### Exhumation: Consider this

#### 17/07/12 || BamaHammer

Uh oh. More Indian metal. Exhumation is a four-piece (sort of, but we’ll get to that) from Mumbai with loads of songwriting talent, groove, and brutality. They’re also one of India’s most promising death metal acts these days with only “Consider this”, their self-released debut, to their name. As far as self-releases go, this one is very well put together from top to bottom. The sound is very classy and professional, the songwriting is world class, and even the art is pretty good.

The album is eight tracks long, but it only clocks in at a shade under 27 minutes. However, there is a lot quality stuffed into that short little span. The torrent of riffs just keeps coming one after another, giving you enough groove to keep you listening play-through after excellent play-through. The riffs are a very fast, high-octane bludgeoning that really never lets up, but Prashant Shah is also not afraid to adventure into the entire extremities of the fretboard, which opens up the bands sound considerably by offering a break from the relentless low-end blitzkrieg.

The bass is your garden variety death metal bass that simply follows the main ideas that the riffs bring. It really does nothing other than make the music as a whole sound that much more huge and brutal, and for the most part, it works. The vocals are nothing new at all, as Aditya Mehta stays in the deepest, most guttural realms of death metal vocals. Again, this suits what Exhumation is trying to do perfectly. And then there are the drums.

The drums are fucken programmed, sure, but they are done extremely well. The amount of quality they hold is reminiscent of Smouldering in Forgotten, a band from Bahrain who also takes a terrific amount of care in programming their drums. There is a load of emotion in their drum parts which give them an extremely organic sound, and it’s easy to get fooled into thinking they were done by some typical death metal drummer badass, and for that I commend Hamza Kazi for going to such great lengths to “humanify” the programmed drums.

This album isn’t going to change the world of brutal death metal, but it is definitely worth hearing. I would rate it a little higher if the drums were real, but for what it is, this album is fantastic. And it’s another small piece of the exploding Indian metal scene, a scene that I’ve grown to thoroughly enjoy and genuinely love over the past year. Check this one out.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Self-released
- Website: Exhumation MySpace
- Band
- Prashant Shah: guitars
- Aditya Mehta: vocals
- Rohit Pereira: bass
- Hamza Kazi: drum programming

- Tracklist
- 01. All That Is
- 02. Blood-Drenched Flags
- 03. Black Plague
- 04. Worship Thyself
- 05. Consider This
- 06. Hell Forbid
- 07. Absolute Power Now
- 08. Alpha Omega