THE PERILS OF THE AMERICAN ROAD – AN INTERVIEW WITH EXHUMED’S MATT HARVEY
- Posted on 16-02-2026
Photo: Ross Sewage
The long-running and legendary death metal hounds known as Exhumed are about to unleash their brand-new onslaught titled Red Asphalt via Relapse Records on February 20, and it is an inspired and utterly stimulating piece of work that sees the veteran act on fine form and as musically potent, vile, and entertaining as ever. Not only do main man Matt Harvey and his skilled cohorts possess a sound and style of their own but Exhumed are undoubtedly also one of the most consistent acts out there when it comes to delivering quality metal with longevity to it. We simply had to have a chat with Matt about the upcoming record as well as his musical upbringing and the things that make him tick, creatively speaking, and motivate him.
Hi Matt, how are things at your end? I’m very grateful to you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us today.
M: My pleasure! Thanks for including me!
You have a killer new album coming out titled Red Asphalt, which contains plenty of groove and wicked hooks. I am curious as to the theme and topic of the LP, namely “the American road.” You’ve often had a certain theme coursing through an album without it necessarily feeling like a conceptual work, and it sounds to me as if the title of the upcoming album could have been inspired by anything from dark and gritty movies to dystopian books and further on to what you see on the News each night. Please do tell us a bit about its creation and what ideas and thoughts went into the lyrics and song titles.
M: The main inspiration was just the sheer amount of time we spend traversing the American highway system every year on tour, and the fact that there weren’t many (any?) great death metal road ballads. There are so many great rock songs about the road, but death metal bands have rarely touched on it, which seems weird considering how many people I know who have been in van accidents or have spent a significant portion of their adult lives traveling between gigs. Once we had the title, then the ideas started to come pretty easy: from movies like The Hitcher, Road Games, Mad Max 2, Crash!, Psychomania, etc.; from real life experiences in accidents and drunk driving convictions we’ve lived through; and from various fatally defective vehicle manufacturing practices. There turned out to be plenty of inspiration. The road is a perfect subject because it’s the place where the average American is most likely to be maimed, mutilated, or killed, but it’s also a place that’s romanticized and deeply ingrained into the American psyche (see Easy Rider, the Wild Bunch, Cannonball Run, Convoy, etc., etc.), so it was a very rich vein to tap into.
How do you guys go about writing and arranging songs? Do all of its members meet up and jam, kick different ideas around and then collectively put it all together, or is it a case of working up something in solitude and then presenting a more or less finished piece of work to the others?
M: We all live quite far away from each other, and thanks to the internet and recording technology, we’ve become very used to working remotely. We send demos and transcriptions back and forth and work from there. This time around, we made sure to sit with each other and go through each other’s demos and offer ideas and make edits that way, so it’s still pretty collaborative.
You have been recording and performing music for decades now, and it has to be said that Exhumed is incredibly solid and consistent when it comes to delivering quality song material, but is there a time when it is decidedly not fun to be a working musician? Like, where do you find the inspiration to keep going and continually deliver great shows and churn out muscular-sounding albums?
M: Well, this deep into our existence, I feel like each record needs to justify its existence. Until we hit on the theme for this one, we didn’t really have a lot of stuff in the works. We’re all very comfortable writing songs and coming up with art concepts etc. We just wait until we find something that grabs our attention and then it becomes fun. We try to keep on a semi-regular cycle of album / tours / EP / more tours that lasts 2-3 years, but we still focus on making records that interest us. It’s no fun to do something just “because it’s time” or we “need” a new record to go on tour – even though sometimes it is time and sometimes we really do need a new record to go on tour, ha-ha! We get burnt out on tour sometimes, like anyone would – a couple of years ago we did a seven-week tour with Cavalera Conspiracy, and by the end, we were all fried. After so long on the road, we were playing great, but our attention spans were shot, and we found ourselves getting cranky about stupid stuff like where to eat breakfast and shit like that. But the good still outweighs the bad in the aggregate.
What specific records were your favorites in your formative years, and which ones helped shape you as a person? Was there a lot of music around in general when you were a kid and do you come from a musical home, so to speak?
