldn't care less anyway. This record is great because it's obviously influenced by theStockholm sound (the first riff in “All By The Constant Vulse” isone of the best Swedish Death Metal riffs I've heard since the 90's)but it takes that influence and then actually does something uniqueand interesting with it.

#10.Talkdemonic – Ruins

Anothermellow, moody instrumental album, this one is a bit more electronic.What really sold it for me was the synth line in “MidcenturyMotion.” It totally reminds me of something from the music from theoriginal Legend Of Zelda game way back when. I can't put myfinger on it, but it's in there somewhere, or some NES game or other.Overall, the music is far more varied than the NES music, featuringfeedback loops, droning melodies, mesmerizing percussion, stringsections, and everything necessary to tune in, turn on and drop out.This is a great zone / chill / space out album for sure. It'ssoothing, textured, and dreamlike, making it perfect backgroundmusic, but there's enough nuance and quality there for you to reallysink into as well. Since there are no lyrics, picking standouttracks is a bit difficult. The album works really well as a wholepiece and definitely will take you into several different states ofconsciousness if you let it.

Honorablementions:

- in no particular order -

Haemorrhage– Hospital Carnage

Well,this is another great Haemorrhage album, and if you like this band,then you'll like this album. No real surprises here, just a lot ofreally fun post-Carcass Goregrinding madness. The video for“Flesh Devouring Pandemia” is also very well done. Totallyawesome stuff, and it's about time that Haemorrhage andExhumed were finally labelmates!

Havok– Time Is Up

Thisrecord is a bit uneven, but when this band is firing on all cylinders(on tracks like “Fatal Intervention”, “Get Out Of My Way”,“Covering Fire” and “D.O.A.”), they evoke everything greatabout American Thrash Metal from 1987-1990. The track “KillingTendencies” also shows that they have what it takes to headconfidently into “Countdown To Extinction” territory. These guysare not only one of the few young thrash bands actually worth theirweight in vinyl, but with any luck they're on the edge of abreakthrough.

Landmine Marathon – Gallows

RyanButler just seems to be able to summon an endless supply of BoltThrower riffs that continue to astound me. Combine those withthe killer crust / d-beat riffs that are all over this record, andyou've got a definite winner. The blast beats being a bit stiff andGrace's vocals sounding slightly forced in the lower range featuredon this record are the only things keeping this in the “honorablemention” category. Death Metal is best when it keeps a punk-rockedge and that's exactly what LM do so fucking well on thisrecord. Also, thanks a lot for not putting me in the thanks listButler. Fucking jerk.

Vomitory– Opus Mortis VIII

Theleadoff track “Regorge In The Morgue” alone is worth the price ofadmission. This is pure Death Metal with strummed, D-Beat via SwedishDeath Metal riffs, occasional Slayer-esquemoments, and a monstrously thick guitar tone dripping with distortionand attitude. Killer solos add some nice bits of texture and vibe,but never overdo it. I wish all Death Metal bands had this much tasteand restraint. If you haven't heard Vomitorybefore, just Imagine early 90s Swedish Death Metal played at doublespeed and tighter. You're there. Now get this album. This is just aquintessentially aggressive Death Metal album – it fucking rules.

ToxicHolocaust – Conjure and Command

Thisis a really, really good album. One problem: It's not quite as goodas their last one. But damn, it is still really fucking good. “Bitch”is an instant classic, Joel's vocals are still awesome and his rhythmguitar work is unfuckwithable. I love this band's riffs because theyare so simple that Anybody can play them, but nobody can do it thiswell and this convincingly. My only other complaint is that I likedtheir old logo better. I hope that Joel at least still rocks thatsweet headband!

Ghoul– Transmission Zero

Thisband is just too much fucking fun. They were beyond great when weplayed with them at the California discord fest this past summer, andthis new record did not disappoint. I knew exactly what to expect,and I got exactly what I wanted. I literally can't listen to thisalbum without grinning ear to ear. “Transmission Zero” ischock-full of everything I love about this band: detuned, derangedsurf riffs, gang vocals, catchy solos, drumming that makes you wantto move (not count bpms), endearing and clever lyrics aboutCreepsylvania and a cast of goofy, spooky characters, and of course -the Killbot robot voice effect. If there's anything that makes mesmile it's that robot voice.

TeamGhost – We All Shine

Thisis a great record of shoegaze-y post rocking brilliance – the musicis beautiful, weird and has a lot of great textures colliding.There's just one problem, the vocals in a few of the songs are the very definition of“acquired taste”. If the vocals were different in a few key tracks (most notably the first song on the album with vocals, "A Glorious Time"), this albumwould have been in my top 5 for sure. After several listens, I stillhaven't been able to fully get past all the vocals (although some songs like "High Hopes" have great vocals), which is a shamebecause the music is just about perfect. Plus this band has anawesome band name. If you can get past / into the vocals on a few of the songs, you'll be treated to some seriously awesome shoegaze / indie / post rock.

Volture– Shocking Its Prey

Thiswas a bit of a slow year for traditional heavy metal for my ears. Ienjoyed, but wasn't wowed by that In Solitude recordthat everyone was raving about and felt the same about the Portraitrecord (which I thought was a bit better with some really greatmoments), but I did really get into this Volture record. It'sjust straight-up fun and rocking heavy metal in the NWOBHM / Priest vein withcliched lyrics about racing down the freeway, banging chicksbackstage and all that shit that really only makes sense when you'retotally wasted. The clincher that puts this band ahead of theircontemporaries is that their singer Brent Hubbard can really sing.An amazing falsetto that thankfully doesn't soundlike KingDiamondmagically turns lyrics about motorcycles and loving heavymetal from juvenile and silly to completely resonant. For furtherillustration of this point, see every Judas Priestalbum ever. Tasteful leads and killer riffs don't hurt either.

Mastodon – The Hunter

I'mstoked that this band has finally made another album simple enoughthat I don't end up zoning out and forgetting what's going on twothirds of the way through. I suppose “simple” is the wrong word –how about direct? There we go. Immediate, stand-alone songs that arecatchy, heavy, intricate and full of bad ass riffs, spacey vibes andexcellent clean singing made this album resonate a bit more for methan their last two records. Don't get me wrong, I like everyMastodon record, but this one is probably my favorite since“Leviathan” - although it might be too early to call. There isone major sticking point though: the song “Blasteroid” totallysucks, but the rest of the album more than makes up for it.“Stargasm” and “Curl Of The Burl” are probably my twofavorites on this one, although each listen kind of makes me thinkthat a different song should be my favorite. I don't care how popularthis band is, they're popular because they fucking rule, plain andsimple.

Bestopening bands Exhumed played with in 2011:

Transient(from Portland, but we playedwith them in Oakland)

Ingrowing(Prage, Czech Republic)

B.U.T.(Prage, Czech Republic)

Theories(from Seattle, but we playedwith them in Oakland)

HotGraves (from Jacksonville, butwe played with them in New Orleans)

CoffinDust (Wilmington, Delaware)

ThingsI got my band-mates into this year that I am stoked about:

JohnnieWalker

CokeZero

TimAnd Eric Awesome Show Great Job

PlacesI went to for the first time this year:

Norway

Denmark

Rome

Merchandise Madness!!!!!

2011-12-01T15:56:00.001-08:00

So we're back from tour and you know what that means! And if you're thinking 14 hours of solid sleep per day for the first week and taking advantage of my newfound privacy to indulge in an age-inappropriate level of enjoyment of internet pornography, you'd be right, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about liquidating the remainder of our merch. We have a few different things left so, here are our wares.

First off we have this lovely zipper hoodie. The back design is above, the front design (pocket print on the left) is above. Available in S, M, L...

The hoodie is $35 US / CAD + shipping. Shipping within the US is $7, $12 for Canada and for international rates please email me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com To pay, just paypal me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com - please remember to include your name and address. Domestic orders with multiple items pay $7 shipping total (except wholesale orders).

Next up is this delightful "Torso" tour shirt design. These are available in S, M, L

The Torso shirt is $15 US/CAD + $5 shipping within the US, $12 in Canada for international rates please email me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com To pay, just paypal me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com - please remember to include your name and address. Domestic orders with multiple items pay $7 shipping total (except wholesale orders).

Next up, we have some lovely designs for you ladies out there. There are 3 different girl shirts below that are all $10 US/CAD + $5 shipping within the US, $12 for Canada, for international rates please email me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com To pay, just paypal me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com - please remember to include your name and address. Domestic orders with multiple items pay $7 shipping total (except wholesale orders).

Lastly but not leastly... We have some CDs. We have "All Guts, No Glory", "Anatomy is Destiny", "Slaughtercult" and "Gore Metal". The discs are $10 each, $2 shipping in the US, no individual orders for discs will be shipped outside the US, as the postage will be prohibitive, but if you're getting a shirt already, I'll happily add a disc to your order for $10. Again, to order, please paypal harvey_matt@yahoo.com with which disc you'd like and your address. No wholesale orders on CDs, you can just get them from Relapse at that point.

"Back From The Dead And Ready To Party North American Tour Part I" Recap, Part III. I mean, part three of the recap of part one of the tour. Or does that sound even more confusing? Ah, fuck it.

2011-09-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

North American tour recap, part the third, in which our heroes return to their native soil, none the wiser from their extensive trials and travails...

Well,after much procrastination, I realized that I need to finish the taleof our last tour, because we're about to start our next one. This hasbeen a really busy year for Exhumed, which is great, buttouring really cuts into my time to catch up on my pet projects,like updating the blog, posting old live bootlegs from my VHS tapeson Youtube, organizing my urine and hair into jars labeled with thetime and date of collection, reading comic books, hanging out withfriends and family, and learning macrame. But alas and alack, thatis, as we say, a rockupational hazard. At any rate, where we? That'sright, our intrepid sextet of loveable misfits was traversing thewild and unforgiving northern wasteland that is Canada... So, withoutfurther introductory fluff, let's dive headfirst into the third andfinal chapter of this crepitous chronicle- and I promise that, as faras third chapters go, it will be at least as much of alet-down as Return Of The Jedi.

Wewere headed west from Calgary to Kelowna, British Columbia, throughsome of the most beautiful forests and mountains in the world. So ofcourse, I slept through it all, hung over and totally exhausted afterour two days in Alberta. By the time I was coherent, we werepractically there. Since we drove straight through, we arrived inKelowna about noon or so. If you haven't heard of Kelowna, BC, don'tfeel bad. I've been all over Canada, and I'd never heard of iteither. That said, it is a beautiful spot, nestled in the gorgeousCanadian Rockies with an abundance of lakes. We grabbed breakfast /lunch at McDonald's (sorry, punk rockers!) and then hit the grocerystore for picnicking supplies. We rolled up at a nearby lake whosename totally escapes me, laid out some blankets, waded in the chillymountain-water, ate some snacks, and dozed off under a shady tree.After killing a few hours that way, we headed over to the venue,which was literally a Knights Of Columbus Hall in town. Now, you mayask yourself, what the hell are we doing playing a Knights OfColumbus hall in a small town in eastern British Columbia that no onehas ever heard of? Aren't we a “proper heavy metal band with arecord label and all that stuff”? Well, the answer is simple. Whencriss-crossing the globe, you're inevitably going to run into areaswhere there is a lot of ground between major cities (aka “primarymarkets” in the parlance of our booking agent and record label) andyou end up playing some pretty random spots in between. Thealternative is a day off, and for us, a day we don't play is a daywithout pay – see how I did that rhyming bit? Pretty neat, huh? Anda day without pay is to be avoided whenever possible. About one dayoff per 2/3 weeks is what we try to shoot for to avoid killingourselves on the one hand and going broke on the other. At any rate,we arrived at the venue about five or six in the evening, and weregreeted by the hospitality of the very nice Kristina, who hadpromoted a show of ours a decade earlier in Penticton, another, evensmaller town in eastern British Columbia that you've never heard of.Like a lot of small-market promoters, she is really enthusiastic toget bands to come through and puts a lot of personal work into theshows. She and her family had whipped up a big ol' buffet of burgers,dogs, potato salad, veggies, soft drinks, water, and of course, beer.After eating and napping a bit more, the other bands began to arrive,and after load-in, Rob, Deedee and I headed over to Kristina's houseto grab showers before showtime.

Theturnout was definitely better than I expected, considering theremoteness of the show. Brandon, an old friend of Wes' actually livesin Penticton (about 70 miles away from Kelowna if I remembercorrectly) and came out, which was cool. The last time we were inCanada (in '05), we ended crashing at his place and I stayed upreally late drinking beer and recording a terrible Sunset-Strip stylecock-rock song called “Hollywood Ninja”. We never recorded anyvocals for it, but we all thought it was hilarious at the time. Atany rate, back to the more-recent-past... That night in Kelowna, weplayed on the floor, with no monitors, triggers, or anything remotelyfancy. It's fun to do shows like this every once in a while, reallyraw and primitive, right there with the kids. We all had a good time,and headed back to Kristina's to crash out before heading toVancouver the following day. The next day was the Monday of athree-day weekend, which made playing in Vancouver (one of those“primary markets” I mentioned earlier) on a Monday slightly morelogical, but what we non-Canadian types failed to take intoconsideration was that everyone vacations near Kelowna and would allbe heading back to Vancouver that day. Needless to say, progress wasexcruciatingly slow. We planned to be at the venue around 5 or so(somehow we always end up leaving at least an hour later than we planto), but with traffic we didn't make it there until 8. This of courseis the height of unprofessionalism, but at least we had been incommunication with the club and the other bands (who were also late,but not as late as us) while en route, so everything was basicallycool. We totally missed soundcheck and of course loading in our gearand merch was a bit of a clusterfuck, but as Dismember once said,“and so is life”... or something like that.

Thedressing room at the club was about the size of a walk-in closet, soRob, Dylan and I headed into the Vancouver-y night for a walk tocheck out the town. Of course, the club we played, the Rickshaw Stop,is in the absolute worst part of Vancouver – right next to theneedle exchange for heroin users. In fact, that may be the grossest,most ghetto part of the whole country of Canada. But it does havecharacter. Luckily,the club had security near our van the whole night, so we felt prettygood about taking off. Within a half a mile, we were out ofjunkie-town and into Chinatown, which was much nicer. I rememberedeating at a really good noodle house in the area where Leon shartedhis pants back in '05. Another mile and we were near the harbor, in apretty nice part of town. After taking in the maritime sights andmaking fun of the D&D nerds fencing at the nearby sword fightingacademy (as a D&D nerd myself, I feel totally justified mockingthose dudes – and I took fencing in high school, so there ya go),we cruised back to the club. We saw a bar with a sign that said“Vancouver's Favourite Country and Western Bar” and Rob and Icouldn't resist nipping in for a minute for a drink. We had a beer atone of the most depressing, down-and-out bars I have ever seen. I canconfidently say that Rob and I were the best-looking people in thewhole place- including the women (and the transvestive hookers) whichshould give you an idea of just what a bummer the vibe was that washappening there. But it was an appropriate, endearing, bummer vibe.The guys playing guitar and singing Hank and Cash songs with a drummachine were actually pretty good and the beer was relatively cheap,so all in all, it was 15 minutes well spent.

Wemade it back to the venue as the night was getting underway, and theturnout was pretty good, which always makes doing a good show easier.Another thing that made the night memorable was that someone hadoverflowed the toilet in the backstage area, so the whole floor waswet, and it didn't really smell that great while were getting dressedfor the show. We were a bit over-tired that night, but after meetingup with some old friends like Justin from 3 Inches Of Blood,who we played with years ago when he was in Allfather, we wereready to rock- soggy, urine-smelling shoes notwithstanding. The showwent over well, but we were anxious to get into Washington and a) getthe border crossing over with (believe me, it can be a hassle gettingback into America too) and, b) get the three-hour drive out of theway so we could get some serious rest- in a motel, in an actual bed.We hit the border at the Peace Bridge and had literally the quickest,easiest border crossing in North America I've ever experienced, anddrove most of the way to Seattle before stopping at a Denny's andMotel 6.

Canadian money is adorable. And, bizarrely valuable in today's failing first-world economy.

Wepiled into the hotel and proceeded to crash the fuck out, exhaustedand happy to be back in the good ol' US of A. We woke up the nextday, hit a Bank Of America to deposit the meager amount of adorableCanadian money we had accumulated (I love the Canadian $5 bill, ithas a picture of kids playing ice hockey on it) and get going intoSeattle. Mike wanted to check out Pike's fish market, so we headedout to the touristy part of town. It was a gorgeous, clear, warm dayin Seattle- perfect weather to watch a couple of dicks throwoversized fish at each other while a throng of families from theMidwest watched and took pictures. Elsewhere at the fish market, weended up randomly meeting up with a dude from Scorched Earthwho worked at a non-throwing oriented fish stand there. Herecommended a good restaurant nearby (I think it was called Athena?)that wasn't totally exorbitant, and we had an amazing lunch.Something about incredibly fresh seafood and Pacific NorthwestMicrobrews seemed to revitalize us. There was also an amazing comicbook store nearby where I found a few back issues of Jack Kirby's runon “Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen” that I didn't have yet (I'm stillmissing 2 Kirby issues) and we all left happy campers. We alreadyhad confirmation from the other bands that their border crossing wassimilarly simple and we had all re-emerged in the US withoutincident. Macabre would also be reunited with their tour manager,Eric at last, which would help things move more smoothly andpunctually, so it was shaping up to be a good day.

This is the kind of crap I spend my very limited disposable income on. And amazingly, I'm single. Who would've thought?!?

Iwas excited because we were back in the states, we had a hugeshipment of merch to pick up at the venue, and our intrepid bookingagent, Dan Rozenblum of the highly reputable Pantheon agency would becoming out to the show to celebrate his birthday that night. We wereplaying Studio 7, which is kind of near the Mariners' stadium, and apretty big venue for us. I was a little nervous about being able tofill the room, to be honest. It's never good when the one show ofyour tour attended by your booking agent tanks. We got settled in andunloaded, and Wes and I headed off to the Pyramid Brewing companywith the Cephalic Carnage guys, where we ran into Luke(World Under Blood, Sleep Terror)who had played guitar with Vile when we toured with them andCannibal years ago. I totally didn't recognize him at first,not only because it had been a long time and I wasn't expecting tosee him there, but also because the dude is fucking yoked these days! It was great catching up with him for a bit, watching some baseballand enjoying some of Pyramid's Hefeweizen. When it was getting closeto show time, we headed back and I was pleasantly surprised to seethe place filling up nicely. I got to hang out with Terry fromScorched Earth which is always a pleasure, and oldfriends Renae and Joe from Skarp (Joe is also in Theories,Book of Black Earth, Splatter House, andprobably about 10 other bands I can't remember right now). I also dida double take when I saw Renae – last time I saw her she was adrunk crust-punk chick, but now she's a mom and really looked like aproper, adult, lady! Always good to see friends doing well. At anyrate, the show was awesome, great vibe, loud kids (even the folksupstairs were making a lot of noise) and a lot of fun.

