You guys are here tonight for a really special concert, not only for your LA fans but also for yourselves: this is your come back tour! What are you guys expecting, not only for tonight’s concert, but also for this tour?You know, we really try not to have too many expectations (laughs). I mean, I just try to take each day as it comes. We have been on the road for three weeks now. I feel that we are playing pretty good and that we should be able to go out and “deliver the goods”.
I said that I try not to expect anything but it is tough because we have always done pretty good in LA, so if we play here and nobody shows up I would be pretty bummed out (laughs). But, it should be a good show and hopefully everybody will have a good time. That’s the goal.
And when we talk about the fans… what should they expect?
Well, since it is our first US tour since releasing out the record and playing shows again, we are playing a lot of old songs. We play something like 3 songs [out] of the new record and then everything else is from the first 3 albums and one song from the In the Name of Gore split as well.
We sort of … taken a poll of what people wanted to hear and used that to pick the majority of our set list because we are out here to give people what they want. We don’t want people to show up and watch an hour long of improved… jam (laughs). You know? We want to give the show that people want to see.
But, as we keep playing, I’m sure that we are going to play more and more new stuff.
Exhumed had a “time off”. Why?
It was for a lot of things. For me: I started the band in 1991 when I was 15 or 14 and after I turned 30, I was “oversaturated” with it, you know what I mean?
Wes, our guitar player, and I had a bunch of ideas but it didn’t really seem that things were getting together outside of that. So, we finished our contract with Relapse [Records]. It was an appropriate time to take a break.
For me, I had just turned 30 so I looked around, and people I used to know that I went to high school with were like: “Oh yeah, I just bought a house” or “ I just got married”, “I just got a kid”. And I was like: “Yeah that’s cool, I’m renting a room and I have a 91 Ford that is pretty… sweet” (laughs).So, I needed to take a step back and get a little perspective.
Honestly, when we took a break, we announced it as a “hiatus” because we “never want to say never”, or go back on anything. But, I really wasn’t intending to do this ever again. At least, not with Exhumed… I still wanted to play music. Anyway, life just has a funny way to kick you right back around. The further you think you get, the more you come back where you started…
What did you guys do during all this time?
For me, I did a trash metal record with my band “Dekapitator”. I started that with Exhumed’s original drummer [Andi “Maniac”] back in the 90s. We did a record in 99 and another one just after Exhumed split up. I also started another trash band, a little bit more influenced by Metallica, Mercyful Fate, Diamond Head, etc. called Scarecrow.
I did that for about 1.5 years and then I moved to Hawaii and just sort of sat on the beach and drank beer for about a year.
That must be cool!
Yeah! It was alright.
Wes [Caley], our guitar player, started a band called “Fatalist”. They did a record for Ibex Moon [Records]. It is like an old school Swedish death metal kind of thing.
Leon [“del Muerte”] was playing with Intronaut and also with Phobia. And Danny [Walker] was playing with both these bands as well.
So, we all kept ourselves busy doing different things. I also got a “real job” for a while...
How was that???
Oh… s***** a**. It was terrible.
What did you do?
I did tech support for a telephone company. I mean, you know… it was an ok job. It was just really weird, at an office space, like that show “The Office”. It was just sort of odd. It wasn’t really a place for me but it was cool.
Now… you guys are back together. Why now?
What are your motivations?I was living in Hawaii and I knew I was only going to be there for a couple of years. So, when I was getting ready to come back [to US] I had been playing a lot, and writing some heavier type of riffs.
I texted Wes saying “Hey dude, I will be living a lot closer to you in a couple of months; we should maybe hang out and jam”. He just texted me back saying “F*** it. Why don’t we do a new Exhumed record?” It was sort of a joke but sort of maybe not a joke. I was like: “That could be cool, if Leon and Danny may be into it”. In a matter of 10 minutes we were getting in touch with everybody.
It sort of quickly snow-balled, I mean, before we were even in the same room together or even in the same state together, we already had an offer for Maryland Death Fest, the Relapse deal was back, we had a new agent here and a new agent in Europe. So, I was like: “Ok… apparently people want us to play”. It was pretty cool.
As far as motivation for coming back now: I think the scene right now, especially for death metal, is a lot better for a band like us. Five or six years ago, when we stopped doing this (on my perception of things anyways) everyone was caught up in this whole, bit per minute, blast beat, super technical whatever… that doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I mean, it’s great that people want to do it, but we couldn’t do it even if we wanted to. It’s just not us, you know what I mean? It just felt like we were not really fitting in anywhere.
Now, the scene seems a lot healthier. You have bands like Autopsy making records again and other old school death metal bands playing… which is really cool.
Actually that was going to be one of my questions: so many bands are coming back together these last few years, in your opinion, are there any specific reasons for that? (From Autopsy to Accept) Is this a good moment for metal bands?