M: My dad was a big music listener who occasionally dabbled in guitar and knew a few chords. My uncle on my mom’s side was a fusion guitarist and flautist, and my grandmother on my dad’s side used to play piano and organ at the Catholic Church and the mortuary and sometimes taught lessons, so music was always around. I never got terribly interested in it specifically until 1987, when I was 11 and I heard Master of Puppets. That was where things took a turn for me. Prior to that, my main ambition was to be a comic-book artist “when I grew up” – I was obsessed with John Byrne, George Perez, John Buscema, Mike Zeck, and Marvel Comics in general. There was kind of a perfect storm of crises that were happening between ages 11-13, I moved to a new school where I didn’t know anyone, my parents split up, and of course, I started getting pimples and pubic hair and all the fun stuff of adolescence. I felt super alienated, so music because my go-to and also helped me vent my frustration and rage. From Metallica, I quickly moved to Hell Awaits by Slayer, Bonded by Blood by Exodus, The Force by Onslaught, the first three Venom records, Under the Sign of the Black Mark by Bathory, all the 80s Kreator stuff, Convicted by Cryptic Slaughter, all the 1980s and ‘90s stuff from Sodom, Crossover and Dealing With It by D.R.I., the first 5 Voivod records, all the early stuff from Celtic Frost / Hellhammer, the first two Sacrifice albums, and then by 1989 / 1990 into the first three Death albums, Slowly we Rot from Obituary, all the initial Carcass stuff, Dark Recollections from Carnage, everything up to and including Beneath the Remains by Sepultura, World Downfall by Terrorizer, all the early Napalm Death records, Horrified by Repulsion, Seven Churches and Eyes of Horror by Possessed, the Impetigo catalog, From Beyond by Massacre, the self-titled Master record, Holocaust in Your Head and Phonophobia by Extreme Noise Terror, Left Hand Path by Entombed, etc.
By 1991/1992 I had gotten into stuff like the Faceless Burial EP by Immortal Fate, World Without God by Convulse, Luck of the Corpse and the Gut Wrench EP from Deceased, the Brutally Mutilated and Mortal Massacre EPs from Mortician, Morbidious Pathology by Goreaphobia, all of the early Xysma stuff, especially Swarming of the Maggots, Been Caught Buttering by Pungent Stench, the Abhorrence 7”, INRI by Sarcofago, Unrest byDisrupt, Drop Dead by Siege, the Necrology EP from General Surgery, Anticapital by Assuck, Nespithe by Demilich, and all of the underground death metal / grind stuff that was happening.
By about 1993/’94 the scene started to change a lot, and I lost interest in most newer bands and went back and rediscovered Razor, Assassin, Infernal Majesty, Final Conflict, Necrophagia, and the earlier stuff from the 80s that I had missed as well as becoming a huge Kiss fan. Around that time, I got super interested in the early early death metal stuff like Insanity, Necrovore, Slaughter, Mantas, Messiah, Vulcano, Mutilator, etc. At the same time I discovered the Powerviolence stuff that was happening like Slave by Infest, Cheerleaders for Imperialism by Hellnation, the self-titled Crossed Out 7”, DIY EP by Man is the Bastard and things like that, that was all quite exciting and led to listening to older stuff like Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing by Discharge, Bonecrusher by Broken Bones, Monolith by Amebix, Return of Martha Splatterhead by the Accused, At the Mountains of Madness by Sacrilege and things like that. Eventually from the 80s underground stuff I rediscovered a lot of traditional metal and proto-metal around the late 90s, like Thunder & Lightning, Black Rose, Chinatown and Johnny the Fox by Thin Lizzy, Filth Hounds of Hades by Tank, Borrowed Time, Canterbury and Lightning to the Nations by Diamond Head, Sirens by Savatage, the s/t Queensryche EP, Taken by Force, Animal Magnetism and Lovedrive from Scorpions, Desolation Blvd by the Sweet, Last in Line, Holy Diver, Rising, Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll by Dio / Rainbow, the s/t Angel Witch record, Fire Down Under and Narita by Riot, and I also got super deep back into all the 70s/80s Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Somewhere between all of that stuff is Exhumed – mostly death / thrash, but with a DIY punk / crust influence and a deep love of metal-infused guitar heroics.
What does 2026 hold for you in terms of musical activities and creative endeavors? Will we be seeing Exhumed in Europe this year?
M: Exhumed is gonna be quite busy this year. We’re doing a US tour February 19-March 20 and then going to Europe and the UK for all of April and then we head to Australia at the end of May. It’s gonna be a busy year in general, and I feel like, given the theme of Red Asphalt, it’s a record we need to really hit the road to support or the whole concept falls a bit flat, ha-ha!
Thanks once again for your time, Matt. Anything you’d like to say to the faithful readers and gore hounds of Eternal Terror Live?
M: Thanks for checking out the interview and hopefully the record as well! We’re looking forward to peeling your faces off of our tires this year when our long and grinding road brings us to your town – don’t just pose, come out to one of our shows and DECOMPOSE.
Red Asphalt can be pre-ordered here:
https://exhumed.bandcamp.com/album/red-asphalt
Links of interest: