EXHUMED "Horror"

EXHUMED

“Horror”

On their last album “Death Revenge”, EXHUMED experimented with more involved songwriting and a conceptual storytelling approach. Reaction to the record was decidedly mixed, so the gorehounds have gone back to basics and stripped their music to the literal bone. “Horror” disposes of the long songs and ambient interludes and dives into a pit of simple gory grind.

The band is probably going to want to kill me for this, but I actually prefer “Death Revenge”. That was an album that took a few risks with the formula. “Horror” is pretty much formula deathgrind right to the core. With sixteen short tunes, this reminds me a lot of REPULSION’s classic “Horrified”, even right down to the similar album title. Now “Horrified” was a monster album, especially for its time, but this is a slavish pastiche. The EXHUMED track “Playing With Fear” even sounds like an obvious knockoff of the REPULSION masterpiece “Black Breath”.

It is violent and gory and delivers what the fans want with buzzsaw aggression. By now, though, I was kind of hoping EXHUMED would be past just imitating one of the seminal grindcore works. This will satisfy the terminally unchoosy but I am not in that crowd. I’m a bit disappointed in this.

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EXHUMED