EXHUMED Interview with Matt Harvey

XM: How’s the tour going?
Matt: It’s going good. This is day six of our tour and so far it’s been pretty good. We’re back in Canada and that’s always a really good time. When we do tours like this it’s really our own show. We work without an agent to get bands that not only have been signed but bands that we also like in person and musically. It makes them a lot more fun. It’s hard to go on tour with a band that you don’t like. We really try to make it so that every band has something unique to offer, but at the same time have a tour that works.

XM: This is your first tour in awhile, is it not?
Matt: Well, it’s sort of our fourth. We did ten days in Europe with Atheist. Then we did three weeks in West North America, and then we did 3 weeks in Europe with Savolic Carnage and now we are doing our East North American tour. Its our first time out here but it’s all been kind of broken up in chunks. It hasn’t been one continuous tour, but it’s our first time playing in Ontario and Quebec in about 7 years. It’s nice to be back.

XM: Do you enjoy touring?
Matt: It’s a weird way to live. Some of us are more comfortable with it than others. I mean, in Europe it’s a little bit easier because we have to pay our agent more so he does more work for us. I don’t have to call people or really arrange anything. Our agent here takes less money so we end up having to do more work ourselves, and it actually ends up better for us over here than it does over there. But its a little more relaxing we get more time to read in the van. You just have to try and find ways to pass the boring time. A lot of touring is 22 hours of nothing with 2 hours of really intense pressure work. Then you sit around for 4 hours and then get on stage and play. It’s a lot like acting; you have to be able to just turn it on and go. It’s not for everyone. I know a lot of people in bands that hate touring and I will never begrudge that to anyone. But I like it, it’s fun.

XM: So why the hiatus?
Matt: Umm it was a lot of different reasons. I started the band when I was 15 and at the time of the split I had just turned 30. I think it was just a combination of different things. We worked really hard but we never seemed to get fully coordinated. Everyone would be ready to tour except one. So then we would get someone to cover for him but then we realize it wasn’t working out. It was a lot of different little things that just never gelled. After 3 records we thought we had plateaued in terms of our career, in so much as a death metal band is a career (laughs). We just seemed to be playing the same types of shows for the same type of people for the same amount of money. We had a line up at the time where our bass player, Leon, who also did the new record with us. He’s never been a full time guy in our band, not since 1996, and the drummer we had at the time wasn’t really gelling. It just wasn’t coming together. I just wanted to do some other stuff. I think turning 30, you kind of have that moment where you look around at the people you knew from high school and say,“oh this guy has a house and 2 kids and I’m still renting a room and driving a shitty car from 15 years ago.” So I did some other stuff. I played in a couple of thrash bands and got some regular type jobs. After 5 years of that I got kind of bored and really wanted to play music again, but a little more seriously. So, Wes suggested one of those half-kidding-but-if-you’re-not-kidding-I’m-totally-in kind of jokes. We joked around about making another Exume record. At first it started as a fun idea with us dicking around, and then it snowballed and we started confirming festivals and started getting these tour proposals. Ever since April, we’ve been really fucking busy. We went from sitting on the couch to sprinting.

XM: Do you see the new album as the best you’ve ever done?
Matt: Oh I definitely see it as the best we’ve ever done. As casually as we undertook it, even with a cavalier attitude, we were confident the album would be as good as our old albums. And it turned out better than we had hoped. It was kind of weird because I hadn’t played this style of music in a long time. Wes and I split the writing for the album 50/50. I starting dicking around with a couple of little bits here and there, then I heard Wes’s songs and then all of the sudden the flood gates opened. We put 11 songs on the record, we recorded 15, and 2 bonus tracks of re-recorded material plus 8 other songs written that either weren’t quite good enough or that we didn’t have time to rehearse. It was cool being in a position where we had a ton of material and we could cherry pick what we wanted. Not only the best songs, but ones that worked together the best. Our old albums weren’t the best produced and some of the playing wasn’t the tightest. With this new line up I knew the playing would be tighter. And also with the way recording technology is and the fact that we had a decent budget. We had a feeling that as long as the songs were good that this would be our best album and I think we achieved that.

XM: What bands do you list as your influences? You started this band when you were 15 so what were you listening when you were 15?
Matt: You know most of my favourite death metal and grindcore bands haven’t changed since I was 15. Napalm Death, Carcass, Entombed, Terrorizer, Death, Early Obituary, and a lot of the German and Canadian thrash like Razor and Voivod. Really, at this point, the band has developed into its own thing, so we don’t really worry about influences. I still enjoy all those bands. To write the new record I just listened to our first demo to our last record. I hadn’t played this type of music in 6 years, so I asked myself, “What does this band do? What’s our style? Oh, that’s our style I’ll write that”.