I think that for metal in general, the scene has been getting better for the last decade… really. For death metal, in particular, I think it’s part of “the 20 years cycle”. This is the same reason why, all of the sudden bands like Exodus, Forbidden, Testament and Death Angel can come out and make records that are viable in the market place. It’s kind of one of those things that you did 5 years ago and now it’s boring but what you did 10 years ago now is nostalgic. With death metal it is that way right now.
It’s interesting. I did an interview with Andre Matos (Symfonia, ex-Angra) a few months ago and he talked about this “cycle”, but in his case it was for power metal.
Yeah, I mean, people in the metal scene think they are so anti-trend, but marketing [for metal] has the same types of market trends and turnovers that happened in movies, happened on TV, or happened wherever.
When I was growing up, you would listen to trash metal, I’m from the Bay Area, [the Bay area is in Northern California and it consists of San Francisco’s metropolitan area] and everybody listened to Exodus, Testament, Forbidden… that was just what you listened to; that was the thing. And then, that burned out. There were just too many bands, too many crappy records. And then came Carcass, Entombed, Bla, Bla, Bla and then there are too many stupid 4th level generic death metal bands coming out so you get tired of that. And then some dude stabs somebody in Norway and everybody gets on to that… and so on and so forth.
So, it’s interesting, as someone who has been listening to metal since 1987, to see how things come and go. Right now, it’s kind of cool, not that we are all about getting the success, but it is a lot nicer to do a show and a lot of people show up and get into it.
To officially mark the come back, you guys have released All Guts, No Glory. Can you say a few words about the album?
We all think it is our best album so far. I mean, for me, I wouldn’t want to do the band again if I didn’t feel like we could at least live up to or surpass what we did in the past. This is the album that I’m the happiest with for sure.
When we did the first record, as soon as I heard the mix, I said: “It s**** a**”. I liked the songs, it is unique and it’s cool that people like it but I have a hard time listening to it.
All of our records ha
ve a lot of flaws. Some of them are our fault but some are not our fault. This is the first one [All Guts, No Glory] that I really feel like we came the closest to achieving what we set up to achieve. It still sound like Exhumed: it is real fast, it has our grind type of riffs, trash riffs, double vocals, songs about deaths and stuff (laughs). It is not a drastic change. We tried to take the elements from the first three records that we all thought worked pretty well and concentrated on that.
How different is this album when you compare it with your first demo or even your first album?
The biggest differences you will hear are: first, it is that this one [All Guts, No Glory] actually sounds good, like it was properly recorded (laugh).
For the first album, even though we had some studio experience, we had listened to the wrong people. By the time we went to mix it, what we had was barely usable and the guy that was mixing it had a completely different approach than the guy that recorded it.
I like a lot of songs from the first record. We play a lot of songs from that album today. In fact, that’s why we recorded the first song of the first album on the “B” sections [Bonus tracks of the new album]. A) Because it’s always nice to have bonus tracks and B) It is just nice to have a version of this song that we have playing live for 12 years where you can actually hear the riffs.
The things that they have in common [first and last albums]: for the first record we tried really hard to have songs with catchy choruses, with traditional rock and pop song structures, and it is definitely the same thing on the new record. For me, as a song writer, that is all what I’m interested in: hooks, choruses, etc. I feel like we have come back more to this on the last album.
Is there still room for gore metal in the metal scene?
I like to think that because the scene now is a little bit healthier, there is room for everybody. Maybe I’m like a hippie or whatever but I think that there’s got to be room for black metal, trash metal, gore grind, punk, etc. It is cooler now because everybody seems to be working together. You see a tour with a trash band, a black metal band, a grind core band. There is a little bit of everything. The kids here come together and they don’t have to be so separated.
So now let’s talk about the future: What is planned for Exhumed until the end of the year?
We are going to Europe next weekend for 4 festivals, which is going to be really hectic, but should be a lot of fun. Then we will have a few weeks off, and after, we will play here in LA at the California Discord fest in the end of September. In late September and October, we will be back in Europe. Late October and November we will tour again in the US (East Coast, Southern and Eastern Canada).
We are lining up some stuff for 2012 already, but I can’t talk about it yet because it is not confirmed.
Ahhhh I hope you guys are going to 70000 tons of metal…??
Oh no, I wish. I was trying so hard to get on that boat, because I want to go on a boat! (laughs). It is just such a weird thing. It sounds like fun.
So, about Exhumed: this is not just a one album thing… you guys are planning to keep the band together…?
Yeah. We started to work on a DVD 6 years ago, so that is the next thing that we will try to finish. We will probably record some new tracks to go with it, as a “companion” piece. And from there, we will just start working on the next record.
And also for me, I will start working on the next Dekapitator record, probably in December when Exhumed will have some time off.
Anything you would like to say to SOM readers?
Well, as far as people who are into the band and are coming up to the shows since we have come back together, I want to say “Thanks”, because it is pretty cool. There are so many bands making records all the time, and haven’t stopped since we stopped. So, the fact that people are still interested in seeing our band and still wanting to hear a new record from us is really flattering.
I just want to thank people for not forgetting about us more than anything. So…cheers!
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Interview done by Deesse_de_la_nuit
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