Exhumed – Beyond The Dead Review

Ordinarily, I am not someone who particularly likes surprises.

But I am someone who really likes Exhumed.

So I will more than happily accept this one.

And of course, aside from its sudden appearance a week or so back, there’s not a lot truly surprising about Beyond The Dead: Exhumed is nothing if not dependable and consistent, and they’ve carved out a nice little niche as kings of gore metal. So, a mere ten months after the last Exhumed splatter-platter, last year’s heckin’ strong To The Dead, here we suddenly are Beyond that, with a new little batch of gore, four new tracks and four live takes to tide over the slaughtermaniac cultists ‘til the next killing spree. It’s the Exhumed gift we didn’t know was coming, but now that it’s here, hell, yes, please, thank you, and keep ‘em comin’…

These four new tracks are rippers, one and all, from the spirited chainsaw bite of “Lysergicide” to the grinding fifty-seven-second of “Septic Five” through to the more intricate blistering blast of “Sick At Heart.” The churning “Rapid Unplanned Disassembly” is the strongest of the four, to these ears, with the vocal (meat)hook during the chorus custom-made for screaming along to. Matt Harvey’s raw snarl bounces off Ross Sewage’s low growls; Harvey and Sebastian Phillips churn out sharpened riffs and chaotic solos; Sewage and drummer Mike Hamilton hold the whole thing together, ratcheted down tight and shifting skillfully between faster thrashing death metal, grindcore intensity, and moments of a catchier and groovier reprieve. As with all Exhumed, Carcass is the primary progenitor of this particular platter, but now a quarter-century-plus into their career, Exhumed c. 2023 is a well-oiled machine, cranking out grody goodness with surgical precision, here as on To The Dead as on Horror and so it goes, all the way back…

And speaking of all the way back, these four live tracks hew a little closer to the present, taken from 2019’s Horror, 2017’s Death Revenge, 2013’s Necrocracy, and then 1998’s Gore Metal (although that one was also re-created in 2015). Devoid of crowd noise or anything traditionally associated with a “live” sound, these four are performed with the same skill and precision as the rest of them, just a bit rawer than a true studio recording, and then some welcome re-done takes on classic Exhumed tunes. The twin slaughterings of “Slaughter Maniac” and “In My Human Slaughterhouse” are the highlights of this half – listen to that gnarly-ass bass tone in the latter one for some high-class grindcore low-end.

These types of EPs are almost always fun, and Beyond The Dead is certainly no exception. It’s the sound of a great band doing what it does, and proving that their continuing streak of killer records is no fluke: It’s just the Exhumed way, all guts, all fun, no compromise, no filler, no surprises.