Youknow it's a good night when everyone is happy. Not just theaudience, not just the bands because people showed up and we got alot of beer, but even the promoter of the show and the bartenders atthe club were stoked with how things went. When the guy paid me, hewas totally psyched (that never happens). He was so happy, Ishould probably have hit him up for more money. The staffended up letting us stay in the bar and party really, really hard.Wes was the first to crash out, at around 2am. I went out to the vanto sleep at about 5am, and I think Mike and Rob finally made it outat 7:30am or so. Rob in particular was over-Jagermeistered. He passedout practically on top of Wes, and despite me trying feebly to pickhim up, he wasn't budging. Wes wasn't exactly pleased with thisdevelopment, and finally shoved him off, before leaving to get somefood as people around the neighborhood (the club is near a lot ofindustrial type businesses) were arriving at work. As soon as Wesreturned, we headed for Portland. Like I said last time, I am soincredibly thankful we had Dylan to drive on this tour, because wehad all been reduced to oblithereens the night before. After we goton the freeway, out of nowhere, Rob stood up in the van, obviouslystill blackout drunk, and began to mutter incomprehensibly. It lookedlike he was about to blow chunks all over the interior of the van, sowe pulled over on the side of I-5 to let him do his thing. He gotout, stumbled onto the grassy shoulder and proceeded to conspicuouslypiss in the general direction of heavy traffic. Then he turnedaround, walked a few paces the other way, and promptly laid down inthe grass to sleep. Needless to say, this turn of events was not toour liking. We started yelling and throwing empty cups at him, Mikewent out and nudged him with his foot, but he remained laying therelike a giant, impassive sack of shit (and I mean that in the mostaffectionate way possible) on the side of the freeway, totally wastedat about 9:30 in the morning. Finally, Mike suggested that I pour abottle of water on his face. This finally roused him, and we got himback in the van where he passed out immediately, with his face on theseat and his body on the Dorito and hair coated floor. Classy, buthilarious. The rest of the brief drive passed without incident,thankfully.

Oncein Portland, we headed to the Relapse Portland office, and had lunchwith Orion Landau, Relapse's amazing graphic designer (who paintedthe Dekapitator cover for us that I totally love) at a nearbybar that served literally the best Pastrami sandwich I have evertasted. Holy shit, I wish I had ordered the Pastrami sandwich! At anyrate, we were all drained and in pretty bad shape at this point. Robwas still a bit drunk, but finally losing steam, and the rest of uswere quite the worse for wear. Really we just needed to sleep. It wasuncharacteristically hot in Portland that day, in the 80s for sure,so sleeping in the van was impossible. We headed to the club in thehopes that they had a backstage area or someplace we could crash outor at least lay down. When we arrived there, it was still too earlyto get in, so we dejectedly headed back in the van and headed to asurplus store for some shopping. I found a cool pair of FerrisBueller-style shades, but not much else. We headed back to the club,which was still closed, and finally passed out for about an hour anda half across the street in the parking lot of some office building.In hindsight, we should have just broken down and got a hotel, eventhough we couldn't stay in town long due to the 11-hour drive fromPortland to San Francisco the following day. We all needed somesleep, myself in particular. When we finally got into the club, I wascrestfallen to find that there was no real backstage area (justenough room for gear), no couches, and no AC. The floor was concrete,and the whole interior looked like it had just been purchased fromhome depot – all unfinished 2x4s. Ugh. There was a second bar areaupstairs with a couple of couches, but the dudes running the clubwouldn't let us sleep there, which was total bullshit. Luckily, wehave a lot of friends in town (who were all at work during the day)who cheered us up. Ryan, Cole, Jason, and a bunch of other oldfriends were there, as well as Matt, Orion, John and Erica fromRelapse. By the time we played, I was beyond fatigued and running onfumes. We got up and started playing, and after Mike made a weirdflub in one of the songs (keep in mind, he stayed up even later thanI did, so I'm sure his brain/body/psyche were totally fried too), Igot unreasonably, super pissed off about it, and started strummingway too hard in petulant anger. I broke a string, which of coursepissed me off even more. I grabbed my backup guitar, glared at Mikeand yelled something shitty at him while the music was playing (whichI honestly haven't done since high school) and continued the set.There was another flub in the next song, and I got reallypissed off, strummed too hard again, and broke a string on mybackup guitar. Wes Caley also doubles as our guitar tech, andobviously he was right there with me onstage, so it wasn't like myguitar was getting fixed while we were playing. I flipped out, threwmy backup guitar into the stand and screamed at Rob and Mike on myway offstage, acting totally unprofessionally and just straight-uprude. I fixed the string hastily and angrily, and came out andfinished the set. Of course, in my sleep-deprived, hungover for thepast week mind, I thought everything was fucked and the band soundedawful, but people were stage-diving pretty much the whole show andthe whole front of the room was a mass of pitting madness, so itcouldn't have been that bad. Everyone I talked to after theshow seemed to think it was killer, so hopefully they're right, haha!As soon as we wrapped up the last song, I apologized to Mike and theguys for being such an asshole and letting things get to me. I reallyjust needed some rest. We loaded out and headed to Sizzle Pie, anawesome pizza place that's actually owned by Matt Jacobson, thepresident of Relapse. He hooked us up with a slew of killer metal androck-themed specialty slices and pies and a great beer selection. Bythe end of the night, I was buzzed, full of pizza and contrite for mytantrum. At that point, sleeping in the van would be simple. I was sotired I could have slept standing up in the middle of a tambourinefactory that was on fire.

Bythe time I woke up, we were well into California, and we stopped andgot breakfast and filled up the tank. I was texting pretty muchnonstop all day with former bandmates and old friends, and our guestlist was filling up rapidly. Exhumed has always been identified as abay area band, since we started out in San Jose (aka the SiliconValley for you non-NHL fans) way back in 1991, when I was but a weelad of 15. San Francisco was pretty much as close to a true hometownshow as we get. That said, we've had many different incarnations ofthe band with different members from different areas, and no one inExhumed even lives in the bay area at this point. I haven't livedthere for about three years, and I haven't lived in San Jose forabout seven. However, Mike and I are both originally from there, andI will always consider it my hometown. I miss the food, the culture,the bars, the proliferation of hot Asian chicks in the south bay, andof course my friends and family. To me, this show felt like there wasa lot at stake, as my good friend Mike Sage would say. We would beplaying and everyone that recorded “Gore Metal” would be there,and we had already planned to have ex-members Ross Sewage and MikeBeams join us on vocals and guitar respectively for the show closer,“Open The Abscess”. I really wanted the show to be a good one, Ifelt like kicking ass in our hometown would be a big piece of the“comeback” thing that we'd been doing throughout this year.

Here's the last song of the evening in San Francisco, where we were joined by Ross and Mike for Open The Abscess. For those of you wondering, yes, Mike Beams was super hammered here. Ross' "Rasputin the mad monk" look / vibe is also pretty awesome.

Wecruised into town, picked up a bunch of much-needed gear at guitarcenter on Van Ness street (right down the street from my old work),grabbed an AMAZING burrito at Taqueria Cancun (one of my threefavorite places to get the rightfully much-ballyhooed “Mission-styleBurrito” that you should have heard heralded as the THE BESTFUCKING FOOD IN THE WORLD) and headed to Slim's. I was stoked to notonly pick up more “All Guts, No Glory” CDs, but also to do areally fun radio interview with Ami Lawless of Voetsek (whoare a great fucking band you should all check out) before the show.To give even a partial list of the old friends that showed up wouldbe ridiculous, but the first thing Col Jones (our drummer from'91-'03, now drumming with Repulsion, Mortuous, andCretin) remarked when he saw me that night was that he wasirritated about “the long line trying to get in to see my own dumbband”. We had 20 guest list spots, used them all, as well as mostof the empty spots on Macabre, Cephalic Carnage,and Withered's lists as well. San Francisco might have beenthe biggest show of the tour, with over 400 folks piled in. We wereall feeling much, much better after Portland- rested, happy to be inour hometown (well, at least two of us), and excited about the lastweekend of the tour. The show was one of the absolute highlights ofthe whole three-week excursion and it seemed like the kids really dugit. I got to catch up briefly with Will from Death Angeland talk about finally recording the slew of Scarecrow songswe'd written together, and Adi from Uphill Battle wasin town on business and hung out with us for a little bit after theshow. We decided to head to Reno that night as accommodations therewould be waaaaaaay cheaper than in San Francisco, and it was a prettylong drive anyway. The night passed uneventfully and I woke up around9:30 to find ourselves in beautiful Sparks, Nevada. *Editor'snote- Since type can't convey tone of voice, I'll just chime in hereand clarify that the word “beautiful” in the previous sentencewas used facetiously. Thank you for your time* We checked into aMotel 6 that was indeed very affordable and headed into Reno itselfto hit a buffet. The buffet was actually pretty decent and we wereable to get some rest and clean up at the hotel. Of course, it wasincredibly hot in Reno. The highlight of our morning was seeing adude riding in a minivan with his family drinking a Steel Reserve 40at about 11am. What can I say, Reno is a classy town.

I'mgoing to digress here for a minute. Planning a tour is a toughendeavor. Our original plan was to play Portland on Wednesday, takeThursday off, and hit San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Orange Countyon Friday, Saturday, and Sunday respectively. For whatever reason,the show in OC never materialized, and we lost both the Friday andSaturday slots at the clubs in LA and San Francisco. Now, anyone thathas ever been to a concert knows that Friday and Saturday are theabsolutely most desirable nights for concerts (probably why thevenues in SF and LA passed on our shows those nights in favor ofsomething more lucrative / glamourous / sexy / quality / etc.) sohaving both of those nights as off nights would be ridiculous (seeabove on why we avoid having days off on tour). Hence adding Fridayand Saturday shows in Sparks (which is basically Reno) and Las Vegas.We'd played Vegas a couple of times before, and it had always been atleast decent, so I wasn't too worried about that show. Sparks,however, I didn't anticipate being that great of a gig. The only timewe had played Reno (back in '97 I think?) a fight had broken outduring our set and all 20 or so of the attendees had followed thefight outside, leaving us to finish the show in a literally emptyroom. Even the bartender was outside watching the fight. Ah, goodtimes.

Werelaxed next door to the venue at the Irish pub, watched somebaseball, and halfheartedly flirted back at the waitress there. Therewere definitely a lot more than 30 people at the show, but it stillfelt underwhelming, especially after the energy of the previousnight. The promoter ended up being a cool guy, but the folks at theclub were kind of dicks. One of the bands on the tour, maybeWithered, I can't remember, ended up being really late to theshow and he was flipping out about it. He also was complaining aboutour stage volume and wouldn't give us any bar privileges, which wastotally weak. The promoter bought us some beer and we resignedourselves to drinking outside in the van. Yeesh. Anyway, the showitself was pretty fun, low-key and more like a party than anything.The kids that showed up were appreciative, and we headed back to themotel feeling good.

Thenext day, it began to sink in that the drive from Sparks to Vegas wasa bit more intense than we'd bargained for, especially with the heat.It was long, dry and boring. We got to the venue on the edge of townaround 5pm, incredibly early for Vegas standards. The sound guy herewas a bit uptight as well. He complained that we had our own soundguys for the tour, complained that we had too much gear for thestage, etc. etc. The bar owner wasn't much cooler, doling out anincredibly meager beer allotment for the night. Drinking would havebeen cheaper if we had just played nickel slots next to a blue-hairedseptuagenarian from Florida and waited for a tired, leather-skinned,was-probably-hot-in-1991 waitress named Jodi who was originally fromMontana to eventually come around and bring us beers in someoff-the-strip casino. On a more positive note, I was stoked to seeSpun In Darkness, and Rhett (aka Thorgrimm ofGravehill fame) and his lovely lady, my “big sister” Liliwere going to be in town as well, so we were gearing up for a funnight. There was a Savers in the same strip mall, and I bought asweet blue denim jacket, which I figured I'd save for fall / winter,as Vegas in August was fucking roasting. The turnout was prettydecent, and kids were telling me how much better-attended our showwas than other Death Metal tours that have rolled through have been,so we felt good about shit by the time we hit the stage. The showwent over well, and as I am known to do, I went on a drunken tiradeon stage about how disgustingly fake Vegas is (it's honestly one ofmy least favorite places in America) and how the underground shouldbe diametrically opposed to all that Vegas represents. When I'm drunkand tired and in incredibly hot weather, I sometimes get a bitdiatribe-y, which is undoubtedly annoying. So, sorry about that.After the show we went out for Mexican food and birthday cake withRhett and Lili, but somehow I got a really gnarly stomachache (thefood was actually delicious before I doubled over in pain) and wentand passed out in the van flatulent and uncomfortable, without sayinggood night or anything to anyone.

Thenext day we were back in Los Angeles, which is pretty much our secondhometown at this point. Wes, Danny, Leon, and Rob all call SouthernCalifornia home (even though Wes doesn't live there anymore, he'sstill from there), and Mike and I are sort of in the middle of SF andLA, living in the San Luis Obispo area. At this point, I spend waymore time in LA than I do in the bay area (in fact, the last time Iwent up to San Jose to visit friends and family, I got a DUI –thanks a lot, jerks!) so I've slowly, begrudingly come to feel quiteat home there. I still enjoy detesting the Dodgers and Angels andcontinually finding things about the bay area that are better than LA(food, public transportation, air quality, weather, sports thataren't basketball, I could go on, but do I really need to?), but Ihonestly do love it there and feel truly at home in LA and OrangeCounty. I was excited to finally headline the Key Club, where we hadplayed a few different times as a support act. Again, this show feltlike a lot was riding on it, not only because it was the last show ofthe tour, but because we had gotten a few different offers to playdown there, and after playing numerous shows in the area withGravehill, a lot of kids had approached me about wanting tosee us play. If the show tanked, then my perception of the band wasway off. Honestly, we had traditionally had better shows in LA thanin the Bay Area for years before we broke up, so I was anticipating agood night. I know I should try and just keep an open mind and notexpect anything in particular, but hey, I'm only human.

Ramblings from a sleep-deprived man in desperate need of a shower outside the Key Club in Los Angeles.

Wepicked up Dylan's friend from Delaware, Deanna, at LAX, dropped Wesoff at his visiting girlfriend's hotel, and headed to Hollywood. Ithink we were the only band on the tour familiar enough with trafficfrom Vegas to LA, especially on a Sunday, to understand how fucked itcan get. Why do I think that? Because we were the only band (asidefrom the locals, Enthraller) who were at the venue even closeto on-time. In fact, not only did everyone else miss load-in andsound-check, we were the only band that was there when dinner wasserved later that afternoon. Everyone has a day when they run behind,but to my thinking, LA was going to be one of the bigger shows of thewhole thing and having played at the Key Club before, I was wellaware of what a tight, professional ship they run there, so I knew weneeded to be on top of shit for the last show. To be fair, we totallyblew it getting to Vancouver on time, so like Mike Abominator alwayssays, shit happens when you party naked. I didn't even really watchthe bands that night, I was busy socializing with everybody, knockingout a couple of interviews before the show, and just hanging out. Thelast night of tour is always bittersweet, kind of like the end ofyour junior year in high school. You're glad to get a break, butyou're bummed to not see a lot of people for a while that you'veworked together and bonded with. Over the three weeks, we had a blastgetting to know all of our tour mates (except for Steve and Lenzigfrom Cephalic, we knew those dicks already) and playing,partying and puking together. We all agreed to meet up at the Rainbowto grab a drink to celebrate / say goodbye after the show and raninto even more old friends there. The show went over really well, weall had a blast, but of course, by the time we finished loading outand getting everything squared away, we got to the rainbow at lastcall. So the after-party, such as it was, ended up being a littleanti-climactic. Luckily, we had already grabbed some beer from thestore for later that night. Deedee's boyfriend Jerry came and pickedher up, Rob took off, Wes headed off with his lady, leaving myself,Mike, Dylan and Deanna to head off to Rob's pad in Anaheim for acouple of beers and some well-earned rest.

"Through Cadaver Eyes" from the new album, like at the Key Club.

In case you thought the last video was too melodic, here's some old shit for ya- Slaughtercult and Torso.

Ofcourse... the next day, Monday, all of us except Rob and Wes headedback up to San Luis Obispo, stopping in Ventura for Del Taco and topay for the van rental. I was dropped off at my pad in Arroyo Grandeat about 6pm to do some laundry, clean myself up, catch up withfamily, and get packed for ourfour-festivals-in-four-countries-in-four-days trip to Europe thatweekend. And did I mention that we were leaving for this insaneEuropean trip the next day at 7am from Los Angeles? Mikedropped off the gear in San Luis at our rehearsal room, and tookDylan and Deanna to Dylan's pad. By midnight Tuesday morning (a meresix hours after we got home), Mike and I were back on the road in thevan and Mike's truck, headed for LA. We dropped the van off at lastin Ventura and continued south for our excruciatingly early flight toPrague where w would rendezvous with the always entertaining Leon delMuerte, who would be reassuming bass duties for these four shows, But that, my friends, is a blog for another day.

Thanksfor reading, true believers!

Excelsior!
Harvey and theusual gang of idiots

The Continuing Saga of the "Back From The Dead And Ready To Party" North American tour

2011-09-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

So here's part two of what's shaping up to be a tour log trilogy, chronicling the misadventures and gastrointestinal problems of a lovable group of wacky misfits. This is a chapter that I like to call:

Episode II: Return of the Fabulous Metal Bozo Clones
- or -
The Making of "Great White North II" - the untold story

Okay,so... To pick up where we left off...

AfterCIM, we were headed to Milwaukee, which would be our first night withall four bands on the tour. We had been freshly re-loaded with merchand had even had a day off, so we were presumably bathed and groomed(for us anyway) when we arrived. The drive from Urbana to Milwaukeereally wasn't too bad at all, which makes things a little easier.

Milwaukeehas never been a particularly great market for us, and even the showwe did there with Cannibal Corpse in '04 wasn't that awesome, I mean it would have been AMAZING for us, but for Cannibalit was a bit of an underwhelming turnout. The fact that all of thebands had just played 100 miles away the night before wasn't great either, and itwas a Monday night. However, it was cool to be back at the Eagles'Ballroom, where I had seen Venom at Milwaukee Metalfest '97and Sodom the following year. We were playing the Rave bar,which I remembered from Metalfests past as “The Relapse Stage”,haha! The backstage was a bit weird, really dark and lit by lavalamps with wall hangings everywhere. Wes was having a hell of a timechanging our guitar strings, just with the lack of light and usable space back there, despite it being really big and sort of maze-like.

Onething about the way we do things, we tend to be pretty laid back andgive everyone we're on tour with a lot of free rein, we never reallykeep people out of our dressing room, hoard our food and drinks ormake people set up their drums in front of our kit or anything likethat. Just because we've been there, and it's kind of a bummer. Thereare rarely any issues with this philosophy, but this was one of thosenights when it kind of backfired on us. The local bands and theirfriends were backstage, eating all our food, and more importantly,drinking our beer and whiskey. I actually had to take our bottle ofSeagram's out of a dude's hand. Also there were like three chicks whowere cooks (the food was delicious, I have to say) and some of thepeople backstage were with them, or something... I really have noidea. Especially since it was our first night with Macabreand Withered on thetour, we weren't sure who was supposed to be there and who wasn't, asMacabre and Cephalicalso had a lot of their friends who were local backstage, so Icouldn't tell what the fuck was going on. So it was a bit of a bummervibe backstage. Overall, the promoter was a really nice guy, and heactually hooked us up with a place to stay later that night, but thataspect of the show wasn't particularly organized, and it turned intoa bit of a clusterfuck.

Embarrassinglyenough, I have to be honest and say that before this tour I wasn'tfamiliar with Withered,except by reputation. I was definitely looking forward to catchingthem live for the first time so at the very least, I wouldn't feellike such a dumb-ass any time someone asked me about them. All Ireally knew at that point was that they were supposed to be a doom /black metal hybrid. Anyone that knows my musical tastes knows that,although I enjoy some doom and black metal, those styles aren't mybread and butter. Within the band's first song, Witheredreally floored me with their smothering, pissed-off brand ofblackened doom. The thing that doesn't interest me about most “trooblack metal” is that it just isn't particularly heavy – it's alltreble. If there's on thing you can say about Withered, it'sthat they are incredibly heavy. After speaking to the guys Iimmediately knew that we were going to get along great and I wassuper psyched to have them on the tour. The Mikes, Dylan, and Beauwere all super down-to-earth, hardworking, hard-partying dudes thatwere a great addition to the bill. I loved the fact that all fourbands sounded nothing like one another, but were all super intenseand heavy in their own way. I think that helps make it a win for thekids that pay their hard-earned shekels to come out and support, aswell as more interesting for me, because I don't want to hear fourhours of brutal death metal a night for three weeks straight.

HavingMacabre on the tour was great, and really kind of a mind-fuckfor me. I remember listening to the “Sinister Slaughter” tape somany times hanging out with Matt Widener and Dan (now Marissa)Martinez of Cretin way back when Matt W. was playing bass inExhumed in '94. Having a band that influenced you supportingyou on tour is really a trip and, I know this word gets tossed aroundpretty casually, but it really was an honor. They were great, andalthough they didn't do too many songs from my personal favoritealbum, “Gloom” (I still want to hear “Dr. Holmes”, damn it!),the set was a killer mix of old and new stuff, including a bunch ofmy faves from “Sinister Slaughter” and “Dahmer”. The guyswere really cool, and made me feel a little bit younger, which isalways flattering, haha! Their tour manager Eric was cool as well and gave usa hand changing over which was appreciated, and their effervescentmerchandiser, Doug was a total sweetheart from the word go.

The Milwaukee show itself was a bit sparse, but the people that were there werefully into it, so that made it a lot easier to give a goodperformance. It's really less about the number of people attendingand more about the intensity of the vibe. The room was small andsounded good, so all in all, it ended up being a pretty fun show. Ourcrew and Withered stayed with some really nice friends of thepromoter on the outskirts of town, grabbed some grub at a place thatwas sort of vaguely Waffle House-esque, and had fun playing with ourhosts' dangerously affectionate pit bull puppy. The next day, we gotup pretty early to head out to the land of 10,000 lakes- Minnesota.

Ialways enjoy doing shows in the Twin Cities. We've traditionally had goodturnouts there, and this night would prove to be no exception. It wasstill a bit of a mess getting used to setting up our drum kit beforeCephalic (we shared backline on this tour) and then taking it downduring Macabre's set, having Mike tweak it, and then setting it backup on stage when we went on, but luckily for your humble narrator,that was a problem that didn't really affect me too much. Afterload-in at Station 4 in St. Paul, I hopped in the van and high-tailed it to FedEx office toprint out all of our paperwork for our crossing at the Canadianborder the next day, and catch up on some emails and otheroffice-type work my archaic phone didn't allow me to do. When I gotback, Mike, Rob, our driver Dylan and I took a walk from the venue tofind something to eat. We managed to find a pretty nice bar / grillthat had a great beer selection, so I had to grab a Duvel with lunch/ dinner. Full and content we headed back to the venue, which wasalready filling up nicely.

Atany rate, the show was pretty damn full, way more so than the lasttime we had played the same venue, many, many years ago. We got some PBRgoing at the bar, and shit was basically pretty damn good. Even though we had just gottenmore merch, we were already starting to run low on a couple of sizes,which was awesome, but a little scary because we wouldn't be able toget anything else from any of our vendors until we got done with theCanadian dates the following week. Canadian shipping rates areridiculous. At any rate, I digress... Macabre are great becausethey're so cynical and sarcastic, they make Wes Caley, our residentpessimist, look like a ray of sunshine. But give 'em a few beers anda good crowd, like they had that night, and you'll see a great bandhaving a great time. I really got to watch a bit more of their set, which put a huge smile on my face.

"In The Name Of Gore" live from the land where people still remember Kirby Puckett.

Anotherhighlight of the night for me was getting to catch up with old friends Steveand Allison from Bodies Lay Broken,my all-time favorite Midwestern Grind band (although Wasteoidand Black MarketFetus are closebehind!). I remember my first time in Minneapolis- staying at MichaGarber of Bodies...apartment and eating at Perkins for the first time – good times!Micah has since relocated to Japan, and it was a bit weird withouthim being there to regale us with tales of hisprodigious push-up marathons. On a bittersweet note about being backin the Twin Cities after so many years, I had always enjoyed meeting up with DonDecker of Anal Blast(who our old drummer Col had lovingly nicknamed “The FleshAvalanche”, a name Decker thought was hilarious) and Earl Root ofRoot of All Evil Records, both of whom had sadly passed away sincethe last time Exhumed had played in town. At any rate, I tried tohonor them with a quick shout-out on stage. The show went over killerand was one of the high points of the whole tour, to be honest. Eventhough our performance wasn't totally perfect, we had reached thepoint of being on the road where everything had become second nature tous, and we didn't have to think about what we were playing, we couldjust lock in and go on instinct. That's when I honestly enjoy playinglive the most, when you've “found your legs” and yougo onstage every night feeling totally confident and ready to kill. At any rate, after the show, we met some of the kids and loaded outto head for North Dakota, and on to Winnipeg the next night.

Weneeded to stop in Grand Forks, North Dakota to pick up a veryspecific and important piece of freight from the UPS store there –a new severed head prop, aka Son Of Ted. After getting the originalTed stolen in Denver, we had notified our de facto prop-master, thevery awesome Caleb Schneider of MurderConstruct and BadAcid Tripand he had set to work getting a new one up and running at maximumspeed. That Wednesday, it was to arrive in Grand Forks so we couldgrab it before heading into the Great White North. While waiting forour putrid parcel to make its appearance, we availed ourselves of atruckstop on the edge of town and showered and did laundry. I hit theshower last while the rest of the crew headed to a nearby Wal-Mart(as much as I try to avoid shopping there, when you're on tour, it'sjust too damn convenient and cheap to have principles – especiallyin North Dakota where there aren't a lot of other options) to get newmerch tubs to get things more organized. We met up and grabbed somelunch and then organized all of our merch, and cleaned the van insideand out, which was long overdue. By this time, the package hadfinally arrived and we were ready to hit Canada.

Anyonewho keeps up with what goes on with underground bands will probablyhave heard myriad horror stories of Canadian border crossings goneawry, with band / crew members getting turned away at the border,bands getting taxed exorbitant fees, etc. etc. If you want to hearsome gnarly shit, just ask Mike Hamilton about what happened to DeedsOf Fleshyears ago. That said... I always approach the border with a bit oftrepidation. We had all of our paperwork in order, and due to achange in the laws, we wouldn't actually need work permits on thistrip as we had in the past, which may have helped get us through moresmoothly. Every tour, at least one person in our touring party has aDUI on their records. That means that you have to pay $200 or so foreach person with a DUI, just to get them into Canada. You alsooccasionally get a lecture from the border folks if they're dicks.This time wasn't too bad, we paid our money, didn't get inspected ortaxed, and were more or less on our way after about 45 minutes ofwaiting. When we got to the customs office, the Witheredguys were just leaving after getting waved through very quickly, andCephalic also wereadmitted fairly smoothly. Our delay ended up being pretty minor, allthings considered. Macabreweren't so lucky. Their tour manager, Eric was denied entry becauseof a misdemeanor charge that was over 15 years old on his record, andthe whole band was hassled for quite some time. On top of that, theyhad to go through US customs to take Eric back to Grand Forks, wherehe would have to ride a Greyhound to Seattle and meet us there, andthen they had to go through Canadian customs againto get to Winnipeg and do the show that night. Oh yeah, and Slayerwas playing in Winnipeg that night, too. Like I said last time, Ilove a challenge.

Thepromoter, Corey, was also the drummer of our old friends in theawesome Grind band Putrescencethat was playing with us that night, and as soon as we got to thevenue, he gave us a ride to the beer store to grab some of thatsweet, sweet nectar. Wes' predictions came true immediately as wewere warned by our Canadian friends to be careful drinking theirbeer, as it is a whole1% higher alcohol by volumethan American beer. Don't worry, my northern friends, we do this allthe time,I think we can handle ourselves. Anyway, Putrescencesounded great, and it was awesome to hang out with my old friend MikeAlexander again. Theshow was actually pretty well attended, especially considering theother band playing in town that night, and there was definitely acontingent of late arrivals that took the opportunity to create theirown metal double-feature. We were looking for a place to stay andwere referred to a local kid who was having a party at his placeafter the show. He assured us he had tons of beer and that all wasgood. We got to the house pretty late, and there was no beer. I wasat that stage of drunkenness where I was ready to seriously party,and having the wind knocked out of my sails like that, I have toadmit, made me get a bit pissy. I was being kind of rude, changingthe stereo and talking shit about the music playing, etc. so Iapologize for being kind of a dick. The guy did buy us all McDonaldsand had a huge pad that we crashed at, so I really can't complain. Wedid have a bit of cheap whiskey that we managed to dig up fromsomewhere that eased the pain of the night a bit. The next morning,we were up pretty early and headed west to Saskatoon after grabbingsome fresh guitar strings.

The only town in the hilarious-sounding province of Saskatchewan with a more ridiculous name than Saskatoon is Regina - pronounced "Rah-jine-ah". So yes, when you say "Regina, Saskatchewan" it sounds exactly like you're saying "Vagina, Sasnatchewan". And no, that joke totally never gets old to the people that live there. They LOVE it.

Wehad played in Saskatoon years ago, at the same venue even, with Behemoth,which was actually on our last tour before splitting up, so it wascool to come back on our own with a great bill supporting us. In fact, thepromoter, a very sweet gal named Zandra, told me that our gig in '05 washer first show booking international acts! I remembered her beingreally nice and letting us stay at her sister's place, which waskiller because they had a hot tub- nothing like drinking a beer in ahot tub while it's gently snowing! Anyway, enough reminiscence.Zandra was just as nice as I remembered her, and we were greeted witha huge catering spread and a cooler full of ice cold beer, soda andenergy drinks. And that was before dinner! Rob and I actually wentout for a jog around the neighborhood, Wes got all the guitarsre-strung, and life was good. The show was killer, andeveryone was happy. I love it when there's a night like that. Ofcourse, I suppose that's not the most interesting read, but the showwas a lot of fun. We ended up drinking outside the club and hangingout with some of the staff while watching some of the guys from theother bands unsuccessfully hit on chicks, which is always goodfor a laugh.

Thenext day, we arrived early in Edmonton, and we were stoked to see thatthe venue was smack dab in the middle of downtown – always a goodsign. We kicked around town for a while as it rained on and off, andfound an amazing vintage guitar shop that was totally mind-blowingand way out of my price range, as sweet as it would have been to comehome with a new Les Paul. I was kind of burnt that day, just notreally feeling it, so after doors opened at the club and everythingwas situated, I left and promptly ran into Rob, Dylan and some randomCanadians. We hit the bar next door, had some food and drink, and Ibegan to feel better. I also met Mike Brown, arguably the biggestExhumed fan out there– at least the biggest Exhumedcollector. He has more of our shirts, EPs and other shit than I do!Despite the fact that he is obviously a huge nerd with terrible tastein music, he was actually a pretty cool, normal well-adjusted dude tohave a beer with. I was feeling even better when we got back and theplace was packed front to back. The show went over awesome, and westayed after the bar closed and got really unnecessarily drunk, doingshots and all manner of other foolish things. We headed to the otherside of town to crash out at someone's pad, had a couple of beers,and passed out drunk and sloppy to end what turned out to be a reallyfun night. The next morning we had to run around town for a while,which took way longer than we thought it would have – the otherside of town felt a lot further hung over in daylight than it had theprevious night, drunk and rowdy in the dark. We also saw a lot of signs that read "Fatality" marking the spot where a fatal car crash had taken place. Apparently, that's a "thing" there. Thankfully, we don't have those signs in California, because there would be so many, it would just be too depressing / frightening to drive anywhere.

At the bar across the street from the venue in Edmonton, whatever the hell it was called- Rob and I with Mike Brown and the crazy Canadian guy who was hilarious. Their humus gave me atrocious farts. Atrocious. No, seriously. Atrocious.

Atany rate, after some Burger King to start the day, we were feeling good abouteverything and we hit the road out to Calgary. By the way, everyone in Edmontonhad talked shit on Calgary the way that Bay Area residents trash L.A.This was to be another night where Slayer,Rob Zombie,and Exodus were alsoplaying in town. Deedee and I were both friends with the Exodusguys, and she managed to sweet-talk Gary into getting us passes,which was awesome. A bunch of guys from the tour knew the Exodus tourmanager, so all the bands were well-represented at the show. Exoduswas great, as always. After getting lost for a bit (it was a hockeyarena, in our defense), we made our way backstage to drink some ofExodus' beer. I metthe super nice Lee and Rob for the first time and got to catch upwith Tom, Jack, and Gary. Before grabbing a taxi back to the venue,we caught a couple of Slayersongs, and Gary sounded greatplaying with them, and visa versa.

Cool shit I got in Calgary. The herpes I got there: not that cool.

Meanwhileback at the venue... The promoter of the show was actually EricGrief, who metal nerds will know was the former manager of Death.I had a great talk with him about Death,one of a select handful bands that I know waytoo much about, andhe was a really nice, articulate guy. He even hooked me up with“Scream Bloody Gore” and “Spiritual Healing” patches, whichwas cool. Our show was billed as a sort of “un-official Slayerafter party” event, which meant that it was designed to start andrun late, but... It ran really late. Wes and I took advantage of thedelay to nip out for a bit of dinner and a drink or two downtown. Themost remarkable thing about the place we went wasn't the beerselection, or the food: It was the ridiculous amount of beautifulwomen that were literally everywhereon the streets of downtown Calgary. Better than LA. Better than NewYork. Better than Prague. Holy shit, I had never seen such a copiousamount of superhot chicks all over the place. It was fucking nuts. After picking my jaw up off the floor about ahundred times, we headed back to the venue where I met up with Dr.Gore from Extreme Metal TV for a quick video interview you can watch below.

If you think reading what I have to say is boring, wait until you try watching it!

If,after reading all the things that we did that night, it seems like wehad waaaaaaaay too much time before we actually played that night, wedid. We weren't evenonstage until after 1am, which is a bit ridiculous. The owner of thebar also got smashed in the face with a bottle and it was very messy.I didn't see what happened, but I did see him bleeding profusely inthe kitchen. Anyway, even considering the time we finally played, theshow was pretty decent, it being a Saturday night. Not awesome, butfar from shitty. We all had a good time, and after load out anddinner at Denny's it was literally after 5am as we headed intobeautiful British Colombia to the small, quaint resort town ofKelowna.

Butthat pulse-pounding suspense-saturated story will have to wait foranother day – a day when the world is finally ready for the truthabout six morons in a foul-smelling van playing loud, obnoxious musicfor any audiences foolhardy enough to pay to see and hear it andtasteless enough to endure it.

Untilnext time, true believers -

Excelsior!

-Harvey and the usual gang of idiots

2011-08-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

Part one of the story of:

The "Back From The Dead And Ready To Party" North American Tour

Ahh... Nothing like the invigorating scent of a freshly minted blog. Once again, as the self-appointed chronicler of the ongoing trials, tribulations, testicles and triumphs of Exhumed, I shall attempt to encapsulate our mildly retarded escapades into a vaguely digestible format for your reading pleasure. Now, to pick up where we left off:

After returning home from the week of Hellfest and Death Feast, we were excited that skin-pounder extraordinaire Mike Hamilton had passed through his trial by fire and kicked some ass in Europe. We were also stoked by the fact that we all didn't want to kill each other even though we smelled terrible by the time we got home. After a flight delay which left us all scrambling to make our connection, we were headed home. Leon set off for his swanky bungalow in Echo Park, and Mike and I hopped in my 1995 Isuzu Rodeo (yeah, we live high on the hog!) and settled in for the four-hour drive back to San Luis Obispo, dropping Wes off in Oxnard along the way.

Our tour with Macabre, Cephalic Carnage, and Withered was only a few weeks away, but there were a number of question marks: Our go-to T-shirt guys at Warlord Merchandise (shameless plug) would be in Europe touring with D.I.S. When we would need a ton of shirts made. Leon, who unlike the rest of us schmucks is encumbered with a “real” job (you know, one where you don't describe your pay scale in terms of “__ dollars an hour”), wouldn't be able to do the tour, due to said "real job." Then, within two weeks of the first show, our plan to share transportation with Cephalic Carnage (which was ill-advised from the beginning in hindsight) was scrapped. On top of that, we had a much longer, more extensive set of songs to learn. What can I say? I love a challenge.

The most important thing was getting a bass player / low vocalist on board. One of the great things about playing in multiple bands (aside from the awesome schedule conflicts that always come up) is that you play with a lot of different great musicians and develop a lot of killer friendships. You also learn that if you can stand being in a Dodge Durango with four other people for three weeks, that you get along with those people pretty damn well. One of those fellow Durango-dwellers of whom I speak is none other than Gravehill guitarist Bodybag Bob. I've stayed at his rustic (read: shabby and squalid) apartment in Orange County countless times getting plastered and blaring old Judas Priest albums until five am, and he had told me that he had recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. That combination made a small, very dim light in my head turn on. Rob (sorry, I call him Rob a lot more often than Bob) is a great player and a good friend, and I had heard him say that he enjoyed playing bass once or twice before. Total Exhumed bass-player criteria right there. He very obligingly agreed to do the tour and things were moving along. I sent him all the tablature for the songs to get started. Of course, I'd never heard his low voice, which was arguably more important than his four-string skills. Rob came up to San Luis for a week before the tour started, his arrival coinciding with Wes' moving out of Oxnard to relocate to the warm, arid climes of Tempe, Arizona. The four of us convened at Wes' place, helped him finish packing up his stuff, and headed north to my town, Arroyo Grande.

The following day, storage space was procured for Mr. Caley's nonessential possessions, and we started to rehearse. I forget how nice it is to actually practice with everyone in the band present at once – that's become a long-forgotten luxury from the days where everyone in the band lived in the same general area. Things were coming together nicely over Thursday and Friday, and then we headed down to Orange County to sneak in a Gravehill practice before our show at the Central Illinois Metalfest, which would be double-duty for Rob and I. Rob, Wes and I trekked back up to San Luis (mind you, it's a four-and-a-half hour drive one way) the following morning to resume Exhumed rehearsals. Rob and Wes crashed at my place most of the time, while Mike worked construction during the day and met up with us to jam in the late afternoons / evenings. An old friend, Kristoff from Shadow Graphics had stepped up with some killer merch that had arrived just in time, so we combined that with what we had left over from Europe and the LPs we had gotten from Relapse, and our merch woes were more or less squashed. Meanwhile,I spent my days frantically trying to locate a suitable tour van, which proved to be an exercise in futility. It seemed that every 12-15 passenger van from San Luis Obispo to San Diego was spoken for. Bogus. A couple of different options that looked very promising came into the picture and quickly faded. I was resigned to doing the tour in a minivan, which would have been insane, and in retrospect, impossible. Due to a weird set of circumstances and things going wrong that are way too idiosyncratic and convoluted to go into here, we weren't able to even rent a minivan Saturday morning, the day before the first show. Like the song says, we had no car and it was breaking our hearts, but we did however, have a driver for the tour, my good friend Dylan Wordeman, host of the Slaytanic Carnage Radio show in San Luis (broadcast every Wednesday, 11pm to 1am on KCPR here in San Luis and streaming on the web at http://kcpr.calpoly.edu /), and that's a start. So that Saturday, the five of us- Mike, Rob, Wes, Dylan and I - convened at my house to try to figure something out.