XM: It seems that a lot of bands become more successful when they start bringing in their own ideas. Everyone starts with an influence.
Matt: Right and it’s always fun to throw bits and pieces into your work. I think some of the main influences that differentiate us is that we don’t listen to much death metal. We are now influenced by a lot more straight up rock. A lot of ACDC, Thin Lizzy, and Blue Oyster Cult, Led Zeppelin, Cheap Trick. When we are writing our songs, we aren’t really concerned about what sounds sick or brutal, but what is catchy. Does it have a good flow? Does it have good construction? We aren’t trying to cram 50 million riffs in a song and we aren’t trying to write music that shows off how good we play. We are just trying to write music we think is good. I listen to death metal now and it comes off as an athletic competition. Yeah, it sounds cool, but I’m too old to play that stuff. I just want to rock.

XM: On that note what’s your favourite beer?
Matt: My favourite beer is probably Duvel. It’s a Belgian beer and it’s about 9% alcohol by volume. It’s got a golden color but its a little bit creamier. So it’s still refreshing like a pilsner but it has a thickness to it so on a cold night like tonight it will keep you warm. I drink a lot of Spotun when I’m at home; a lot of German and Belgian beer. On tour we really just drink whatever.

XM: Well, you’re actually the first person that I’ve asked that question to that has said they like beer. There are a lot of rockstars that prefer liquor instead.
Matt: To me, I like beer because I’m a quantity drinker. So if I drink liquor...it gets bad sometimes. We used to drink really heavily on tour. Now we just drink on the high side of medium. It’s actually been a lot better. We play better, we feel better. You don’t lose stuff all the time, we don’t lose our shoes. We drink beer a lot though. I drink a lot of Scotch, but that’s more of an at home, relaxing drink. It’s not a drink to go on the road with 20 people yelling, “Lets fucking rage!” I’ll drink wine at home too.

XM: For a lot of fans and people like me who haven’t had the chance to explore your entire discography, how would you describe your newest album?
Matt: I think the newest record is a mixture of our last two records: “Slaughter Cult” and “Anatomy”. “Slaughter Cult” is a real straight up Ride the Lightning kind of album. “Anatomy” is a little more melodic and the songs are a little more developed. Almost too developed in the sense that the songs are 5 minutes long and everything on “Slaughter Cult” were about 2 and a half minutes long. So on the newest record I think we split the difference and were able to make straight forward songs that still had melody and a little bit of development without getting And Justice For All about it; this song takes 9 minutes! That’s just too long, especially for death metal. We really need to keep it to 3 minutes. Basically, it’s straight up death metal with a bit of thrash and grindcore. Its the kind of thing where you put it on, have some friends over, crack some beers and get rowdy. It’s not something to sit down and analyze with a fucking metronome or whatever the fuck.

XM: You mentioned that you played some festivals in the beginning of the year. Are those the first festivals you’ve ever played?
Matt: We did a couple back in the day, but this is the first time where we’ve done a bunch of them. We played clubs and bars and a couple hundred kids came out every night, which was great. Over one weekend I remember thinking “Wow. We just played in front of 18,000 people.” When you play festivals like Hellfest in France, you’re on the small stage and there’s 4000 people there, while The Scorpions are playing to 30,000 on the other stage.

XM: That’s still a lot of people though
Matt: Yeah! For a grindcore band that sings about blood and guts.

XM: In comparison to North America those are huge numbers.
Matt: Yeah. Really, the only big festival in the States is Maryland Deathfest. And the room we played in there was totally packed. You needed a shoe horn to get more people in there. But that was about 1,100 people. In all honesty, I actually like playing a smaller show. To me, it’s just easier to connect with people. How do you tell that guy 300 yards away “Hey you, start fucking rocking!” How do you reach out to that guy? It’s fun. It’s cool because it gives you a taste of what being in a real band must feel like. Oh wow there is a dude that sets up my amp for me. Its a novelty.

XM: Do you see the band continuing?
Matt: Well, here’s the thing. When we did the record, we didn’t think about it too much and then things just started snowballing. Even right before we started recording, we already had everything written. Then we were offered all these festivals and all these tours started lining up and the whole thing took on a life of its own. We’ve already started talking about the next record and what we want to do and what direction we want to take. We have tour plans through next summer. We’ll be home December and January then on the road till September. As long as shit keeps coming our way and it makes sense we aren’t going to turn it down.

