Wow, this seventh full-length is the curveball we didn’t expect from gore-grind legends Exhumed. The album (their first with Sebastian Phillips of Noisem on guitars, replacing long-time member Bud Burke) is a curveball because it’s a stripped-down, raw, gore-grind album… which is a surprise because over the years Exhumed have matured into more of a third-album Carcass meets third-album Metallica sort of death-grind, but here, man, any of these 15 songs could fit right in on a Slimewave 7”, if you catch my drift. 

Songs like “Scream Out In Fright” or “Ripping Death” just race past, a spree of catchy gore-grind riffs and frantic double bass and blast beats, the band leaving material like the epic “The Anatomy Act Of 1832” from 2017’s Death Revenge far behind for now, the 7:29 of that song alone equalling more than a quarter of this album’s entire runtime, Exhumed showing a surprising amount of diversity at this point in their excellent catalogue. And I love it all, man, the surprise of Horror’s primitive gore-grind absolutely hitting the spot much like the exquisite melodic death-grind of 2003’s Anatomy Is Destiny hits the spot on other days, the band still managing to show some songwriting smarts here in the almost three minutes of “The Red Death”, which hits a mid-tempo stomp before racing to the bloody end. Then there’s “Utter Mutilation Of Your Corpse,” all eight seconds of it… this album is just a treat to listen to, no one doing gore-grind better than these grizzled vets. It’s not going to take you on the same journey through the morgue as their more melodic material, but this quick trip to the sewers satisfies a craving you barely knew you still had.