Mike remembered that Inherit Disease from Ventura had bought a van a few years back and weren't playing too many shows, so he put in a call to their bassist Josh about renting their vehicle. After checking with the other guys, Josh got back to us and said it would be cool. To say I was relieved when we got that call would be the understatement of the century. I was beside myself with happiness. We headed to Ventura that night in my car and Mike's truck with Mike's drum kit, our guitar stuff, a bunch of merch, our bad selves, and Wes' necessities that would be dropped off at when we hit Phoenix for transplant to his new home. The van was a beefy Dodge with six captains' chairs, and not too much room for gear and merch – which wasn't the biggest deal, since we were sharing a backline and trailer with Cephalic Carnage – but we wouldn't meet up with them until Sunday evening in San Diego. And we wouldn't get Wes' personal belongings out of the van until the following day in Phoenix. And there was still one more person to pick up. Wes and I took my car to Echo Park to retrieve the sixth member of our touring party, Deedee, our merch girl. This would be the first tour where we would actually have not one, but TWO crew folks to help us, which was a massive improvement over all the tours we'd done in the past. We'd usually traveled without any crew whatsoever, except for a couple of short runs with a friend doing merch. It was also the first time we'd ever toured with a woman present. So it was exciting to have the help but there being a woman present was a bit of an x-factor to be honest. Luckily, I've known Deedee for about ten years now, so I felt pretty confident that she would be able to roll with the punches of touring and more importantly, tolerate a fart-filled van full of idiots making terrible and offensive jokes for three weeks. Turned out I was right.

We crashed out at Rob's pad in Orange County for the night, woke up and dropped my car off at Mike Abominator's pad in Garden Grove, where he and his very kind girlfriend Christa had offered to let me park for three weeks, then headed south to San Diego. The van was a bit cramped, but spirits were still high from the simple fact that we had pulled something together to ride around in in the first place! We would find out that day that our buddies in Cephalic Carnage had an even rougher time getting to the first show than we did. First they had engine trouble at the Arizona / California border, then they had a flat tire on their trailer, which they had to ditch at a repair place until the following day and pile all of their gear into their van in order to make it to the show. The drive to San Diego was a breeze, totally unaffected by the much-hyped closure of a section of the 405 freeway (remember “Carmaggedon”? It was just as fucking lame as you thought it would have been), and of course the weather along the coast was beautiful.

We arrived at the Ruby Room in San Diego, which is smack dab in the middle of the gay part of town. It was also the day after their pride parade, which seemed like it was a pretty big deal. Having lived in San Francisco, this didn't faze me in the slightest, and we loaded in on time and more or less relaxed. Sid, the promoter was truly a gentleman, and hooked us up with copious amounts of homemade and delicious food and a full keg of microbrewed beer. Things had come together and were officially looking up. Mike Abominator and Christa came down and hung out, some friends of Dylan's and Mike's cruised out, and the mood was good. We were getting travel updates from the Cephalic guys, who finally made it just in time to load in and get onstage. The room stayed pretty empty until late, but right when I went out to get ready to load Cephalic's gear in, I was pleasantly surprised that it had gotten really full as To Violently Vomit (which is basically all the guys from Disgorge except the singer) were kicking out their brutal death metal jams. Cephalic made the best out of their undoubtedly terrible day, and we had a killer set to close things out. It was great to see Leonard and Steve again, as Cephalic has been a band we've played with pretty much at every stage of our “career”. Our European tour with them and Inhume in '04 is still my favorite tour of all time. They had to stay in San Diego to pick up their trailer at the repair shop the following day, and we headed East to Arizona to Ryan Butler's pad in Chandler for a bit of rest before the next show in Phoenix.

For those of you who don't know Ryan, he is one of the genuinely nicest people you could ever meet and a killer engineer who runs Arcane Digital Recording in Phoenix (well, Chandler) where we tracked the guitars, bass, and vocals for “All Guts, No Glory” (for full details, read the older blogs here). Oh yeah, and he also writes some of the heaviest riffs known to man in Landmine Marathon, who we were really stoked to have playing the show with us that night in Phoenix. We divested the van of Wes' moving stuff early that morning and he left for Tempe while the rest of us went to shower and get some rest at Casa de Butler. Ryan kindly took Deedee and I out to run some errands and get some miscellaneous stuff we needed but couldn't afford until generating some cash from the first show. We grabbed lunch at Qdoba and eventually headed over the venue.

Monday Night is the night to rock in post-nuclear Phoenix.

The weather in Phoenix was weird to say the least. Of course it was mind-bogglingly hot, but apparently July is Monsoon season there – I didn't even know that Phoenix had a monsoon season. So a weird thick fog / smog / smoke hung in the air around the venue, and a hot wind blew mercilessly. It was very nuclear winter-ish – artificially dark in the late afternoon with torrid, violent winds whipping shit around in the parking lot. Very pleasant. At any rate, Cephalic again were pretty late in arriving, due to waiting for their trailer to be repaired. The show itself was a little less well-attended than I had hoped, but by no means empty. Undaunted, Landmine sounded awesome to get the party going after sets from a couple of other locals, as did Cephalic. The sound was a bit off for our set, which made it less than ideal, and apparently the sound wasn't too great on the floor either, but we had a good time and the line-up was gelling nicely as we bashed it out. After the show, we finally got all the excess stuff out of our van, since the trailer was back up and running and Wes' stuff was moved to AZ, and more legroom was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

The next day we were due in Albuquerque, New Mexico for show number three. I was excited that we were playing with Laughing Dog again, hell I was excited that Laughing Dog was playing again, period. We had played the Launch Pad a few times before and it has always been a good time, and this would prove to be no exception. The room filled up really well, especially for a Tuesday night, and all the local bands were pretty killer – Torture Victim was a great crossover band, and Suspended was a really good all-girl Death Metal three-piece. There's a band description you don't hear too often! Unfortunately, I was grabbing dinner when Laughing Dog actually played, much to my disappointment, but hey, you gotta eat. I am really looking forward to hearing some new stuff from these guys. Anyway, we got back and started getting ready as Cephalic Carnage was entertaining the folks, and our show went really well. Steve from Cephalic ran our sound (for the rest of the whole tour, luckily!) and did a great job, and the kids were going mental. It was a great night, and the best show of the tour up to that point. The drive to Denver was pretty gnarly, though, so we loaded out, had a few beers in the parking lot and settled in (read – passed the fuck out) for the long night's ride.

We headed to Steve's house to once again bathe and nap, and old buddy Sherwood Webber (formerly of Skinless) came over and brought some beers for lunch. We hung out for a few hours before heading to the Marquis Theater, where Steve and Brian of Cephalic both work doing sound. Being in our tour-mates' hometown definitely did not hurt the draw, as the place was pretty fucking packed by the time the tour package was taking the stage. It was also great to catch up with ex-Cephalic bassists Jawsh and Patrick Russell, two great dudes. The show was really kickass, with a LOUD audience that makes our jobs onstage so much easier. Of course Steve knowing the soundboard like the back of his hand helped us sound as heavy as possible. Everything was going great until... we went to load out and I realized that someone had totally swiped Ted, the severed head prop that I pour blood out of at the end of every show. We frantically searched around and asked security, but no one had seen anything. I'm still pissed about that. What kind of fan steals an irreplaceable stage prop from a band? What a dick. At any rate, after my ire subsided to a manageable level, we hit the bar across the street for a couple more beers with Patrick and his girlfriend before piling back in the van. I really, really, really love having a driver on the road so there's always someone sober that hasn't just played to drive after shows. It's pretty much the best thing ever.

Touring in the west means that most drives are fairly long (and some can reach excruciating lengths, but there were hardly any of those on this tour), and the trek from Denver to Merriam Kansas (basically Kansas City) was no exception. We had already mapquested all the drives and were pretty hip to how long it would take, so there weren't too many surprises in that department. What we weren't prepared for was just how insanely hot the midwest is. Phoenix has nothing on Kansas (and Iowa for that matter). This show was cool because Origin would be joining us, a reprise of the Relapse Contamination tour Exhumed, Cephalic, and Origin did together in the summer of 2001, which was actually Origin's first tour. In fact, their original bassist, my old friend Doug Williams, was co-owner of the bar we played! The original plan for the night was that Origin would play between Cephalic and us, but because they were shooting a video that day, they opted to play a bit earlier so that they could stay set up from soundcheck. Their video shoot was appropriately raucous, and the rest of the show was a bit more subdued after the hometwon heroes left the stage, but still a great time.

"I've got a golden ticket - wait a second... What the fuck?!?!?" - Charlie

The next day was Des Moines, Iowa, a city we had never played before, so we didn't really know what to expect. The venue, Vaudeville Mews, was right next door to a great English-style pub with an excellent beer and Scotch selection. I spent my per diem pay on a glass of Dahlwhinnie Scotch. Mmmm... delicious and peaty. After a light lunch and a couple of drinks, we headed back to the venue once the show was getting underway. I was stoked to play with Black Market Fetus, who put on a great show for a rabid hometown audience. My friend Krista Spikes, who I used to work with at Necropolis Records way back when, was there with her husband, and it was really nice to catch up for a bit before we hit the stage. The turnout was actually pretty decent, although the venue was indescribably hot. I'm gonna digress here for a minute. When we play, I invariably sweat a lot, and when I do some of my longer screams, it's not uncommon for me to see stars and get light-headed, especially when the stage is particularly hot. That usually happens only once a night, though. This show took things to a whole new level. I saw stars three times, and finally during the first scream in “Open The Abscess” the entire room went white and I heard a loud buzzing in my ears that blanked out all the music – it sounded like an alarm clock from the 1970s, and it engulfed all the sound in the room for about 10 seconds. I just kept playing and hoping it would go away and that I wouldn't pass out. Luckily, I didn't pass out, and things returned to normal within 10 or 15 seconds. After we got done, I wrung out my shirt three times. I probably could have filled a medium soda cup with the sweat from that shirt. Gross. Anyway, that should give you an idea of just how fucking hot that place was. You can read a review of the show here. After the show, the venue closed quickly to re-open for a weird cover band / white rap thing, so we went back to the bar next door, played Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, and the Scorpions on the jukebox, and drank a lot of Duvel and other good beer with the BMF guys and Cephalic, capping off a really fun night.

The next day we were due in Urbana, Illinois, for the Central Illinois Metalfest. Small-market cities with fests are always a little weird, but Matt Bishop, the promoter is an old penpal and a great guy, so I was psyched. We hit town around 9 in the morning or so, but were luckily able to find a hotel that could check us in immediately. We get some rest and got cleaned up and headed for the venue which was located in the college in town. Matt met us at the door, and we got set up with wristbands, drink tickets and all the stuff one needs at a fest, as well as a prime merch spot right across from Jon and Jill of Ibex Moon. It was killer running into a bunch of old friends like Jim and Don from Nunslaughter, Tom, Dave, and Adam from Cardiac Arrest, Dave from Insanity, Mark from Impetigo, Greg and Carly from Relapse Records, and of course the creeps in Gravehill. Also, Kristoff met us there with a much needed merchandise refill before we would head to Canada in a few days. The Gravehill set went over really well and was a lot of fun. Cardiac Arrest guitarist Tom Knizner who filled in for me in San Diego while I was on tour with Exhumed came out for the last two songs, which was awesome.

Gravehill gets all Maiden on your ass with three guitars - sorry Tom, that makes you Janick Gers!

Thankfully Rob and I had about four hours in between sets, so I headed back to the hotel for a shower before the Exhumed set got underway. We took the stage a bit behind schedule, but not too late, and the set went down pretty well, considering that it was nearly 1am - a lot of these all day / two-day / three-day events turn into endurance tests after a while. Like I said, festivals in small-market cities aren't particularly glamorous or anything, but all the folks there, attending and playing, were 100% into the whole thing, which is what really counts in the end anyway. We scarfed some pretty good pizza from the place next door and retired to the hotel for a few beers and bad tv (the Mary J. Blige “Behind The Music”- yeesh!) before crashing out.

The often imitated, never duplicated Wes Caley at CIM, doing what he does best: finger-tapping solos with his tongue out.

The next day was our only day off for the whole tour, and most of the band returned to the festival to catch Hod, Withered, and Macabre, but instead I went to the gym with Matt from Cephalic and then joined he and his bandmates to watch the Captain America movie, which was pretty damn good. Not as good as Iron Man or Thor, but still quite good. Steve and I ended up being the only ones that didn't go for the 3-D version of the film, so we had a popcorn tub intended to feed the 6 of us all to ourselves. I have never ate that much popcorn in one sitting in my life and I hope to never do so again. At any rate, before I bore you all with a tedious analysis of the film that calls upon my 30+ years of Marvel Comics readership, I'll stop here and resume this chronicle next time with a gripping account of our show in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm sure that alone has you on the edge of your collective seats. I know I'm about to piss myself in anticipation. Must... hold... on... until... the next... chapter – if only it's not... already... too.. late...

How's that for a cliffhanger?

See you next time for more thrills, chills, and spills with the usual gang of idiots!

Cheers,
Harvey

Back In The Olde Country

2011-08-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

Europe, Part the second

In my never-ending, but futile, attempt to catch this blog up with the present, I'm reaching back into my admittedly faulty memory banks to the distant past of June, 2011 to recap our ongoing escapades in the Old Country. Read on if you like stories about idiots with guitars:

After MDF, we had a couple weeks of down time to get ready to head back to Europe for yet another round of festivals. Of course, Exhumed being Exhumed means that the only constant is change, so as Danny got ready to head off on an Intronaut tour, we were rehearsing with Mike (Deeds of Flesh, ex-Vile) Hamilton, a great drummer and an old friend. Mike and I had been jamming sporadically before MDF, knowing full well that Danny would have commitments elsewhere, so we were fairly well prepared. One of the great things about jamming with Mike for me personally (beyond the musical and personal stuff) is that he lives 15 minutes away from my house, not two hours away like Wes and Danny, or four hours away like Leon, or four-and-a-half hours away like the guys in Gravehill, Dekapitator and Cretin. So playing with Mike was making my life easier in many, many ways. Things came into clear focus musically once Wes got to my pad in Arroyo Grande, as he and Mike think about music in a way that is largely alike: in terms of sets of specific details that interlock to form a coherent whole – from the inside out as it were. On the other hand, your humble narrator tends to look at things first on the whole and then break that whole down into smaller details. At any rate, any lingering stuff was tightened down in the rehearsal room and it was time to return to Los Angeles to rehearse with Leon and board an excruciatingly early flight the following day.

We were lucky enough to be able to rehearse in the Dreaming Dead jam room (thanks Liz!) and crash nearby LAX in Malibu in order to hit the airport at 5 for a 7AM flight. Of course, the flight was delayed. After checking our bags and getting our boarding passes for our new flight on a new airline, we trudged back to Malibu to grab a bit more sleep and I hit the shower, figuring that I would just sleep on the plane. Needless to say, we eventually arrived in Amsterdam and found our driver, who was of course waiting at the gate of the old airline. Wires were uncrossed and we piled into the Sprinter van to head for the first show.

Everyone tells me it's difficult to book shows in Europe in the summer due to the festival circuit kind of devouring all the metal audiences and their hard-earned money, so we had to scramble to fill in any dates between Hellfest in France and Death Feast in Germany, and they predictably were a bit underwhelming. As to why we needed to fill in those dates, it's very simple. Every day we're on the road, it costs money, especially since we have to rent a van and a backline in Europe, so every day we're not playing we're just losing money. With the realities of being in an underground band and the state of the record industry in 2011, the days of simply receiving a cash advance from your label and not ever worrying about it are over, so we need to at least break even to consider doing any shows, especially in Europe, where it costs us about 4,500 dollars just to get over there. At any rate, we arrived ear;y June 17^th and play a show the same night in Zaandam, Holland. We enjoyed a few jet-lagged beers in a quaint alley bar before the show, which started things off on a wacky note. The support band Kutschurf were hilarious, dressing in goofy masks and cooking a kebab onstage amongst other antics. Their girlfriends at the merch table were also really nice, trying to explain the band's dirty jokes which were delivered entirely in Dutch. Our set was less intentionally goofy, but a little rough, and we left directly from the venue to France for Hellfest.

The lineup for Hellfest was insane. We would only be there one day, but with Bolt Thrower, Hail Of Bullets, Severe Torture, UFO, Angel Witch, Sodom, Kreator, Municipal Waste, Thin Lizzy and the Scorpions all playing that day, we were determined to make it memorable. Angel Witch was already playing the main stage when were loading into the Rock Hard Tent (a tent that probably held 3,000 people) which bummed me out, but we had to take care of business first. Severe Torture was tearing it up when we got there and got situated with the help of our intrepid European label manager, Pip Soret. We managed to find our backstage area, a very fancy cubicle complete with 2 six packs of Hellfest beer, and a bottle of wine. A Jack Daniels representative stopped by and gave us JD shirts, harmonicas (!), and most importantly, a bottle of whiskey. Then Leon and I went to the press tent for a couple of interviews before the show.

I think I should stop with the blow-by-blow for a minute to describe the ridiculous scope of Hellfest. It's basically the size of a small city, that is to say, a small city inhabited exclusively by Rockers. There are two massive, side-by-side stages outside which alternate, as well as two huge tent stages, a walk-up reception area, a press tent, and a backstage area the size of a high school, complete with cold / hot catering areas, a guitar showroom, a cubicle for hairdressing and massage (yeah, what the fuck?!?!?!), a shower area (awkwardly located near the cold catering area) and most importantly: the artist bar. It's worth noting that there were bonfires and post-apocalyptic sculpture all over the festival grounds and that the artist bar was the only place that accepted Euros, rather than tickets which we did not have. Anyway, it was a bit of a mind-fuck being there. We felt very out-of-place and kind of like we were getting away with something just by being there.

We banged out a couple of interviews and then headed back to the stage to get ready to play. Hail of Bullets was just getting done as we were setting up, and it's always great to have a beer and a laugh with such excellent dudes. The show at Hellfest went really well, and things with Mike really clicked that afternoon, as we battered through our set exhausted but enthusiastically. We were done relatively early, in time for the 2^nd disappointment of the day – UFO were finishing up on the main stage as we were loading out! We headed for the backstage to change and have some food and drinks undaunted. After breaking into the bottle of Jack, Wes and I headed out to catch Thin Lizzy, which was pretty enjoyable, despite the irreplaceably absent Phil Lynott and Gary Moore (R.I.P.). I was hoping to see John Sykes or Derek Robertson, but Scott Gorham kicked major ass and the guy from The Almighty did a pretty decent job on vocals. I caught a bit of the Sodom set, but it started to rain, so I slunk back into the backstage area for a jet-lag induced nap. About an hour and a half later Leon and Tony from 1349 (who I knew from our tour with Zyklon way back when) woke me up, I grabbed a snack and resumed drinking. We hit the artist bar for a bit, then went out to the show. I was curious to catch the Scorpions, since I love the early stuff, but they were playing “Winds of Change” as I was walking by, a song I cannot stand, so I kept going to the Rock Hard Tent to catch Bolt Thrower. Long story short, they were amazing. Their set list was a nice mix of old and new stuff, with the “World Eater / Cenotaph” medley getting Leon and I to headbang like high school kids. Then it was back to the bar. We hung out with the Hail of Bullets guys for a while, then they split, then we partied with Tony and some other Norwegians for a while. Dave Witte stopped by for a second which is always a pleasure, then the Norwegians split and we went down and drunkenly harassed the Bolt Thrower crew for a while like the fanboys we are. Then they left, and finally we were asked to leave the Artist Bar as they were closing. None too pleased, we made our way to the dressing room only to find that there was no booze left there either. Someone (Wes, I think) kicked the table over by accident, and we just started demolishing it for some reason. Then we knocked over some other stuff, tore some posters down off the wall and looked for our van in the dark. Of course, drunk, stupid and spent, we passed out immediately at the hotel, only to wake up early the next morning to head to the land of chocolates, waffles, and Trappist Ales, Belgium.

