Wage War have announced the details of a new EP, and jumped straight in with a bludgeoning slice of Florida-shaped heaviness.
The track is called ‘SONG OF THE SWAMP’ and is as dark and murky as the surroundings that inspired it. Sticky, savage, and wonderfully dark, it finds the band stepping back into the sort of heaviness that kickstarted their journey, whilst still sitting perfectly within the bludgeoning hard rock and nu-metal experiments of their recent output.
Perhaps working on something that sits so close to home has brought out a different sort of beast in the band, as they explain, “Driven by Florida and the raw aggression of nature, it’s a heavy track built on tension and hostility.”
Whatever it is, it’s an absolute joy to behold.
The EP that it is pulled from is called ‘IT CALLS ME BY NAME’ and will be released on April 17 via Fearless Records. It serves as a follow-up to 2024’s full-length ‘STIGMA’.
The artwork looks like this:
Whilst the full tracklisting is like this:
1. SONG OF THE SWAMP 2. 4×4 3. BLINDFOLD 4. KARMA 5. PURIFY
The United Kingdom has consistently remained one of the most vital global epicenters for punk rock music, with specific regions developing their own distinct, highly recognizable sonic fingerprints. When you examine the lineage of the Sunderland punk scene, you uncover a rich history of bands prioritizing raw emotion, gritty realism, and definite melody over flashy […]
The United Kingdom has consistently remained one of the most vital global epicenters for punk rock music, with specific regions developing their own distinct, highly recognizable sonic fingerprints. When you examine the lineage of the Sunderland punk scene, you uncover a rich history of bands prioritizing raw emotion, gritty realism, and definite melody over flashy […]
The august institution known as the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has unveiled the nominees eligible for induction in 2026. This year the Hall has recognized 17 acts, and 10 of those names are being put forward for the first time. Jeff Buckley, the Wu-Tang Clan, Lauryn Hill, Luther Vandross, Pink, Shakira, INXS, New Edition, Melissa Etheridge, and solo Phil Collins will all get their first crack at Hall Of Fame status.
Chuck Wright has played bass alongside everyone from Slash to Alice Cooper. He’s a player’s player, a producer, and a songwriter. But what he’s best known for are his many stints with Quiet Riot. Specifically, he contributed his four-stringed licks to the band’s iconic ‘80s metal classic, Metal Health. Though he’s been out of Quiet Riot for several years, he’s proud of his legacy within the band’s history and has been keeping busy with various projects. As for how he hopes to be perceived beyond his heavier-than-heavy reputation, Wright tells ClassicRockHistory.com, “People probably think of me strictly as a rock
Ross Sewage closed a recent interview with a perfectly Exhumed response to a simple question: Asked to complete the sentence beginning with “Death metal is at its best…,” his answer was straight to the point: “when it’s fun.”
And, man, Exhumed is nothing if not fun.
Release date: February 20, 2026. Label: Relapse
From humbler beginnings through the early 90s as one of the earliest and best examples of what would eventually become (somewhat unfairly) maligned as “Carcass worship,” Exhumed spit forth a spate of split releases that reeked of putrefaction, before landing on their first full-length in 1998’s Gore Metal, before fully hitting their stride with the follow-ups, Slaughtercult and Anatomy Is Destiny. The former of those was (is) grindier, nastier, uglier, and the latter is more polished, precise, technical, and the middle one was just right.
Somewhere within that spectrum lies Exhumed’s beating heart – they’re a predominantly death metal band with grindcore strains throughout, blood-spattered and gore-soaked, vicious and violent, and always, ALWAYS fun. After a brief lay-off and partial reunion, through line-up shifts that saw founding drummer Col Jones depart and bassist / co-vocalist Sewage (gone since Gore Metal) return for Death Revenge and beyond, Exhumed soldiers ever onward, now on their ninth full-length of fresh meat.
To cut directly to the proverbial chase: Red Asphalt is, for the most part, business as usual for Exhumed. It’s catchy, carving death metal, with the Harvey-high / Sewage-low vocal interplay, and an appropriately filthy production that feels just polished enough to not wear the edges off. The riffs rip through tremolo-picked runs and groovier bits, with dashes of melody (though not as much as on some previous efforts). Lyrically built upon tales of life on the road – or really, more upon tales of death on the road – Red Asphalt is thematic, without being a concept album, similar to the VHS b-movie inspiration of Horror. The title track hits that perfect Exhumed stride: catchy guitar work, an immediate vocal hook, a midtempo bulldozer drive that upshifts into thrashing glee. More of those sweet melodic guitar leads appear in “The Iron Graveyard,” with others cropping up throughout – in “Signal Thirty,” in “Symphorophilia,” everywhere – and with each repeated listen (and there have been many so far, and more to come), I’m reminded that those big bloody meathook-sized earworms are Exhumed’s true calling cards, lancing through the eardrums and right into the brain, never to work itself free.
Of course, with any Exhumed album, at this point, the question is not so much “what are we getting here?” but “how does what we’re getting here compare to what we’ve gotten before?” and the answer is “quite well, actually.” I’d place Red Asphalt above To The Dead, which I very much enjoyed, and soundly above Horror, which I also very much enjoyed. Everything this band does will immediately be compared to that first run of three, those classics of gore metal, to the extent that it’s almost irrelevant if Red Asphalt lives up to Slaughtercult, as long as it lives up to the band’s logo on the cover, and it certainly does that.
This is Exhumed; this is death metal (mostly); and like the man said, this is fun.
Miranda Lambert’s refusal to follow a prescribed Nashville formula defined her career before it truly began. An early recording session in Music City left her dissatisfied with the suggested pop direction, so she returned to Texas determined to write her own material. She taught herself guitar with her father’s help and began writing songs that reflected her own voice. Raised in Longview, Texas, and later based in Lindale, she had already been performing since high school with “The Texas Pride Band” and working regular gigs at venues such as the Reo Palm Isle in Longview. By sixteen, she was appearing
