Exhumed: All Guts, No Glory (2011)

Review

In 2011, a trend can start and end in a couple months. With a dozen new releases in every genre every day, and people writing about music on umpteen million blogs (I'm guilty too), it just moves fast. Take, for instance, the so-called New Wave of Old-School Death Metal. It was identified as a reaction to the too-clean, too-technical sound of modern death metal. The NWOOSDM seems to have started some time in the middle of 2010, and here we are in the middle of 2011 and the anti-trend of NWOOSDM is now the trend. Some people are already getting sick of it.

Is it now anti-trend to release a modern death metal album? What's cool (or anti-cool) today? Don't ask Exhumed, because they obviously don't care.


The death metal veterans' grindy, thrashy, high-speed death metal is neither trend nor anti-trend. They're just doing what they do, and doing it well. The modern production probably isn't considered cool today. The straight-forward songs have neither technical wizardry nor atmospheric oppressiveness. It's just pure metal made by people who obviously love what they're doing, and don't take themselves too seriously. Metal could use more of that, especially when it's as catchy as this.



The Verdict: Exhumed are just doing what they do, and they don't care what anyone else is doing. I give All Guts, No Glory 4 out of 5 stars.