Amazingly, none of us were particularly hung over the next day, despite a pretty epic bout of alcohol abuse in France. That would change however... We had the next day (Monday) off, so the club, a killer rock/metal bar / venue / record store / hostel (yeah I know, pretty much heaven, right?!?) called De Rots in Antwerp offered to let us all stay upstairs an extra day, which was a big help. We piled in the gear and hung out for a few hours until Serial Butcher got started. They were a pretty killer Death Metal band in the Cannibal / Severe Torture vein and really nice guys. The show was small, but the vibe was really great. Everyone there was awesome and into it. We hung out with the bar staff and a guy from the great Last Days of Humanity and his girlfriend until about 5am, and kept partying until about 9:30 AM (!). Wes got up just as we headed to breakfast before crashing and burning. I got up at about 6:00pm the following day to help load our equipment out, since we were having too good of a time partying to actually load out after the show, realized that I was brutally hung over and went back to sleep until about 9 that night, when I finally woke up and grabbed a much needed shower. Leon, Mike and I left Wes at the bar with some beer money and headed out to get some dinner. We ended up at a really delicious South American steak house and enjoyed a very meaty meal. I wasn't intending to party too much, but we got back to the bar around 11 or so, and started drinking again. We closed the bar at about 3AM or so, and headed upstairs to the hostel area, where Wes and I polished off a bottle of Jameson's. Belgium nearly killed us...

We had two shows with The Black Dahlia Murder and Atheist on Wednesday and Thursday in Switzerland and Germany, before finishing up the week at Death Feast Open Air on Friday. The Black Dahlia guys were all cool dudes, and it was great to hang out with our buddies in Atheist again. To be honest, I was really burnt from Monday and Tuesday in Belgium, and was a bit useless both nights, but I did manage to get some laundry done in Germany and enjoy a couple of killer shows. It was a bit rough as they were just three band bills, so we played first every night, but the shows went pretty well and by Friday, I was feeling pretty much human again and ready to party at Death Feast. I wish I could have had more hijinks to describe during those two days, but after three days of ridiculous-level partying in a row, I laid pretty low offstage and slept and read a lot.

I was psyched for Friday because Ross Sewage, who of course did bass and vocals and co-wrote the lyrics for “Gore Metal” , was going to come onstage and sing “Casketkrusher” with us at Death Feast, as we were playing directly after Impaled. It was good to see those guys again and hang out for a bit. Apparently the dry, self-deprecating, cynical thing is a Bay Area trait, so it was nice to hang out with folks with a similar sense of humor. Death Feast was much more akin to the type of festival we're accustomed to: one backstage tent with beer and catering, porto-potties, one simple stage and about 2,500 Death Metal maniacs. We did a brief meet-and-greet for the Rock Hard Magazine guys and had a few beers there before getting ready for the show. We were a bit late arriving to the festival so we didn't get to set up our merch until way late in the day or see too many of the bands, but Impaled sounded groovy and killer from behind the stage. We got up and powered through the set pretty much on auto-pilot (in a good way) after the past week of playing and raging. It was a great ending to the trip. Ross came out and nailed the song, sounding really killer and making me wish he was singing all the old stuff with us, and the vibe was killer. We proceeded to get wasted and accidentally miss Malevolent Creation's set but emerged in time watch Dismember from the side of the stage and once again headbang like it was 1991 all over again. Good times.

All in all, it was a good trip, with Mike really stepping up to the plate and powering the machine forward. No lost or broken luggage, just Wes' pedal board was loaded incorrectly at Death Feast, but was eventually found and shipped back to the good ol' US and A. Aside from the braincells we wantonly destroyed, we headed back home relatively intact to start rehearsing for the US tour with Macabre, Cephalic Carnage, and Withered. But that, as they say, is a blog for another day.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures featuring the usual gang of idiots.

- Harvey

2011-07-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, well, this is as rapid-fire as I get apparently. Anyway, where were we?!? Oh yeah, just getting home from Mexico City. It's always nice to come home, especially after a grueling weekend like the one I had in Mexico City. At any rate, we were home for a few days in between Mexico City and Maryland Death Fest. Ultimately, we were viewing MDF as probably the most important show we had lined up in the first half of the year, as everyone would be there – the kids, old friends who'd seen us at our best and our worst, press, label, agent, ex-band members, etc. We felt that if we had a good show and pulled it off at MDF, we would be legitimizing all the other shows and really letting the folks know that we were back and could still deliver the goods. Especially with the amount of studio trickery available these days, almost anyone can make a heavy sounding album, but to be able to really kick ass live when it counts, that's what separates the men from the boys. At home I was still shitting green water but otherwise feeling pretty good. We tried to put a rehearsal together for Wednesday night, but it was a bit of a logistical nightmare between me and Wes getting to LA, Danny's Intronaut rehearsals, my Gravehill rehearsal, and Leon's job so we finally capitulated around 11:45 pm and headed to Long Beach to catch a few Z's before our flight the next day.

Undaunted, we readied ourselves for the flight to Baltimore, Maryland – excuse me, I meant Bodymore Murderland. We boarded the plane with a minimum of hassle, aside from getting an additional oversized baggage charge for Leon's bass which was total bullshit – had never been charged extra for it before and haven't since. Air Tran are just dicks.

At any rate, after some last minute detail-sorting out by yours truly we had our shuttle from the airport and our hotel situation mostly sorted out. While waiting for our shuttle, the lady at the counter was cracking us up. She was an overweight black woman talking on the business line for t

he shuttle to her girlfriend, gossiping very loudly while sucking on the remains of a chicken wing. She would change her tone of voice periodically and say things like “Good afternoon, sir, I'll be with you in just a moment”, then turn around and return to her conversation. I was trying incredibly hard not to laugh. Leon just turned to me with a completely straight face and said in a very quiet, serious voice: “Stereotypes.” I had to walk off for a minute and laugh into my hands. In no time, we were on our way to the very nice Tremont hotel in downtown Baltimore.

We had two suites for the first night, then one suite for the entire weekend, since Danny was leaving Saturday morning for the Intronaut European tour. Leon and I sacked into our suite, showered up and then headed down the street to the venue to catch Tragedy and Cathedral, who were both awesome. I saw a ton of old friends on the way in, and ended up hanging out with the Cathedral folks courtesy of Scott Carlson for most of the night. I'm sure Lee Dorrian later berated Scott for allowing me in their company because of all the irritating Napalm Death questions I asked him. I can be such an annoying nerd when it comes to my favorite bands.

Friday was our day to play, so the challenge really was just staying sober long enough to pull off a good show. We went out to lunch to a nearby Irish pub, and then back to the hotel with ample time for me to hit the gym and change and relax before the show. Anyone who was at this festival will be able to attest to the fact that it was ridiculously, swelteringly hot and very, very humid, especially for a native Californian with a stomach infection like your humble narrator. I was incredibly dehydrated the whole weekend, which made it difficult to drink as much as I would've liked to, but regardless, we were feeling pretty good about things as we got ready to go on. We were literally surrounded by old friends, Col (Jones, our original drummer), Matt and Marissa from Cretin, the Gravehill guys, the Relapse crew, Albert and KSP from Decibel, Joe from Skarp, my sister of metal Lili, Tom Hailey, our intrepid agent Dan Rozenblum, and many other familiar faces were at both sides of the stage. The room filled up really nicely as well, so things were looking good.

The sound onstage was not so great, but apparently it sounded good in the audience. We started blasting through our set, not realizing that due to some rain outside and the subsequent set-shuffling it had caused that we were going to have to cut things a bit shorter than we'd planned. The fact that Kylesa, who played right before us (how they got stuck playing at the exact same time as Neurosis is beyond me, considering that they're probably pulling from the exact same crowd) used all their own gear instead of the festival backline like every other band did (including us) and had to do a complete tear-down after their admittedly killer sounding set didn't help matters any. By the time we got through “Forged In Fire” (not an Anvil cover, haha!) we were unceremoniously informed that the next song would be our last. We ended up cutting “So Let It Be Rotten, So Let It Be Done” from the new record, as well as “Torso” and “Vacant Grave”. Oh well, there's always next year. We managed to cram “The Matter Of Splatter” and “Open The Abscess” into the “last song” and left the stage sweaty and stoked. Col liked it, so I figured it must have been pretty good, as he's always been the first person to tell me when anything sucks.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur, between the Cretin set I played on Saturday, Cianide ruling the universe, and a pretty intense night of partying, and the Gravehill set I played on Sunday. The heat was insane on the outside stage, and between the beers and stomach infection and a week of dehydration, I was pretty much spent. I stuck around and caught some of the Nokturnel set and then went back to the hotel and just laid in the air conditioning for a couple of hours dozing off here and there. I swear, I have the worst timing ever. Of all the weekends to not be 100% for partying, the weekend of MDF is NOT the one. Alas and alack, it was still a great weekend and thanks to all the friends and folks we partied with over the course of those four days. They are far too numerous to name individually here or probably even accurately remember. Wes and Leon headed home on Monday, and I hitched a ride with my old friend Tom Hailey, who was one of the main people responsible for us getting signed to Relapse back in 1997, to his home in Raleigh North Carolina where I spent a very nice night with he and his lovely wife Cathy eating really good vegetarian pizza and sharing music, beers, and laughs. The following day I headed to South Carolina to spend a week more or less relaxing with my mom, stepdad and grandmother. Good times. But back to matters at hand, the next episode here will feature our exciting return to the old world, and because it's Exhumed, another live line-up change. Ah, some things never change. Or always change. Whatever, you know what the fuck I mean!

Over and out true believers! Stay tuned for another book-length thriller from the usual gang of idiots!

- Harvey

Mexico City

2011-06-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, looking at this blog, it's a little frightening how behind the times it is. It's still talking about shit that happened in April... So in an effort to get things closer to present time, I'm going to do some rapid-fire updates...

Tonight's episode:

Mexico City – Fiesta of filth

– or -

Viva la vomit!

After returning from the Atheist / Inferno fest / Neurotic Death Fest Europe trip, I was quite excited to give my two week notice at my (very crappy) job. Our schedule this year is way too busy to hold down any kind of regular work. I was kept busy finishing out my last couple of weeks at work and getting everything sorted for the trip, so we only had time for one rehearsal. We were still feeling pretty good after Europe, though, so it wasn't the biggest deal.

May 19^th, the night before we left for Mexico, I played with Gravehill opening for Destruction in Santa Ana. I grabbed our humble axe-slinger Wes Caley from his home in Oxnard on the way south for the show. The night was a blast, and I ended up getting really, really hammered. I try to hold myself to a zero tolerance policy with Jagermeister, but after drinking a six pack during the performance (which went down awesome and the kids were great, by the way!) and then meeting very cool dude Matt from Dark Descent Records (who put out the new Gravehill record, which came out pretty killer in my humble opinion) and coercing him to buy me a few more beers (the perks of being a “recording artist”, haha!) I was left vulnerable to wiles of that licorice-flavored Teutonic libation we all know and love/hate. The night got kind of weird from there, but overall a good time was had by all. Wes and I stopped off for some much needed Carl's Jr. to soak up the madness on the way to Long Beach where we were hosted by the lovely and kind Katrina Woehlcke (who also let me park in front of her house for the weekend, thanks again!). Needless to say, the next morning when we got up at 7am to head to LAX, I was not a happy camper. Regardless, we boarded the flight with a minimum of confusion and consternation, especially compared to our last trip. This wouldn't last too long though.

Being in a band like Exhumed is weird sometimes. We're far from rock stars (as our meager bank accounts will clearly attest) but when you go to someplace like Mexico City, you kind of forget that for a day or two. As soon as we got off the plane and into the gangway into the terminal, a baggage handler spotted Leon, and welcomed the band to Mexico. Not even in the airport yet, and we were already rockognized. Odd... Then as we were going through customs, one of the guys there asked us what band we were in, and when we told him, he waved all our bags through the x-ray machine and then played us something from “Anatomy is Destiny” on his phone. Odder... We met up with the very cool guys in Pathology, who would be in the same van and hotel as us, and also had the same flight back to LA. Somewhere between customs and the van, Danny's cymbals were lost, which we realized when we got to the hotel. We were able to figure out in our broken Spanish how to tell the guys from the festival, and they called the airline and figured out where they were. Unfortunately security would have to hold them until Monday morning when we departed back for California, but the festival also had cymbals on hand already, so that was a bullet effectively dodged.

We met a few kids outside the hotel, signed some shit for them, and got settled in before heading out for some food. There was a huge buffet nearby that we decided to check out. Anyone that knows any of us even slightly knows that Exhumed pretty much runs on Mexican food 99% of the time. Everything was delicious, so I ate a bit of everything there – meat, rice, all kinds of seafood, flan, I didn't discriminate. I had three plates of food, it was that good. Wes declared it to be the best meal he had ever eaten. If you're wondering why I'm spending so much time talking about the food we ate, keep reading. It will all become clear.

After that we had a few beers (surprise!) and proceeded to get really bored. We ended up hijacking the dudes in Hirax and hopped in their van to get to the fest, as hanging out at the hotel was getting pretty tedious. We all piled in the back with the gear and anywhere there was room and headed to the “Metal in the Forest” festival. We were all wondering about this fest – mostly we were wondering where the fuck the “forest” was in Mexico City. Well, a one-hour van ride later, we had our answer. It was pretty far outside Mexico City, and in the dark, it seemed very remote. We got there as Watain was playing and headed into the madness. If we thought the response in the airport was weird, being at the fest was ten times crazier. Our journey from the gate to the bar (maybe 60 feet away) was a 30 minute odyssey of autograph signings, pictures with the kids, hugs and handshakes. At one point we were standing at the merch booth with about 20 kids taking pictures and shit and chanting “Exhumed! Exhumed!” Totally surreal. At any rate, before too long we were in the backstage tent (yes, the backstage was in a tent) looking for beer when one of the Watain crew guys (I could tell by his cute little matching vest thing) came up to us and politely asked if were playing next. When we told him that we were playing tomorrow, he informed us that we would have to get out of the tent because Watain would be coming offstage. What an asshole. We were literally discussing the fact that we should go to the bar immediately before he said that, so we took off and headed for less douche-y territory. From there we quickly ran into old friend Antimo from Disgorge (Mexico, obviously) and Profanator. It was great to see him again and he introduced us to Ruben, and our party team was formed! Hirax played and were awesome and then Rage was scheduled to go on, but after a 90 minute soundcheck, ended up not playing at all because of some sort of weird technical issue. That was all pretty humorous (as was the guitarist's mullet, perfectly preserved from the 80s) and we were fairly intoxicated by this time, but it was getting really late and pretty chilly. We realized that if we somehow missed the van back to the hotel, we would be literally stuck in a forest, with no tent, sleeping bag, jackets, etc. So we stuck close to Katon and co. and piled into the van for a hilarious ride back to the hotel.

The next day, we were the last band scheduled to play, so I was very surprised when I was awakened by a phone call at noon telling me the van was here to pick us up to head to the festival. Needless to say I asked the guy if we could catch the next van which he told me would be there in an hour and a half. Three and a half hours later, we were headed back to the venue after eating something very Denny's-esque at the hotel restaurant and a few beers. Since it was Sunday, the festival was scheduled to end at 8pm or so (unlike the previous night, which went on until 2am or thereabouts), and we were supposed to be onstage at 6:30. By 7:40 we were actually onstage, and it was just hitting dusk. The show went over really well, and the kids were awesome. Since the festival was outside in a kind of park / recreation area, the ground it was set up on wasn't particularly level and the front of the stage was sloping down towards the ground, which was a little dicey to navigate, but we grinded out the set undaunted.

Obviously things (logistically speaking) were winding down as we played, and dudes were taking down the lighting rig about mid-way through our set, which was weird. Thankfully the kids stuck it out with us and were awesome. By the time we finished playing, the lighting rig was halfway dis-assembled, and the backstage tent was completely devoid of lighting, so we struggled to find our bags in the dark and amazingly didn't forget anything – except our banner. We were so rushed leaving and there was so much activity with the people taking down the stage that no one grabbed it. We headed back to the hotel to shower, and then decided to hit a taco place on the corner.

We ended up drinking and eating with the guys in Violator and Gama Bomb, a couple of excellent Thrash bands that had played that day. I was wishing Dekapitator was in the line-up as it would have been a perfect fit! A couple of the Pathology dudes cruised over for beers as well, as well a guy from Anarchus who literally just happened to be in the neighborhood. Crazy! Anyway, because we need to get paid in US Dollars, we were waiting to get paid for a few hours after the show, so beers and al pastor tacos kept coming and going, and by the time I finally got all the business settled, my stomach was a bit iffy. I laid down to try to grab four hours of sleep before catching yet another excruciatingly early flight. As I lay there, I could feel my guts a'rumbling. I thought “just sleep a bit and this will pass”. I took some stomach medicine and tried to get some rest. It was not to be. I headed to the bathroom and vomited intensely three times in rapid succession. Now, keep in mind, I had been eating really spicy food all day, and everything came up. Literally. So I had an entire day's worth of spicy food pouring out of my face in three massive inverse-gulps. Tears were flowing, vomit was pouring out of my nose, which was also running, and to top it off, I had extremely bad diarrhea. After that expulsion, I hoped that I had literally gotten it all out of my system, and laid back down. Wes got back to the room and passed out as I lay there tossing and turning. It was gonna be a looooong day.

At 6am or so, after throwing up a couple more times, we woke up. I told the guys I was feeling ill, gave Leon all our money and told him he was in charge. We piled into the van with the Pathology guys and headed to the airport. I rode shotgun with the window open and a bag in my hand (that I thankfully didn't end up needing on the drive), ready for the worst. When we got the airport, the line was huge, so I posted up near the bathroom, and left the guys to their own devices. After about an hour or more, and several agonizing trips to the bathroom for me, someone from Pathology had the wherewithal to discover that we were in the completely wrong terminal of a huge airport. Bad news. We headed to the correct terminal, all of our crap in tow, with me bringing up the rear. As sick as I was, I had to stop every 50 feet or so and rest, and I was sweating profusely. Also, I had to go the bathroom at least every 15 minutes. It quickly became clear after a 10 minute tram ride to the other terminal and yet another bathroom break for yours truly that our chances of making the flight were getting very, very slim. The Pathology guys, unencumbered by a shambling, vomiting albatross of a band member such as I had become, sprinted on to the finish line and boarded the scheduled flight. We however, didn't even reach the gate until the flight had been closed for 20 minutes.

Our options were to wait until tomorrow and catch the same flight, which would have cost us $400, but allowed us to get a hotel (which of course would have cost even more money) and some rest and try again the following day, or to wait in the airport for 7 hours and try to get on stand-by for the full flight that afternoon. Being in state that was at best incredibly tired and frustrated (everyone else) or vomiting and shitting profusely and practically non-stop (me) we headed downstairs and found some benches (which were thankfully located very close to the bathrooms) and crashed out for a few hours. Somewhere around 1pm or so, I finally hadn't thrown up for about 45 minutes. It was time to try to keep some water down. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a bottle of water that much in my life, even though I could only handle small sips at a time. By this time I could at least talk a little bit to the other guys and find out what was going on. Up to that point, I had been pretty much oblivious. We planned to head back to the counter at 3:30 to see about the standby flight. I finally got some solid sleep until Wes woke me up so I could see a guy holding a “Ted Bathing” sign in the airport that got a few laughs. I looked at my phone and it read 3:35 – which I found a bit distressing as Leon and Danny were nowhere to be found. I swear, I get sick for one day, and all hell breaks loose! Anyway, I texted Leon, who was of course a) with Danny, and b) at the bar. They hurried back and we were at the ticket counter by four. Thankfully there were four seats in the exit row (score! Extra leg room!) available and it would only cost us $25 each to change our flights, since it was the same day. Frowns were turned upside down and I even ate a little on the plane ride home. So, as the bard once sagely intoned, all's well that ends well. We headed home happy and relieved. However, my stomach was still bothering me even a week later at MDF... but that's the next exciting episode in the never-ending fight for truth, justice and the Armenian Way– or whatever the fuck it is that we're doing with ourselves on these ridiculous adventures.

MDF recap coming soon!

More about Europe - and not the "final countdown" one, even though John Norum is totally rad

2011-06-04T17:38:00.000-07:00

Where were we.... Oh yeah, still in Europe. Since posting part I of our European Vacation - yes, that's a Griswald reference - we've been to Mexico City and Maryland Death Fest, but those stories will come later. Also, I have a bunch of photos I'll upload next time. Anyway, here's the exciting conclusion of our last saga - four dumbshits let loose in the old country - or, how I learned to stop worrying and love Europe.

Leaving Italy and heading back to Germany, we drove through the alps once again, and I actually was awake for most of the drive, taking in some truly breathtaking scenery, and taking over the iPod for the first time on the trip. That was a nice change of pace. I had finally almost got over my jet lag, now that our trip was winding down of course. Exhumed has always had our most solid following in central Europe – Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Holland. As we headed into the home stretch, we were playing to our strengths – drunken Germans who love blast-beats and presumably shit-porn. We had never played in Munich itself, and we were all psyched to be in the beer capital of the world. I personally love German beer, it's my absolute favorite, with Belgian beer being close behind, and the beer in Munich was exactly what I love about German beer. Not too heavy, refreshing, mildly effervescent with a full, but not overbearing flavor. So delicious. The club had built in accomodations (not totally uncommon in Europe) so we weren't going anywhere until the following morning. We posted up in the bunk room and got ready for the show. The stage was a little weird, very long and horizontal but not deep. It didn't really matter though. The place filled up quickly, and we saw a lot of Rotten Sound, Napalm Death, Dead Infection, etc. shirts. Always a good sign for us. We tore into it and the kids were loud and obnoxious, just the way we like it. One of the better shows on the whole run for us for sure. Also ran into the drummer of one of our old favorites - Dead. A split 7"was discussed, and hopefully the project will actually materialize and not just be drunken yammering. Admittedly, it'll be impossible for either band to top the cover art for Dead's "Orgasm Through Sleazy Vibes" EP.

After we played we retired upstairs to meet with our agent Marco, who works for the excellent Avocado agency. He was a nice, straightforward guy who spoke plainly and directly – what the fuck kind of booking agent is that?!?!? Anyway, it was a positive meeting, we started working on more plans for Fall, and then it was time catch Atheist and get sloshed. Done and done. We just partied all night, and it was a total bro-down, or brodeo. Either way, it was just the four of us and our ever patient driver, Mat. Kelly and Chris from Atheist stopped in for a drink, but soon we were getting stupid and loud. I managed to only break one beer bottle, and graffiti an excellent picture of our personal mascot, Ted Sanchez on the wall. Success!

The next day, we weren't even that hung over, by some blessing of the beer gods, and we headed off to Tilburg. Again, this was well-trod territory for us, having played the awesome 013 venue a few times already. We were sharing a dressing room with Atheist and one of my favorite current Death Metal bands, Hail Of Bullets. Martin from HOB informed us that the Heineken was his, but we could drink as much of the other beer as we wanted. That sounded like a dare. Anyway, I ran to the local music store to grab some new strings and after getting the guitars stage-worthy, met up with the affable American expatriate Pip Soret from Relapse Europe. Got to hang out with a lot of old friends, Harold from Legion of the Damned, John and Kyle from Incantation, Jason from Misery Index, Frank Van Liempd, our old publicist, and a lot of other folks who I can't exactly recall at the moment. The vibe of the whole day was just awesome.

We were pretty warmed up and tight (at least for us) by now, so the set felt great, and it went down awesome. I have to admit, I love playing bigger stages, much more room to run around and interact with the kids and shit. Caught Misery Index and Hail Of Bullets crushing it, drained many, many beers and headed off to a Formule 1 hotel, which anyone who has ever stayed at one will tell you is one of the worst hotels ever. We had two rooms with bunk beds – it was very “Stepbrothers”. You also had to keep pushing the button to turn the shower on every 45 seconds or so, or it would just turn off. Oh, Formule 1, you don't even have continental breakfast.

We got up to fly to Greece pretty early the next day, but our driver, who had up to this point been very on the ball, misread our flight schedule, so we totally missed our flight. Getting this sorted out was very time-consuming and expensive, which Mat very professionally took out of his pay, stand-up guy that he is, since for once- it was someone else's goof that caused the delay! I love it when I get to say that. It's pretty much always our (if not my) fault when things go wrong, haha! Anyway, after a bit of a delay and some food, we were back on track. Wes and Leon flew from Amsterdam to Frankfurt to Athens, and Danny and I were routed through Munich. I actually got a hold of the promoter before we left and gave him our new arrival info and things were back on track. All things considered, a pretty minor hiccup.

After a fairly nondescript flight, we arrived in Athens – our flights landed within 20 minutes of each other's – and Danny and I quickly found Wes and Leon in baggage claim. Amazingly, all of our luggage was already there and things were looking good. The driver was there waiting for us, and he was a super nice guy. He took us by the Acropolis, even though it was closed, which was truly awe-inspiring, even from the remote viewing area where we were. Greece was a breath of fresh air after the sort of stiflingly organized nature of central Europe. Here the city clearly sprung up spontaneously, erupting in tangles of labyrinthine, serendipitous urban quagmire. The streets were dirty, there were weird hookers on the corner, graffiti everywhere, rubble in the streets from a soccer-related riot / street brawl. It was kind of like being back in the Oakland or Hollywood, except without the burritos. I can't wait to come back to Greece, hopefully on vacation and really soak in this amazing place. Again, we had an uncharacteristically nice hotel, even if it wasn't in the greatest neighborhood. We were warned several times about the neighborhood, which was kind of funny. I just said, “Dude, I used to live in Hunter's Point – I think I'll be fine”. Bay Area peeps will know what I'm talking about there. At any rate, the dinner at the hotel was delicious – the eggplant in particular was great. We headed to the venue and had a few beers before hitting the stage. This was definitely an Atheist crowd, who eyed us a little suspiciously at first, but warmed up quite nicely and the show turned out really well. Great to go out on a positive vibe. I had been checking out Atheist sporadically every night, but in Athens I caught their entire set and was really blown away at how good they are – not just at playing their instruments (that too), but they really are a band that sounds like no one else. We interrupted their set to bring them out Jager shots and Danny and Leon even stage-dove during “Piece of Time”. Epic stuff!

After the show, we headed back to the hotel, where Leon crashed out. Wes, Danny, and I wandered around town until we heard some cool-sounding folk music coming out of a basement bar, so we wandered downstairs and grabbed a very large beer and an amazing sausage sampler plate. The music was great, the vibe was awesome, and it was one of those you-can't-plan-this-shit kind of travel moments that makes the whole grind of touring totally worthwhile. I felt really lucky to be sitting in a random bar somewhere in Athens drinking good beer with old friends and enjoying truly local color. Afterwards, we made our way through the hooker-lined streets and got back to the hotel. As Wes and I were heading to our room, I heard some girls in the hallway and poked my head out. They asked me if I was in a band, I said yes. The only thing I could think to say next was “You guys want some beer?” Before we knew it there were three obviously very under-age Norwegian high school chicks drinking beer, chewing tobacco, smoking cigarettes and taking shots of Absolut in our room. How random is that? Anyway, no this wasn't some weird “Barley Legal” Letters-worthy encounter (c'mon, I'm 35 years old here, what kind of guy do you think I am?!?!?), but it was a pretty random and funny end to the night. We dozed off about 4am or so and got up around 8 to fly home.

I took a quick shower, rousted the boys and we piled in the van. We were cutting it pretty close time-wise, as usual. It turned out that didn't really matter, though, since our flight was delayed by three hours (exactly the amount of time we would have had to catch our connecting flight). The wait in line took forever, and the wait for the flight seemed to take even longer. In our hungover (as usual) states, we saw a smoothie stand, and invested way too much money in the worst fruit smoothies I have ever seen. Eventually we were headed home. I watched Black Swan on the way back, which was pretty good, and got some rest. I couldn't even drink on the flight this time, I just needed a day off. That didn't stop the other guys, though, but the party vibe had definitely mellowed at last. We hit JFK, went through all the ridiculous TSA bullshit in customs, and barely made our rescheduled connecting flight to LA, where we learned immediately after landing that Bin Laden had been killed. That was kind of a trip, and I couldn't help but be stoked and feel even better about getting home. The last hiccup was that our merch box was lost by Delta, so I had to stay even longer and fill out a bunch of bullshit paperwork. Leon and Danny headed off with their significant others and Wes and I were picked up by the ever-affable Mike Abominator from Gravehill, driving my car which he graciously allowed me to park in front of his house in Orange County while we were gone.

On the way south to the OC to drop Mike off, we hit the closest Del-Taco and I ate waaaaaaay too much. From there, Wes and I drove north to Ventura County (about an hour north of LA) and I continued on to San Luis Obispo County (about four hours north of LA) where I arrived at about 5am and finally got some well-deserved sleep.

My trip:

Strings broken: 1

Beer bottles broken: 3

Pieces of Luggage forgotten by Exhumed: 3

Clothing items lost: 2

Books read: 2

Instances of vomiting: 1

Shits taken outside: 1

Exhumed Tattoos: 1

Favorite condiment: Butter

Travel days: 11

Showers taken: 7

Drawings of Ted Sanchez: 1

Calls to my parents: 4

Band arguments: 0

Farts: 1,000,000

Exhumed in Europe Spring 2011

2011-05-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

Exhumed in Europe 2011 Part the firste

Idiots abroad

– or –

How I spent my Spring Break

Let me get this out of the way first. Logistically, Exhumed is a mess. A lumbering, clumsy clusterfuck of a band. We have no rehearsal space, are missing significant pieces of key gear (although this is being remedied as I type this), live in different cities, and never seem to have the basic elements of being a band down. That said, we have a killer new album under our belts, a great record label behind us, rad booking agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and years of experience at pulling victory out of our asses at the last minute. And so it remains in 2011.

On the morning of our flights to Oslo, we forgot the following: 1 entire T-shirt design; our backdrop; all of Danny's clothes and drum hardware; my bullet belt; and a brand-spanking new severed head to drink blood out of at the end of the show. Wes was the only person that didn't forget anything, but he also had all of his clothes in a grocery bag. Oh, did I mention that we barely made the flight? Hopefully none of the wonderful people that I mentioned above (record label, agents, etc.) are reading this blog, as I really don't mean to erode any (very probably misplaced) confidence they may have in us, but I have to tell it like it is. The important thing is this: we made the flight to Norway – we played the shows, we lived to tell, or rather to blog, the tale.

Luckily, we flew KLM to Amsterdam, which means that they don't charge you for booze. Wes and I enjoyed several Johnnie Walkers that made the morning's rough start a lot easier to take. I also got to see “The Fighter”, which was a killer movie. We hit Amsterdam without incident, hit the bar, and then made our way to Norway. Of course, when we collected our luggage, my guitar was conspicuously absent... That was a bit disquieting. After hassling with the attendant paperwork that one must endure when one's luggage is lost, we met the very amiable tech-death metal legend Kelly from Atheist and headed to the hotel.

We were greeted by an extremely polite dude who was listening to a great mix CD w/David Allan Coe, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and other country classics, which was a very good omen. The hotel was a bit surreal, as it was a pretty nice hotel (2.5 stars at least) that had been taken over by the Inferno Festival. All the TV screens showed ads for metal vendors at the fest or new releases from Norwegian metal labels. Motorhead played over the PA as we checked in. Fucking weird. There were heshers everywhere, and a lot of goth-looking clothes going on which was a bit strange as well. We had planned to get guitar strings and a few other essentials after landing as we ran out of time to do so before leaving, but we were informed that everything was closed for Easter – all weekend. After dumping our luggage, we headed to the venue to get our wristbands, passes, and most importantly... drink tickets!

It felt a little weird for our first show back to be in a place where we didn't really know anyone, and we just kind of hung out at the rooftop open-air (the weather was great) bar by ourselves for the first hour or so and felt a little goofy. That problem was soon solved, as we were joined by an old friend, Christine, and quickly ended up hanging out with a bunch of people, including Bard Eithun (ex-Emperor) who was a really nice, down to earth dude. Soon we were several drinks in and making friends left and right. I had a very solid buzz and took in a killer set from Aura Noir and then headed downstairs to check out one of my all-time favorite bands, Voivod. They took the stage and just crushed the place. I immediately headed upstairs to see some old Bay Area heroes of mine, Forbidden, who were also excellent, then headed back to the hotel drunk and feeling no pain.

Danny and Leon hit the sack and Wes and I headed to the bar to cajole drinks out of anyone foolish enough to befriend us. We ended up drinking Satyr's brand of red wine (yeah, the dude from Satyricon has his own wine which was served at the fest... whoa.) with Christine, Craig and Steve from Forbidden, and a few other people until about 5am. Craig graciously offered me use of his guitar the next day, which was really, really nice of him. Especially considering that in 1989 I was a 13 year old who used to headbang to “Forbidden Evil” in my bedroom all the time! We also got a lot of advice on how to get my guitar back from the airline, how to pick up Norwegian chicks, and a lot of other seemingly pertinent information which I forgot immediately after leaving the bar.

The next day... headaches, beer shits, and worst of all, the realization that we a) had no money, and b) were out of drink tickets set in. But we always find a way, right? We didn't play until 12:30am that night (immediately after Immortal's set – what a great slot, huh?!?) so the challenge we put to ourselves was to stay sober until about 10pm anyway. Wes set about re-tuning Craig's guitar from Eb to B, I got our merchandise going, and just when we had to go down to the desk to borrow a screwdriver or something, Wes and Danny keenly noticed my guitar sitting there! Sweet relief! We headed over to the club for soundcheck, and things seemed to be getting on the right track at last. After soundcheck, I cobbled together a new set of strings that I got from the incredibly helpful and polite production staff. Since this is Norway, and everyone tunes to E or D, the strings were waaaaaaay thinner than the guage we usually use (.013-.56), but the set that was on my guitar were really old and the fifth string had already broken several times, so just about anything was a step up. I ate my sandwich I had taken with me from the hotel's extensive (and delicious) breakfast buffet and headed to the hotel's workout room. By the time I was done there and showered, it was about 9 or so, and I got a call from the fest, very concerned that we were late for our signing session (which is weird in and of itself- we're an underground Death Metal / Grindcore band for cryin' out loud!). Yours truly apparently didn't read the one of the promoters' several dozen emails correctly, and thought it was going to be right around the time we played... whoops! The really embarrassing thing? We had to have a van come and pick us up at the hotel because every time we tried to walk to the venue (maybe half a mile away from the hotel) we got hopelessly lost – unless we were drunk, in which case we walked straight there and back with no problems. Wes and I hit the venue and met quite a few nice kids with shit to get signed and took some pictures with them, which was cool. Danny and Leon were already at the venue, but Leon's phone was off, so they missed the whole thing. Hoo boy... as I type this, I realize that we really gotta get it together.

At any rate, we quickly found the guys from some of our old tour buddies in Soilent Green, Today Is The Day, and Vomitory, and our beer problems were as good as solved. We were ready to rock at last. The room we were playing filled up quite nicely as Immortal wound down and we bashed out a surprisingly (to me anyway) tight and coherent set that went down really well. After exhorting the crowd with a typical “So Norway likes Death Metal, huh? - I don't think you fucking heard me, I said NORWAY LIKES DEATH METAL, RIGHT?!?!?”, I can confidently confirm that Norway does indeed like Death Metal. Heading back to the hotel we had more drinks with Steve Austin, Shane from Napalm (who told a wonderfully drunk and enthusiastic tale of receiving the Genocide demo in the mail on January 31^st, 1986, with Wehrmacht on the A-side of the cassette) and the Vomitory guys and Christine, and left the bar around 3 or 4, somewhat of an improvement from the previous night.

I was up early the next day to hit the breakfast buffet before splitting for London, where I ran into Horgh from Immortal (he had played drums for Hypocrisy when we toured with them several years ago) to congratulate him on a job well done the previous night and then got ready to fly out. This time we were a bit more ready than we had been leaving LA, and we met all of the Atheist guys, who we would spend the next 10 days on the road with.

The flight was short and sweet, and our work permits were properly filed and presented at customs, which makes a huge difference – the last time we visited the UK we were stuck in customs for almost 2 hours – so things we pretty much humming along. Our driver Mat, was there at the gate, on time to pick us up, we had all of our luggage and it seemed like things were coalescing nicely at last! We were even able to get some proper guitar strings and everything! The show went down really well, and I began to understand just how great Atheist are live- I literally hadn't seen them play since 1992. They executed their material flawlessly and demonstrated that technical, progressive Death Metal can still be aggressive, organic and powerful. We were recommended to hit a bar in town called the Crobar (yeah, I would've thought there'd be a “w” in there as well), as the show was over by 10:30 or some obscenely early hour. We got cabs and hit the bar – a true rock bar with a great juke box stocked with tons of Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, Morbid Angel, Autopsy, Kreator, Celtic Frost and much more killer shit. Beers were drained, friends were joined and made, including an American serviceman named Andrew (I think?), an old friend of Danny's named Niki, and a very helpful blonde who had an Exciter patch on her denim (my kind of girl, for sure!) whose name has completely escaped me. The party escalated from there – everyone except me left around 2am or so, and somehow or other I ended up in the office of the bar partying with the bar staff until about 5am. A lot of details as far as how things went down are fuzzy at this point. Shit, they were fuzzy the next day. I do remember doing a shot of something and instantly vomiting. That was pretty gnarly. Anyway, the cab I ended up in dropped me off at the wrong Travelodge, which I didn't realize until I tried my key in the door and it didn't work. That was interesting. Luckily, I was able to hail another cab and get to the right hotel (two of them on the same street) within a few minutes. I stumbled into the room as the sun was coming up for about an hour and a half of sleep before the van left for Germany.

This day was pretty much gone for me. I slept until about 6pm or so, when I finally emerged, crusty, cranky and very hungry and thirsty. Today's show paired our package with the excellent Macabre / Birdflesh / Rompeprop lineup, which was great. I joined the other guys and old friend Adde from Birdflesh / General Surgery just in time for dinner. Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, et al) was also on hand as he was on tour with Macabre. It was great to meet him and tell him in person how much I dug the Circle Of Animals record he did. If you like Ministry, Killing Joke, Godflesh, Pigface, God, Head Of David, etc., you should absolutely check it out. Anyway, back to dinner. We of course went to the wrong restaurant (our dinners were paid for by the venue at a place called Maze, and we went to someplace across the street) and ended up having to buy our dinner like idiots. We decided to hit Maze anyway and get our food to-go for after the show, a decision which would prove to be prudent. By the time we made it back to venue, I was feeling more or less human, and Rompeprop was just wrapping up a killer set. Birdflesh was next, and were as lethal and hilarious as ever. Macabre was beyond awesome, and it really hit home how psyched I am about our upcoming tour with them in the states and Canada. I always love playing Essen, not only because the kids there are awesome, but because it's the hometown of one of my very favorite bands, Kreator. The show was great that night, maybe the best of the whole trip. The kids were going fucking mental and we were loving every minute of it. After the show, I asked Adde “Was the set too gay?”, he smiled and responded “Just gay enough.” That's when I knew we were on the right track.

From there we hit Paris, a city I've been to many, many times. In fact, I even vacationed there (and you thought I had no culture!) so I was much more interested in sleeping than I was in taking in the sights. We did get out for a bit to try and find some new underwear and socks for our under-wardrobed drummer. The show went down all right, and I got to see my old buddy Malek Baali for a minute afterwards. We fully intended to go out and get shitfaced, but the need for dinner, high prices in the neighborhood and a lack of overall momentum kind of foiled us. Alas, tomorrow would be another day. And hopefully a drunker one. We headed east to the beautiful country of Switzerland. Of course, myself being a lunkhead of the highest order slept through the alps and only woke up once we were in Zurich itself. The thing that sticks out the most for me was that the beer we had here was probably the worst beer I've ever had in Europe – yes, it was worse than Kronenbourg. Luckily we had Jack Daniels. We all bunked in one room in a hostel, where Leon took matters into his own hands and bought some good beer for all present, and we proceeded to get hammered with the Atheist guys at the hotel. The next morning I took one of the least satisfying, but most overdue showers of my life. A quick trip through the well-stocked continental breakfast bar and it was off to Italy.

Again, I slept through some spectacular scenery, and awoke at the venue for load-in. One thing that will scare the hell out of you being in an underground band: A really huge venue. This place could have easily held 1200 people. That was a bit big for just us and Atheist. I was a little apprehensive about filling the place up to say the least. Our hotel was ridiculously nice as well – Wes and I had a suite all to ourselves with two king-size beds and a huge, jacuzzi tub. Danny and Leon's room was considerably more modest, but still pretty damn swanky. We got back to the club, checked out the usual array of bootleg merchandise you have to tolerate when playing Italy, and were relieved to see a lot of cars in the parking lot. The place wasn't full by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely didn't look pathetically empty either. We hit the (huge) stage, had a good, well-received show and hung out with our old pal Marco from Brainwash. We went out to meet some of the kids after the Atheist set, and were amazed that they actually smelled worse than we did. That never happens! The next day I resolved to actually be awake for the drive through the alps.

To be continued... Hopefully the other guys will send me their pictures in time for pt. II so you can see some of the stupidity...

Tablature

2011-04-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, some folks have asked me about tablature for Exhumed songs, and since I end up transcribing the songs for the other guys anyway, I actually have tab files. The program I've been using is Guitar Pro 5, but there's a new version, Guitar Pro 6 and you can download a free trial of the program here.

I haven't used any of the fancy stuff on the program, I've just used it to transcribe riffs. There are no solos transcribed, as frankly, it's just too much of a pain in the ass to do it, and I rarely remember them correctly anyway. One limitation I've found, at least in GP5 is that you can't account for tempo changes within songs - so each song is tabbed at or near the dominant tempo. So the bridge for "Waxwork" will be way too fast for example when you listen to the midi, which is of course, hilarious sounding.

I've posted up three songs to start with. There's "Limb From Limb" from Gore Metal - basically every song on the album is virtually indecipherable by ear - I'm almost hesitant to post these tunes, as usually when you can't make out a riff, the riff you imagine almost always ends up being heavier than what was actually recorded. So if you're disappointed, sorry, haha! Then "Decrepit Crescendo" from Slaughtercult, which has long been a staple of our live set. I think that the solo riff here is transcribed as a D-beat riff, whereas on the album it's trem picked like an old-school Death Metal riff. That was a change made years ago, so if you want to play it faithfully w/the album, just trem-pick that part. Lastly is "Waxowork". I posted this because it's one of our most complicated (not necessarily technical, but complicated) songs and I've seen some really weird videos on youtube of people playing it really wrong. Now they'll have no excuse, haha!

Anyway, enjoy and let me know if these are helpful, fun, or whatever.

Cheers,
Harv

download "Limb From Limb" tab

download "Decrepit Crescendo" tab

donwload "Waxwork" tab

LPs and other junk for sale

2011-03-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

So I finally cleaned out my storage space and found some merchandise sitting around collecting dust. So instead of it sitting around collecting dust at my pad, you can buy it and then it'll sit around collecting dust at yours! Here's what I've got:

EXHUMED "Gore Metal" LP - $15ppd US, $20ppd world

EXHUMED / INGROWING 7" - $5ppd US, $6ppd world

EXHUMED / INGROWING 3"CD - $5ppd US, $6ppd world

DEKAPITATOR "The Storm Before The Calm" LP - colored vinyl - $15ppd US, $20ppd world

Paypal only to harvey_matt@yahoo.com

Just email me at harvey_matt@yahoo.com if you're interested - I'll get your address and we'll go from there.

Cheers!

Crap from the Crypt Vol. 1 - Goregasm demo 1992

2011-02-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a new thing on this blog... I will be digging through my archives of accumulated bullshit and posting random tidbits here from time to time of stuff that isn't available or maybe has never really been heard outside the band. Keep in mind, this should only be for the really curious or the extremely die-hard, as all of it will be raw, poorly recorded (and probably poorly played), and mostly ripped from crappy 3rd generation cassettes. Most of our (comparably) listenable material from the past was featured in the exhaustive compilation 2CD (or limited 3CD) “Platters of Splatter”. That said, there is still some random stuff floating around down there, deep within the cobwebbed recesses of storage spaces, long neglected boxes and shameful, repressed memories.

I figured we should post “Goregasm” up here first, as it's the oldest thing I have on hand (I think I may still have a copy of our 1st rehearsal tape in storage... it's pretty cringe-inducing) and it's something people here and there have asked me about through the years.

A bit of history to put this recording in context is definitely in order. In January 1992 we released our first demo tape, “Dissecting the Caseated Omentum”, followed by our first EP that May on Afterworld Productions – called “Excreting Innards” (both releases can be found on disc 2 of “Platters...”). Jason Wineland, the guy who released the EP (as well as the excellent Putrifact 7”) was getting pretty ambitious and decided he wanted to release a full length album from us. Well, at the time, I was 16 years old and a junior in high school. The oldest member of the band at the time was our bassist, Ben Marrs, who was 18. Suffice it to say, we were far from organized, and after recording the EP, we could no longer rehearse in my Dad's garage – the cops were called too many times – so rehearsals were sporadic. We would sometimes share a jam space (or rehearse at someone's house) with a punk band from my high school called F.D.S. (Flying Dead Skin – wow... that name sucked then and has gotten worse with age), and sometimes we would just end up playing shows cold. (check out some of our old pay-to-play tickets from '91-'92 at the right...)

We had booked time to record our “album” in October, but had barely rehearsed. We also only booked two days in the studio – the same amount of time we had taken to record the six-song demo and then our subsequent six-song EP (although two songs on the EP were under five seconds long) – and we planned to record a twelve song album in that space of time. Needless to say, not the brightest planning on our part. Our reasoning was that since most of the songs on the record would be from the demo and EP (we had four brand new songs, a noise song, and re-recorded eight songs) that it would take us less time to record them. Of course that wasn't factoring in time for mixing, or the fact that we had barely rehearsed before the recording. The naivete of our planning for this still kind of astounds me. Afterworld never offered a budget for recording – and to be honest, it never even occurred to us that one of the primary functions of a record label was to fund recordings. We just were having fun making a racket and the fact that anyone was interested in helping us do that lit a fire under our collective asses.

It should come as no surprise if you're still reading that the resulting music is pretty bad, both in performance and in production. But it is a funny artifact from the band's embryonic stages. Shortly after this recording, we kicked out Ben Marrs for some reason or other – it all seemed very serious at the time – I think he didn't show up on time for a gig or something like that. Mostly I think it was because he was crazy about bands like Atrocity and Demilich and wanted to go in a weirder, more avant-garde direction, or maybe because he was 18 and a lot further along in life at the time, while Col and I were still very deep in a “read comic books, play RPGs with many-sided dice, afraid of girls” kind of stage. (pic at right - nerding out circa '92/'93, L to R: Me, Derrel Houdashelt obviously very baked (below), our friend Brian "Terrorizer" Rubio (above), Col Jones with his boyish grin).

Even after recording this, I think we all realized that it was a bit of a step backward from the demo and EP in terms of performance and sound quality. Jason let us know shortly after we finished recording that he was folding the label, and “Goregasm” faded into the background. For some masochistic reason, we started selling it as a demo cassette in 1994 (the cover, designed and photocopied by Ross Sewage can be seen below to the right), which kind of kept it on a few people's radar. For me, I think this is more of a novelty or a completist kind of thing - I sure as hell wouldn't invite people over to my house for a listening party for “Goregasm”. But there are still some cool riffs and ideas that given some more time to rehearse and execute could have been a positive part in the band's development, rather than a red-headed stepchild. We decided not to put this on “Platters...” because the quality is just so bad, and most of the songs are featured elsewhere in different versions.

I actually had an offer not too long ago to have this issued as a limited vinyl-only release, but to be honest, it's so rough around the edges (and you should all know by now that we're far from perfectionists) I wouldn't want anyone to pay for it. So go ahead and download the bastard if listening to musically inept high school students bite off way more than they can chew is your idea of fun.

Download "Goregasm"

I don't think that there ever was a concrete track order, so the files are simply in alphabetical order. For whatever reason, a couple of the files contain two songs, and some of the file names don't exactly match up with the track names, so here they are:

01 Ben's Song – This song did have lyrics and a title at one point, but Ben Marrs wrote most of the music, and since the actual title and lyrics are lost to the annals of time, it was simply called Ben's song
02 Cadaveric Splatter Platter – this is a re-recording of a song from the EP, you can hear subsequent better versions of it on “Platters of Splatter” disc 2 and 3
03 Caseating Decomposition_Embryon – this is “Caseating Decomposition” and “Embryonic Regordation” - two songs from the demo re-recorded and on the same track here for whatever reason
04 Coital Mutilation – this is a re-recording of a song from the EP
05 Excreting Innards – this was a new song at the time, and you can hear much better subsequent versions of it on “Platters of Splatter” discs 2 and 3
06 Festering Sphinctral Malignancy - this is a re-recording of a song from the EP
07 Goregasm - this was a new song at the time, you can hear the first riff recycled in a song on the new record, “All Guts, No Glory”
08 Oozing Rectal Feast – this is a re-recorded song from the demo
09 Perverse Innard Infestation - this is a re-recording of a song from the EP
10 Splurgee_Pyathrotic Discorporat – this is two new (at the time) songs - “Splurgee” a noise bit about Slurpees, and “Pyathrotic Discorporation” - you can hear a subsequent version of this song on “Platters...” disc 2
11 Ziploc Bodybag - this is a re-recorded song from the demo

Exhumed Mark I (seen at right being doofuses in 1991)
L to R:

Derrel Houdashelt - guitar
Col Jones - drums
Matt Harvey - guitar, vocals
Ben Marrs - bass
Jake Giardina - vocals

"Behind the music - where you can smell all of the band's farts" - or "How to succeed in Grindcore without really trying"

2010-11-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest installment in the continuing adventures of a lovable gang of misfits who must band together to overcome the odds and win the campus ski tournament, defeating the smarmy jocks and winning the heart of the pretty girl who is obviously too sensitive and sweet to be dating the leader of said smarmy jocks. Oh wait... I thought we were in an 80s movie there for a second. Nonetheless, the usual gang of idiots is at it again, pooling their collective, ummm... I was going to say talents, but that's a bit of a stretch, but the point is - we're making a new fucking record. It's going to be called "All Guts, No Glory" and we're recording in Arizona. Here's the fucking details:

Day 1 - Tuesday: After arriving in Los Angeles around 1:30 am with Wes in tow, we grabbed a well-deserved Burrito and arrive at Leon’s house about the same time as he does. We enjoy a few cold beers and unwind, even though we have to get up in a few hours and head off to LAX. I get up early and shower anyway, then we arrive at the airport with a minimum of hassles. One and a half uneventful hours later, we’re in Arizona and are welcomed by our old friend Ryan Butler (Unruh, Landmine Marathon, etc.), who will be recording the remainder of the tracks for the album – guitars, bass, vocals, incidentals, etc. Nothing particularly interesting happened after that, we hang out for a while, have a few beers and some food and then off to bed to get started in the morning.

Day 2- Wednesday: After discovering that Busch 30-packs were only $15 at the local Walgreens, we stocked Ryan’s mini-fridge and started thinking about guitar tones… Many guitarists are fucking obsessed with tone and Wes (especially) and I are no exception. The plan was to record four rhythm guitars and we had already decided to use Wes’ Marshall JCM 800 as the core sound for the rhythm guitars on the record, but the tone for the other two tracks would have to be sorted out in the studio. Luckily, Ryan has a killer arsenal of amps at his studio (Arcane Digital in Phoenix- yes this is a plug for the place, it rules!) so we had a lot of shit to choose from.

We settled on a two amp set up with a Bogner Uberschall and an Engl Powerball, for a bit brighter, crisper tone than the Marshall. It was a bit weird hearing all the songs with this tone first (since these tracks were planned to sit a little lower in the final mix, we recorded them first since the playing invariably improves as you do more takes), but by the end of day, we had a tone we were happy with and we had dug into a couple of tunes already.

Day 3- Thursday: Rhythm guitar is always the thing that eats up the most time in the studio for us and although we knew that going in, the fact that we had 17 songs to work through was beginning to sink in. Wes was up first, focusing on recording his songs. We had discussed having him track all the rhythm guitars, as Mike Beams had done in the past (in case you’re wondering, that means that I tracked a grand total of none of the rhythm guitars on “Gore Metal”, “Slaughtercult”, and “Anatomy…”- thanks Mike!) but he and Ryan convinced me to go with a “you wrote it, you record it” philosophy common in many bands with two guitarists. Needless to say, lazy prick that I am, I was not entirely enamored with that decision, and to be honest, I was a little intimidated having to record rhythm guitars (although I did record all the rhythm tracks on “Garbage Daze…” and the bass on “Slaughtercult”, there's a lot less pressure there). Luckily for me, I didn’t have to jump in too quickly, as Wes led the way, laying down some crushing stuff on a bunch of his songs (and one of mine too, by the time all was said and done).

Another great thing about recording with Ryan is that he, like myself, is a giant nerd. While listening to Wes’ tracks, I availed myself of the opportunity to devour back issues of Marvel’s “New Avengers” series by Brian Michael Bendis, which impressed the shit out of me. What can I say, I am a HUGE Avengers fan – I think I even posted a picture of my extremely beat-up copy of Avengers #1 on Facebook a while ago. And yes, I am fucking beyond psyched about the upcoming movies. Anyway, between guitars, comics and the Giants kicking the crap out of the Rangers in the World Series, I had no problem filling any downtime in the studio

Day 4- Friday: I ended up tracking a bunch of stuff on day 4, and it ended up turning out pretty okay. The tone had a little more high-end than I’m used to, and I definitely ended up hearing a little of the “twang” that I picked up from playing with Matt Olivo in Repulsion (the distinctive JCM800 + tube screamer Repulsion twang) than I’m used to, but anything Repulsion related is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. It also started to become clear that with the amount of material vs. the amount of time that we had for rhythm guitars, we weren’t going to be able to be quite as anal retentive about guitar as we were on “Anatomy…” (which, ironically, we had less time to record), and would have to let go any hopes of eliminating every trace of string noise, every slightly over-accented note, etc. etc. This was actually a blessing in disguise.

All of us in the band feel like “Anatomy…” was a little too clean sounding (funnily enough, that’s exactly what Neil Kernon told me when I was telling him to make it as clean as possible) and wanted a sound that was a bit more off-the-cuff this time around. By the end of the day, almost all of the Bogner / Engl tracks were done and we were really, really tired of drinking Busch. I retired to the good ol’ Super 8 looking forward to Saturday – when we would set up the Marshall and Leon would arrive in AZ.

Tune in next time, same bat-time, same bat-channel, for the next exciting chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of this fucking album. Oh yeah, and we'll put up some pictures, too.

Cheers!

Harvey and the usual gang of idiots

Exhuming Exhumed: Once more into the breach, dear fiends...

2010-10-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Friday October 1^st found your humble narrator once more headed southbound on US Highway 101 towards Camarillo. With Wes and Danny in tow, and southern California traffic in full-on snarl mode, we continued south to grab Danny's drum kit, and then onwards to Corona, California, a southeastern suburb of Los Angeles, and a town we've played many times at the sadly defunct Showcase Theater. In fact, I actually met Danny and Wes for the first time at one of those shows! The excessive LA traffic could only be coped with by enjoying some little-remembered Death Metal gems by Demilich, Mordicus, Disgrace, Xysma, and Carbonized. Initially, we had planned to record the drums October 15-17 but, due to Danny's impending Intronaut tour (supporting Helmet) which kicks off this weekend, we had to push the dates forward. Things were a bit rushed, but overall confidence was high heading into the process. This past weekend was (as anyone on Facebook probably already knew) Leon's birthday, so he ended up staying in Echo Park and no doubt destroying brain cells by the thousand while we toiled at the sweaty work of laying down the drum tracks for album number four.

We arrived at Trench studios after nine pm Friday, where we met up with engineer John Haddad (ex-Phobia Drummer, and producer of bands from Hirax to Intronaut and many, many others in between) to set up the kit. John used to play drums in Phobia years ago and has been around the LA and OC scenes for a long time. In fact he's recorded many of my friends' bands, and worked with Danny on Phobia and Intronaut records, but somehow I had never actually met the guy before Friday night. Being a drummer puts him in a great position to understand what goes into getting great drum tones and his experience in the scene has gives him the right perspective to properly record the heaviest, noisiest, fastest shit. You can see this extremely flattering shot of the back of his head just above, taken by our staff photographer, Wes Caley. Trench is set up in John's house, a spacious place with a great backyard, a lazy cat, and most importantly, a pool and jacuzzi. After a long day of driving, Wes and I headed to the AM/PM for (surprise!) beer, while Danny and John got things going. After setting up the drums themselves and the microphones, it was too late to get much else accomplished besides inebriation and sleep.

The next day, we were up and running by noon-ish and things were finally underway. Wes and I switched off playing scratch guitar tracks (I played the songs I wrote and vice versa) as guides for Danny. While Wes was tracking I took advantage of the opportunity to watch the extremely frustrating SF Giants Saturday game and get myself properly pissed off. The tracking started a little slowly, but after the first three songs were completed, we were clearly on a roll. The heat in the control room was stifling (sweat was literally pouring off my face while tracking), and I can only imagine how toasty Danny must have been blasting his way though eleven songs that day. By then it was time to adjourn to the jacuzzi and enjoy the reward for a day's work well done: several dozen beers. Gravehill drummer and all around swell guy Rhett “Thorgrimm” Davis and my long time sister-of-metal Lili stopped by to hang out with us, John and his roommates, Scott from Abysmal Dawn and “Bubbles” (so named because he was so shit-faced that he turned the bubbles in the jacuzzi on with his belly while crawling over the control panel on his way in). If you can enjoy the photo of our man stew above, you've got a stronger constitution than I. Exhausted but extremely happy with the progress we'd made, we headed to a nearby Motel 6 for a more tranquil night's sleep.

The next day, after some really gnarly (in the bad way) veggie burgers from Denny's (I'm glad that I opted to wait and get a turkey sandwich and an apple at AM/PM) we returned to the Trench to pick up where we left off. All of Wes' songs had been tracked on day 1, so I settled into the control room to knock out the last four songs we're considering for the album and the three bonus tracks. One song still had some arrangements to be finalized – after all we'd only had four rehearsals – and that was the last one we completed after re-recording one tune from the previous day. You can see Danny above left, feigning amusement as he hears me utter the phrase "Sorry Dave, it's just not fast enough" in my best impression of Mick Harris' accent from the Hard n' Heavy Grindcore edition videotape. That handsome beast below left is yours truly, looking moderately confused and tracking scratch guitars - which is an improvement, as I'm usually feeling extremely confused while playing.We finished strong around five o'clock by which point, Danny's brain and endurance were pretty much maxed out. After hitting the nearby Del Taco for what felt like the millionth time that weekend (Friday night, Saturday mid-day, Sunday evening twice) Danny and John settled in to edit the drums and make sure all was as it should be while Wes and I watched TV and I snuck in a nap in anticipation of the long drive ahead. 18 songs were edited and double checked, and everything was loaded onto a flash drive by midnight or so, and we all packed back into the car to head home.

