Album Review: Twisted Horror Split w/ Exhumed & Gruesome

Would you look at that, Matt Harvey put out a split with himself. Harvey has been extremely busy the last few years (he’s always been busy, but I’m talking since I cared to keep track of his activities… so, the last ten years or so), and it’s been extremely cool to see his band Exhumed come into their own within the past decade (a crazy thought as they've been kicking around since 1990!). Exhumed were the first band that I came to associate with the term “gore metal,” and while they’re definitely not the only (or the first) band that this designation could apply to, they’ll always have place in my red, gooey, valvey center because of this fact. Within the last three years, in particular, I’d say, they’ve taken their gratuitous, ghastly, swe-death and grind hybrid in daring new directions, subtly introducing melodicism without loosening their grip on the throttle of intensity, while also leaning hard into the pulp horror aesthetic that once only lived on the periphery of the band’s persona. 

The three songs packaged on Twisted Horror are archetypical of the sound that the Exhumed perfected on their fucking fantastic 2019 LP, simply titled Horror. “Rot Your Brain” begins with a terrible Entombed-esque cry that will fill your veins with ice cubes as you are pulled into the tracks ripping percussion and vicious, cannibalistic chords, as if your pants leg had become caught in a conveyor belt and you were slowly being fed into a meat grinder. 

You may think that your mind is sufficiently menaced and its synapsis thoroughly julienned after this opener, but you’re going to have to pull yourself back together if you’re going to make it through the remainder of the release. The slippery, fine-grained grit and melodic mendacity of “Buried to Die” will tumble in on you from all sides, enveloping you in a stew of bludgeoning grooves and wheeling, piston percussion, poured together until they are as thick as concrete. Surviving the previous tracks brings you face-to-face with “Dead, Deader, Deadest,” which exhibits loose, blood-soaked guitar lines that lash and lasso your attention like a noose around the neck, and will pull you behind its relentless peel until your limbs become dislodged with the friction, to the tune of a chorus of call and response, gargling death vocals. 

The Exhumed tracks would feel sufficient as an offering of fetid aural fare, but then Harvey also saw fit to include two tracks from his Schuldiner-raising, Death revival tribute, Gruesome, a band whose sound is entirely unstuck-from-time, and who so resemble their heroes that it’s basically like the getting a direct sequel to Leprosy every time they release an album. I couldn’t consider myself much of death metal fan if I turned down something like that, now could I? Both Gruesome tracks land right in the pocket, with hairy, putrid chords, gangrenously septic beats, viscera irrigating vocals, and squealing slide guitars. It’s all over too quickly, leaving me thirsty for another shot. Oh barkeep, can I get another? I’ll take mine extra wet, put something in there that will leave a trace of iron on my tongue, and don’t forget to add a twist of horror!

Pick up a copy of Twisted Horror from Relapse here.