XM: Best show you’ve ever played?
Matt: That’s tough, because there are a lot of different ones that are all really good for different reasons. I think on of my favourite ones was when we played at Wacken Open Air in Germany in 2001. That was the first time we played in front of more than 1,000 people for one show. I think the thing that was so cool about it, for me personally, was as soon as we started playing the whole crowd pushed forward and I saw this dude - this might sound really shitty - but I saw this dude who was wedged up against the barricade to get his spot in the front and his leg just totally snapped and he had to be carried off on a stretcher. There were also this group of kids from Poland who had this banner, like an old school one made out of a bed sheet, that said “Gore Fucking Metal” on it. Never experienced anything like that before. So that’s probably my favourite.

XM: Out of Exhumed, Goatwhore, and Havok, who parties the hardest?
Matt: I think Goatwhore parties the hardest, but they do it in pockets. They’ll party super hard, then for the next couple of days they don’t want to see the sun. I think we are the most consistent. Havok parties a decent amount, but they are still young. You’ve got to let them run around and let them be rebellious. In terms of actual consumption: us and Goatwhore have them beat. We’ll find out how hard they party on Sunday though because our drummer and I are from the Bay area and we’re Oakland fans and Havok is from Colorado so they’re Bronco fans and the two teams play each other this Sunday.
XM: Fuck Shanahan. I’m a Raiders fan as well.
Matt: Right on man! Yeah man, I hate that guy. That’s a whole other story we could get into though.

XM: Since you’re from Oakland, I tend to want to avoid politics, but given what happened in Occupy Oakland, what are your thoughts on that?
Matt: I’m sort of a liberal libertarian. I don’t think any system has it figured out, whether it be religious, political, or philosophical. But, I think it’s good to see people going out and being activists, because for so long in America the only people being activist were these extreme right wing idiots. Here’s the thing: if you’re a conservative that’s fine but be a real conservative like Ron Paul who has a real conservative message that has simple plans that make sense and are clear and doesn’t just resort to rhetoric and media pandering. I can respect that. I don’t agree with all of it but I respect it. So it’s nice to see the other side coming out and (barely, because of the media) making themselves heard. There is a lot more people out there than the polls indicate that don’t want to let people making billion of dollars pay no taxes. People that are actually compassionate about others. People who think letting others die because they don’t have health insurance is shitty. Maybe that makes me a leftist pinko fag,but whatever. I think everybody should have equal rights whether they be gay, straight, transgendered, hermaphrodite, black, orange, purple, white. It’s cool to see the other side find a voice. It’s an uphill battle though, because the media in the America is so fucking ridiculous. 150,000 people show up for an anti-war rally, 1,500 show up for a pro war rally and they get equal media coverage which is 30 seconds. So its tough because everyone has been so marginalized. People have to do something. If that means a general strike to shut down Wall St. fuck it it’s a start.

XM: One last question. You started this project when you were fifteen...
Matt: (laughs) Yeah. Stupid.
XM: I don’t mean to sound insulting..
Matt: Nah, that’s ok (laughs)
XM: But it’s not like you guys became Slayer or Metallica.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely not.

XM: But there is a lot of bands out there like you and there are a lot of kids who are fifteen starting their own projects and bands. You’ve definitely been through the grind in this in industry. You’ve done the work. So what advice can you give based on the experiences you’ve had and learned?
Matt: You really have to do it for the right reasons. If you really like playing music ,you’re going to do it no matter what. You may not tour when you’re in your mid 30’s, you might just have a band on the weekends. As long as you do it for the right reasons and don’t have expectations. I’m from the Bay area, so when I was a kid I grew up with Metallica, Exodus, Testament. Those guys were my heroes. So playing death metal in ‘89 and ‘90 was straight commercial suicide. The idea of even getting paid to play a show was a really distant goal at the time. I think I was really realistic about it and didn’t have any expectations. If your goal is to make money, don’t play metal...like...why would you do that? (laughs) Get in a cover band and make a shit load of money. Play corporate events and cover Billy Ocean and you’ll make a lot of money. You have to do it for the right reasons. Stick to what you believe in so the next day when you wake up you feel good about yourself. If you want to make money don’t play death metal. There is only a handful of bands that make a living from it out of the thousands and thousands of death metal bands. The thing I come to realize now is that there are a ton of bands that would kill to be in our position even though our position isn’t that spectacular. Even if we play a shitty show and only 80 kids show up. Every one of those shows a kid comes up and says “Guys I’ve waited so long to see you guys. I have all your albums and demos” and it’s like “Cool man, thank you” That means something, it means a lot. It means I don’t need to be a star. I’m just a guy doing what makes sense to me.

XM: Well thank you Matt for the wicked interview.
Matt: No problem man

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