EXHUMED / HEMDALE - SPLIT LP

Released in 1996, during an era where death metal was supposedly “dead,” In the Name of Gore brought together two of that era’s sickest bands, HEMDALE and EXHUMED, for a 24-track / 53-minute orgy of viscera and depravity. At the time, HEMDALE were well on their way to being one of the cultest bands in the metal underground: gory, gnarly, and utterly uncompromising, it was perhaps fate – or, rather, their recordings being too foul & filthy – that they only ever released EPs and splits during their original run in the 1990s (and even when they re-formed in 2013). However, their contribution to In the Name of Gore was an all-too-generous 13 tracks, still HEMDALE’s longest recorded entry anywhere – and it still stands tall as some of the sickest (and nearly blackened) goregrind around, ignorant and untouchable in its primitive grind & gallop schematic. Back then, EXHUMED were grade-A early-Carcass worship, still a couple years away from their classic Gore Metal debut album. Although they’ve continued on with a respectable and prolific canon of work that endures to this day, the rough & ramshackle era of ‘90s EXHUMED hits the hardest – or, rather, touches upon a nostalgia of a simpler time for those involved in the scene back then – and their 11 tracks here encapsulate that sensation with no small amount of poignancy.