WOULD YOU RATHER WITH EXHUMED
A DIFFERENT KIND OF INTERVIEW
By Chelf
Hello Matt! You have a reputation of doing the best interviews (lucky me!) so I thought we would do something extra special together. Let’s do a ‘would you rather’ kind of thing to get to know you better through a series of hypothetical scenarios!
Let’s go!
Would you rather have a bad production of an insanely good album or a mediocre album with a fantastic production?
That’s the easiest one out of all of them. I’d rather have a killer album with bad production. So many albums that I like had a horrible production. Horrified by Repulsion or In the Sign of Evil by Sodom, or Reek of Putrefaction by Carcass, none of these sound particularly good but they are classics and they rule. And I feel that especially when I’m in Europe you hear a lot of the mainstream metal over there and it’s the same like it took 10 seconds to write the riff and weeks to produce because sonically it’s amazing and it bores the shit out of me.
Would you rather travel back in time and fix previous mistakes regarding the band or fast forward to the future and see the results of your current actions so that you’ll be able to act accordingly?
I think this is one of those questions where your answer changes over time. At this point, I would rather go back in time, simply because I’m 43 now so there’s certainly a lot back then that I could fix. So, I would rather go back and knowing half of what I know now, I would have avoided a lot of mistakes at the time.
Would you rather have a catchy chorus or exquisite riffs?
It depends on the band. For Exhumed I think you need the riffs. Because you know we don’t sing on pitch or anything. For death metal and trash and more extreme metal, you need the riffs. But if you are playing more traditional metal you need the chorus. Like Iron Maiden, one of my favorite bands, they have amazing riffs but when you get to the chorus you forget all about those.
Would you rather utilize your lyrics to address real-life issues or dive into a world of lyrical dragons, swords, and fantasy?
With Exhumed I would rather have lyrics that talk about real-life issues. Although I do like lyrics about dragons and swords to be honest.
Would you rather suffer a jet-lag or a hungover?
Oh, jet lag is so much easier cause you can drink and energy drink and stay awake. But with the hangover you just get stuck! I happen to be known in the band as the “vomiter” so I get pretty bad hung-overs and there have been times on the tour bus where I was like “ok, so I’m gonna hung out here with the bucket” and wait till we pull over and dump it out. So yeah, I’ll take jet-lag.
Also being jet-lagged means that you’ve been traveling so that’s probably a good thing, right?
Yes! That’s a really good way to look at that. He said and we both agreed that the next time he is jet-lagged he will be thinking of MHF 😛
Touring non-stop or studio recording non-stop?
This is the hardest question! Realistically, I guess I would have to pick touring because it is paying. If money was no object I would rather be in the studio creating, creating creating! But they both feed each other!
Would you rather carve out a niche for yourself as a musician or keep exploring different creative paths?
With Exhumed is all about carving out a niche for ourselves. That’s what the band has always been about. We don’t want to evolve into something unrecognizable. But for me personally, as an individual, I’m all about doing different stuff and do it under different band names.
After a period of touring with the guys, would you rather take a break from them and spend some time apart to avoid oversaturation or keep seeing them regularly?
I would like to keep seeing them on a regular basis. And maybe if we all lived in the same city I would change my answer but we all live quite far apart now. For a long time my drummer and I lived in the same town so that was at least something but now he moved out of state so everybody lives somewhere completely different. So it’s hard because we all like to get together and practice and then hung out at the bar or something.
That’s so interesting. You know, most of the bands after touring for a while they need a break from each other but this is not the case for you.
Working in the music industry with so many musicians I strongly believe that every band has to follow their unique way of doing things. There is no magic recipe to success or to getting along, you just have to find what works for you and whatnot.
We do have a great time together we all get along and we sort of have learned how to deal with each other’s quirks! As we established I’m the one who throws up in a bucket, and everyone has to live it for example hahaha!
Your new album HORROR is coming October 4th on Relapse Records! That’s a day after my birthday so I will take it as the band’s gift to me. Thank you, you shouldn’t have. But I’m glad you did 😉 Would you rather tell us a bit about this new piece of work or let me ramble?
This is the most straight forward, stripped down and direct thing that we’ve done so far. We recorded it in our studio, it was a lot of fun to write and it was a lot of fun to make and its, more like the death metal I enjoy as a listener rather than the last couple of albums which were the kind of death metal that I enjoy playing.
Until the next one,
Chelf on behalf of MHF magazine.