The ride home was a strange mixture of feeling exhausted from the work and energized by the great performances Danny had just put in. Wes and I developed a concept that Leon had come up with for the cover and we finally nailed down what we want to do for the artwork, which was a big question mark resolved. With Weird Al Yankovic in the background, we discussed more ideas about what we wanted to do in the studio as far as guitars, bass and vocals at the end of the month. Having three weeks between recording the drums and everything else is definitely a little weird and frustrating, since we were all really pumped about the work Danny had done and excited to get underway with everything, but we'll use the intervening time to refine our ideas, practice along to the drum tracks, and write our solos. I personally can't wait to head to Arizona to get the rest of the record done at Arcane Digital Recording.

I dropped the lads off at their respective homes in Camarillo and headed north into the light early morning drizzle towards the Central Coast and home. Feeling a little reflective, I put on some Sigur Ros (my favorite band at the moment) and contemplated what we had accomplished and what lay ahead. Considering that at the beginning of the year I was living 2,500 miles away and hadn't been in a band for over a year and a half, and now I'm recording the first album of new Exhumed material in seven (!) years, 2010 has been interesting to say the least.

Stay tuned for more exciting chronicles of our never-ending battle for truth, justice and free beer. Oh yeah, and we'll have news about some shows in Europe soon as well. I look forward to boring the pants off you all again soon with the next installment of an ongoing series that I wanted to call“The Life and Times of Mortimer McPherson, Enterprising Boy Bootblack - a Profile in Pluck”. Unfortunately, that idea was vetoed by the suits at Relapse, and now I'm stuck writing about my band instead.

That's all folks!

Harvey and the usual gang of idiots...

Exhuming Exhumed, the saga continues...

2010-09-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

Exhuming Exhumed: Parte the second, in which four enterprising lads perform musical compositions of dubious quality for the first time

Despite having a shitload of music and lyrics that I've been really confident with for months, a few key elements for the record had been missing thus far, namely actual rehearsals, the album title, and the artwork concept. After weeks of coming up with potential titles to no avail, I was driving home from work a couple of weeks ago and, of course, the idea came to me instantly, no thesaurus, notebook, or search engine needed. That makes the artwork concept a lot easier to work towards, and was a real relief, as well as a nice kick in the ass to get going on the record. And yeah, I can't reveal the album title yet or any song titles, so please don't ask. Feeling galvanized just by coming up with a title, I was really chomping at the bit to get going with a proper rehearsal.

Everyone's schedules are kind of crazy so it had taken a little while to get things lined up for us to even get in the same room together up to this point. In fact, plans were still up in the air as far as where the actual rehearsal would finally take place when I headed south to the the sunny, mild climes of Camarillo to meet up with Wes. The first night, Sunday, we just hung out had a few (dozen) beers and a few laughs, before getting down to brass tacks on Monday. Monday ended up being just Wes and I fine-tuning and brushing up on songs and riffs, with me getting to try out my guitar after a full set-up for the first time. That felt awesome- like I had just gotten an entirely new, totally kick-ass axe. (Thanks again, Wes!) So after about four hours of serious work, Natural Ice took its toll and we ended up spending the last hour or so laughing our asses off while trading Dismember, Carnage, Entombed, Carcass, Obituary, Death, and Autopsy riffs back and forth. The next day we met up with percussionist extraordinaire Danny Walker after he got off work, and the three of us headed south to the mean streets of Vernon (basically L.A.) where Intronaut and Murder Construct practice. You can see Wes to the left, performing the all-important first step in any Exhumed practice.

I have a bit of a confession to make here: My usual strategy is to always project confidence no matter what the circumstance, which usually works out pretty well, but I can now admit to feeling a certain level of trepidation before we got started. Sure, we had been working for months on these songs individually, and had talked on the phone, via email, text, hung out and had a few beers, etc. etc. but Tuesday night would be the true trial by fire- not only for the new material, but really for our entire method of putting the album together. If the practice was a disaster, we really wouldn't have the time or money to get shit sorted out in time for the record. Plus, it was my first real band rehearsal in about two years. While warming up on one of the riffs from a new song of ours, Danny joined in, then Wes started playing, and before we knew it we had played pretty much the whole song. Then we started from the beginning and nailed it and all my fears melted away immediately. Leon arrived shortly thereafter and added some nice Repulsion Bass Grind rumble to the proceedings.

We made it through nine songs in all that night and, of course I'm biased here... but, I thought shit sounded intense as fuck. It was a big relief that things got going really naturally and felt easy and, well, I can't think of a better word for it than normal. It was like putting on your favorite old t-shirt that you always wear to shows or something – it just felt like Exhumed. Of course, not everyone knew every riff to every song, and some songs took a couple of tries to get through, but really things went great overall. In-jokes were bantered, dolphins (see the pic of Danny above), Ted Sanchez, butter and farts were discussed, PBRs were drained, we all shared some rad Mike Beams anecdotes, and a good time was had by all- even Leon, who was dead tired and super stressed with the prep work for Murder Construct's shows with Venomous Concept (which are happening as I type this) - see pic at right. All told, we played for about three and a half hours and I left not having to worry about projecting confidence, because I was charged up as fuck and truly very, very confident with our progress and our ability to be ready to go into the studio to cut the drum tracks in three scant weeks.

As I drove home up the coast of California after parting ways with the boys I felt better than ever about the new record and the way that everything has been coming together. So good news all around. Next year is getting interesting with plans for Europe already starting to take shape, and I'm feeling like we have our shit in a state more resembling togetherness than I thought. Anyway, tune in next time, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel for more chapters in the seemingly never-ending battle to complete this record.

Cheers,

Harvey and the usual gang of idiots

2010-09-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s high time for another update, but the thing is, there isn’t much to be updated. Things have been in transition, but they‘re about to get hectic. I’ve just found a job, and Wes has relocated back to Camarillo (also home to the one and only Danny Walker, and closer to my neck of the woods than his former digs in OC), so we’ll rehearse there when things are more settled, probably starting next week. In the meantime, Mr. Caley has been diligently creating a new set of pre-production versions of the new tunes.

During the writing process, Wes and I each recorded rough versions of our material. My gear was pretty rudimentary and outdated, including my buddy's Dr. Rhythm Section drum machine from the 1990s (Thanks Ace!), and Wes’ setup was more sophisticated, using Guitar Rig 3 and Drumkit From Hell. This meant that his tracks not only sounded a lot better than mine, but a lot different. The difference between our recordings also made it tough to get a cohesive “album“ feel for things. After Wes and I discussed arrangement changes and ideas, which will undoubtedly be tweaked yet again before we properly record, Wes volunteered to create new versions of the songs from the ground up, including the changes we’d worked out, also enabling us to hear all the songs with the same recording quality- helping it sound like, you know - an ALBUM. So, by the time we actually track the record, it’ll be the third time that most of these songs will have been recorded. Yeesh… That said, these new tracks have been coming out great, and that’s been keeping Wes busy.

I, on the other hand, spent a couple of weeks going through all the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they were coherent, interesting, and most importantly, that they worked with the actual music. Then came the task of divvying them up between myself, Leon, and Wes, as well as determining where we’d to use a “chorus” style of vocals like we had done on Slaughtercult (in “Slave To The Casket” and “Slaughtercult” for example). More work goes into creating this crap than you might think, let me tell ya. I'm finally confident with everything, and after getting the seal of approval from old friend and literature post-graduate Matt Widener (ex-Exhumed, Cretin, Citizen), as well as Col (Jones - who I started the band with in ‘91) who is the first to tell me when something is “gay“, I can relax and know I‘ve got something worth a shit.

In the past, I’d usually have lyrics written before any corresponding music, then I’d have to try to get the words to match up with the songs we’d written. That is not a system I wanted to continue using. This time around, aside from maybe a couple of individual lines, rhymes, or song title ideas, I wrote everything after already having music to work with. I was consciously trying to prevent the excess of verbiage that weighed down the “Anatomy…” material. I think it will have worked, but I can’t know for sure until we’re listening back to the songs in the studio. I’ve never sung at practices, in fact I haven’t owned a microphone since the mid ‘90s, and I’ve never owned a PA. So, until recording, no one has actually heard how the lyrics go, not even me, although I usually have a very good idea of what it‘ll sound like. Since Ross has been out of the band for over 10 years now, I’ve been the sole lyricist, which isn’t the way I‘d want things. The collaborative effort can bring out some really good stuff, and getting an outside opinion is incredibly valuable, but hey, nowadays at least there are fewer songs about penises than we used to have.

Meanwhile, since returning from the Cynic / Dysrhythmia / Intronaut tour, Danny has been busy working with the pre-production tracks and memorizing (or re-memorizing) the songs. One thing that’s great about working with him is that he does his homework and puts in the time to get his shit together before we practice, rather than using rehearsal time to learn things on the fly. He instinctively grasps what it is that we’re trying to do, so even if he’s learning one of our older tunes where the production and playing isn’t the keenest, he gets the intent, and then plays it the way we meant to do in the first place. The first time we practiced with him, he played our 13 song set straight through in one go with no mistakes.

Leon has been working with the temp tracks, working out bass lines from the guitar tab I’ve sent him and Wes. Also, I’ve conveniently color-coded all the lyrics so he can at least have an idea where he’ll be singing. Everything is described as far as its placement in the song as well (e.g. “over the sliding blast beat pre-chorus riff” or “over the 1st and third times of the verse riff”) so we can hit the ground running in the studio.

This whole process is worlds away from how we did the “Anatomy…” record, or how we’ve done any previous record (except for the “Garbage Daze…” cover album, but that was still a bit different) where we simply practiced more before recording - increasing from one or two days a week to three or four. Our pre-production in the past consisted of a boom box with a condenser mic, or an old 4-track with one mic in the middle of the room recording onto a cassette. Both ways have their advantages of course, this one is a bit less time-intensive as a group, but more so for each of us as individuals. Spending two or three hours a night at your jam room is great, but it made more sense when we were younger, individually and as a band. Those were the times when spending all night obsessing over a note change in a riff feels like the most important thing in the world. With the line-up we have now, we’re all more confident and experienced, and if something doesn’t work, we simply trash it and move on, rather than spending hours arguing about what purpose each note plays in making whatever riff sound whatever way it’s supposed to or whatever. It helps that we're all fairly prolific writers. There are no egos and the obsessive analysis of every little thing (as a group) subsided years ago, right around when “Gore Metal” came out. The music comes quickly and naturally, and we have a sense of what the band IS, rather than groping for a “sound” or “direction“.

It’s weird because the musical part of the process is fairly effortless, but getting it all together in a way where everyone can relate to it independently without the “rehearsal room” dynamic takes time and can be tedious. As much as I sometimes miss hanging out in a smelly rehearsal room with every available inch of wall space covered with posters and working through things bit by bit by bit, the way we’re putting things together now allows us all more space and time to live our lives (and work our jobs, and play in other bands at times). Living in different areas, it’s almost essential to work this way, and without the technology that’s available these days, it’d be a lot harder to get shit together. At the end of the day, we all know and trust each other enough to work up good stuff on our own, without having to look over each others’ shoulders and hyper-analyze every drum fill, lick, riff, piece of wordplay, rhyme scheme, bass line, etc.

Although many people regard this as a “new” line-up of the band, it doesn’t feel “new” at all. We have all played together extensively (albeit sometimes in different combinations), and we feel confident in each other’s abilities. This isn‘t a knock on anyone that has been in the band before, it’s just a different dynamic, and that change is invigorating. Since the band hasn't ever compromised our musical style, we've sought out other kinds of changes that keep things from stagnating, and right now this dynamic is working really well. Down the road? Who knows... Right now the new record is the only thing on our collective horizon. Of course, the individual songs end up a bit less collaborative (Col and I would re-arrange 99% of everything from my original ideas of songs, and Mike‘s tunes for that matter) but the album as a whole actually becomes more collaborative, with Wes contributing almost 50% of the songs, and everyone free to develop their parts on their own before bringing it all together.

Well, for not having much to update, I’ve been typing quite a bit. So I’ll leave it at that and then once we actually rehearse (in the good ol‘ fashioned sense of the term), I’ll post some more shit, as well as some current pics and other crap.

'til next time,

Harvey and the usual gang of idiots

New interview on Metal Maniacs site

2010-08-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

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.

Terrorizer interview - unabridged

2010-07-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a transcript of the entire conversation I recently had with Terrorizer's James Hoare. Enjoy...

1) What prompted you to get back to work on Exhumed?

There were a lot of different factors, to be honest. I think when the band went into hibernation in '05, I was really wanting to play a different style of music and just was burnt on the whole death metal scene, not to mention the grind of touring, the frustration of constant lineup changes, and the stagnation of the band's growth. But after a while away, my perspective on the band, the scene and everything has really changed so I think things are coming from a much better place. I recently found an old CD from '05 with ideas for what would have been the next Exhumed record, and I know that stopping at that point was absolutely the right decision. Now I feel excited about things again, I think getting away from the "scene" has allowed me to refocus on what I love about this kind of music and to really feel it again. And it feels fucking awesome... I didn't realize how much I missed blasting and all those sliding Terrorizer-style riffs, haha! I'm also stoked that the scene has kind of made a bit of room for bands that play the older style of Death Metal again, because I feel like Exhumed has a lot more commonality with Autopsy than with Annotations of Autopsy, so it's killer that there's bands doing the older style again - as well as bands that continue to push the boundaries and progress the genre as well. And even the weird kid bands with too many words in their names seem like the more they progress, the more Death Metal they're getting, so I think that the whole zeitgeist of things is moving in the right direction. The Death Metal scene now is a much healthier place for us to be than it was in '05.

2) How did you settle on this line-up?

When we started talking about doing a new record and playing again, I had been living in Hawaii for about a year, and was starting to see that I would be ready to move back to California pretty soon and started contacting a lot of old friends, and a lot of my friends are old bandmates, especially considering how many lineup changes we've had, and Wes (Caley, guitarist) and I started talking about jamming since I was planning on moving quite a bit closer to Southern California that I had been living previously. From there it quickly turned to talking about Exhumed. Wes actually dropped Leon (DelMuerte, bass / vocals) and Danny (Walker, drums) a line and they were on board in about 15 mintues. It was the easiest Exhumed lineup assembly of all time. Everyone was stoked and on the same pages and it just seemed to fall into place.

I really wanted to pick things up where the band had left off, rather than doing a "reunion" thing and focusing on what had already happened. I think if I was working with the "classic" line-up we'd be pretty limited as far as pursuing touring opportunities and really doing this full-on, the way that it has to be. I've been waiting like 5+ years to make a new record with Wes and Danny involved so that really got me fired up. And Leon is a great riff-writer and probably the best guy to have on tour with you ever, from a lot of perspectives. He keeps the rude alcoholic vibe that we all enjoy revelling in going strong, haha!

3) What can you tell us about the new songs? How did the writing work?

I think that the new songs combine the kind of sophistication of some of the bits on the "Anatomy..." record with the more straightforward arrangements and sensibility of "Slaughtercult". The songs are shorter and way more focused than on "Anatomy", I was really frustrated after "Anatomy...", I felt like those songs were kind of dicking around too much - the new stuff goes straight for the throat. It's really fast and aggressive, with bits of melody and dual guitar work, and I think it fully sounds like Exhumed. The writing has been way different than in the past - I've been writing w/a drum machine in Hawaii, and Wes has been doing his demos in California, then we all listen and compare notes on what works, what doesn't etc. But the writing has actually been really collaborative, with both Wes and I coming up with a ton of material, then working together with the other guys to cherry-pick the best of it to make the strongest record possible. I think we both kind of push each other to write more and better stuff - I'd hear one of his tracks and get blown away, so I'd have to get back to the drawing board and come up with something even heavier, so there's a bit of inspiration / healthy competition in the dynamic that's been really exciting. I also recently got to demo all the songs for Col (Jones, ex-Exhumed drummer, currently drums in Cretin, Repulsion, Dekapitator) and the rest of Cretin to get their feedback, which was really positive. They're some of my oldest friends and would definitely give it to me straight if the material wasn't up to snuff. We'll be getting together before recording this fall to rehearse and put all the pieces together.

4) What're your plans for the release? Anything you can tell us about the art?

Well, it should be out in Spring '11, then we'll doing a lot of shows, focusing on festivals and one-offs to start with through the summer. So far Maryland Deathfest 2011 is the first thing we have confirmed. Then we'll be looking at any more extended touring for the fall and winter if things go well and we get offers that make sense for us. The initial shows and the festivals will be shows where we'll focus more on the older stuff for sure, I hate going to see a band play after just getting back together and hearing a shitload of songs I've never heard before, so those will be more "reunion"-ish, and then if we end up hitting the road after that it'll be more like a normal tour where the newer stuff gets a bit more airtime. The art is still in the works at this point, but it will be disgusting, if that's what you're wondering, haha!

5) How conscious are you of new fans discovering Exhumed in the last couple of years?

Not really conscious at all, actually. I have been so out of Death Metal since '05. Playing thrash in Dekapitator and Scarecrow, and doing the occasional Repulsion show is not much of a way to keep your finger on the pulse of the scene. It's usually just a bunch of geezers drinking and talking about tape trading, haha! A good friend of mine out in Hawaii played me the Job For A Cowboy cover of "Matter Of Splatter", which was kind of flattering and weird, but I don't really know if new kids are getting turned on to the band, to be honest. If they are that's great, if not, that's okay too - I do know that everyone involved with the band throughout the years has been asked many, many times at shows, online, wherever, when / if the band's coming back, so it's nice that folks haven't forgotten about it. But ultimately, I've always done / not done Exhumed because it's what I wanted to do, and if other people are on board, then that's awesome - if not, that's cool too, we've never been "popular" or particularly "cool" and that's never been what Exhumed has been about. To quote that old Roadrunner ad back when they used to actually put out cool records - :"Some music was meant to stay underground", dude.

Terrorizer Magazine interview

2010-07-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

There's an interview with Terrorizer magazine about the re-animation of the band that you can check out here:

http://bit.ly/9QN4vk

Not sure when the mag hits the stands, but it will also be in the print version. After I get back from the Gravehill tour, which has been really fucking awesome, I'll post an unabridged version.

2010-06-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

EXHUMED return From The Grave

Gore-metal originators EXHUMED have reformed after a five–year hiatus. EXHUMED 2010 will feature founding and original member Matt Harvey on guitars and vocals along with returning members Leon DelMuerte (PHOBIA, MUDER CONSTRUCT) on bass and vocals, Wes Caley (UPHILL BATTLE) on guitars, and Danny Walker (INTRONAUT, MUDER CONSTRUCT, UPHILL BATTLE) on drums. The band will begin recording a new full-length and follow-up album to 2003’s Anatomy Is Destiny this fall for a spring 2011 release.

Harvey recently commented on the reformation; ""I'm totally fucken psyched to be making music with Exhumed again, it's been way too long. After a few years off and away from the Death Metal scene, I feel rejuvenated and ready to hack, maim and kill once again. I wanted this to be a continuation of what the band was doing and was on its way to doing, not a reunion or some weird nostalgia thing, so the first person I started talking about this with was our guitarist Wes (Caley), who has been writing some great songs for the new album, and once he got the ball rolling with Leon (DelMuerte, bass, vocals) and Danny (Walker, drums), it come together quickly and easier than ever!”

“We've been writing for the past few months, me in Hawaii , and the other guys in California , and now that I'm back on the mainland we'll be getting things together for album number four. We're all really excited about the new shit, it should combine the directness of "Slaughtercult" and the intricacy of "Anatomy..." so it's definitely gonna be our strongest record yet.”

EXHUMED has confirmed that their first North American appearance will be as part of Maryland Deathfest 2011. To commemorate the band’s return to the stage, they are asking for fans to pick their set list. Suggestions are being welcomed on the band’s MySpace, Facebook page, and new blog: GorefuckingMetal.blogspot.com.