by John Curtis Blose
As a long time member of MHF and part of the staff here at the Official MHF magazine I am lucky to on occasion be introduced to some up and coming kickass talent. I was contacted by Isaac Goldsmith drummer for the band Exhortation and ask to listen to some of their music and let him know my thoughts . I took a seat later that evening , put my phones on and hit the play button. I listened to their first single at least four times during that session and I have to say it blew me the F away. That track was “Seeds Of Ruin” and it was only the beginning of more great tracks to come. On August 30th, 2015, “Exhortation” released their debut EP “Oracle of Bones” to great reviews. I highly recommend giving this a listen you will not be disappointed!
The band currently hails from Cleburne, Texas and have become huge local fan favorites and have shared the stage with bands such as Cannibal Corpse, Suicidal Tendencies, Nile, Nuclear Assault, Allegaeon, Havok, Black Fast, Hate Eternal, Rivers of Nihil, Revocation, and Misery Index.
In March of 2016 the band went to work in studio working with Altered State Recordings and Alex Goodenough to start work on their debut album “Ashland Messiah” . The album was released on December 20th of 2016 and has meet and surpassed expectations . I had the pleasure of asking Isaac a few questions about the band and it’s rise in the Metal world so let’s get started .
I guess let’s start at the beginning.
Please give us a brief background for each member; you know maybe a little personal history before “Exhortation”
I started my first band at 13 and wrote all the time. I started on bass guitar after playing Trombone in the school band and then went to electric guitar after that. I was raised on heavy metal thanks to my older sister and my father. My favorite metal bands are Havok, Tesseract, Evile, and Kreator.
Spencer started playing bass when he was about 12 years old and that same year he started playing bassoon in the school band. In high school he played bass in the jazz band 3 out of the four years he attended. Some of his favorite metal bands are Revocation, Decapitated, Exodus and Overkill
Isaac started playing drums at age 12 and joined his church band when he felt he had a calling to perform in a Metal band. A few of his favorite metal bands are Rage Against the Machine,Revocation,Korn and Periphery.
Seth says”I started taking guitar seriously at 12, around the same time I started really coming into my own as far as musical preferences go. My dad raised me on classic rock and metal, so from there it just got heavier. Thrash was a huge part of my high school years, and still is. Nowadays I’m a huge technical death metal fan, too. Bands like Allegaeon and Psycroptic. It goes all over the place for me, though. We’ve all had a huge impact on each others’ musical inclinations, so there’s a lot of overlap”
I would describe your sound as Havoc meets Cannibal Corpse with a touch of Old School Slayer shredding at the rim of Hell …. Who were your early influences and where do you see the band heading as your talent evolves ?
There’s really no telling where we will go musically. We really just write whatever we want and go with it. As for the influences though we kind of all come from across the board. Jordan’s heavily influenced by thrash, Isaac is more of a metalcore guy. Seth is more influenced by 80’s metal and classic rock and spencer has always been more of a deathcore and death metal listener.
How did you guys come up with your name ? I know this is a pretty standard question but sometimes there is an interesting story behind it ?
Seth was just looking for a name that went well with how we wanted to present ourselves which was a very heavy band with influences rooted in Christianity. We found the word exhortation and felt its definition meshed well with what we wanted our message to be and we just went with it
The new Album is due out 12-20-16 “Ashland Messiah” after 2 years of hard work I know this this is an exciting time for you guys and your fans . Can you give us a little insight into the process of creating Ashland Messiah and are there any certain tracks that have a special meaning to one or all of you?
To be honest, I wrote almost all of the songs on the record in the course of a week in my bedroom at home. At the time I was dealing with a lot of emotional things which is where I normally find my inspiration so the songs were just falling out of me constantly. Spencer was the primary writer on the songs Light the Fires and Between which I wrote the lyrics for and out of the songs on the record those two (Between and fires) have the most effect on me lyrically. They’re very personal lyrics to me and so those songs are special. Then we had our buddy Jonathan West, who was in the band for a few shows, come up with the instrumental track Nineveh. He just sent me it via text one day and I told him I wanted it on the record and he was cool with it so I recorded it and that’s how that got there.
Any words for your fans , present and future that you guys would like to share?
The obvious answer is of course, thank you. Thank you for all the support you’ve given us and thank you for helping us create something like this album. We hope we can continue to make you proud in the times to come
Please find us at ; exhortationband.com
For Live show info; Booking info and Merchandise, Also find them on facebook/exhortationband and twitter/Exhortation2014
Thanks to Isaac Goldsmith and” Exhortation” for taking time to talk with us and be sure to check out “Ashland Messiah” the brand new debut album out now.
John Curtis Blose / Metalheads Forever Magazine
Photo Credits : Josh Grant & Chad Fenner of “Concert Photos”
