Death metal’s kings of gore trade graveyards for guardrails as Red Asphalt turns modern highways into the ultimate horror setting. We caught up with EXHUMED frontman Ross Sewage to talk road carnage, groove-heavy filth, real-life crashes, and why touring is both a love affair and a slow-motion wreck.
Red Asphalt shifts the band’s gore obsession from historical and cinematic settings to the modern American roadway—what made the road feel like the next natural horror landscape for EXHUMED?
Ross Sewage:
We were on tour talking about what we should do with our next album and I was like, “we’re a band on the road, why don’t we have a great road song like ‘The Road Behind’ or ‘Home Sweet Home’?” Our solution was to make an album entirely of road songs, just through the lens of death metal. That means lots and lots of gore.
Sonically, the album is described as more groove-driven and hook-laden while still maintaining deathgrind chaos. How conscious was that balance during the writing process?
After we had made a decision to talk about the slime and the horror of being on the road, the music writing process followed suit. If you’ve ever had to sleep in a van with a half-dozen people and wake up at one of our country’s fine truck stops, stagger in with your hair askew and pants half filled up, five days from your last shower, just to eat some slimy nachos because that’s the only hot food item they have, then you know it feels sleazy to be on the road.
Conceptually, the ooze, gore, and slime that drip from a truly gruesome auto wreck over the gleaming panels of steel are like some more groove-driven riffs juxtaposed with the polished death-grind beats.
Songs like “Unsafe At Any Speed” and “Signal Thirty” reference real-world danger and trauma—did you draw from specific experiences or stories while developing the lyrics?
Matt and I certainly have specific experience in trauma on the road. Decades ago, Matt lost control of a Toyota SUV we had borrowed to play a show in Santa Barbara, CA while we were driving home. Those early SUVs were garbage cars with a giant, top-heavy cabin placed on top of too thin a frame.
Matt overcorrected a drift and the car flipped and I received facial injuries in the back, got airlifted out, and had glass pulled out of my ripped-off eyebrow for a few hours. While no song is specifically about this experience, anyone on the road will see the trauma and horror as thousands of cars crash every day. The road is a meat grinder.
You’ve called Red Asphalt a “love letter to the road.” After decades of touring, how has life on the road shaped your perspective as musicians and as people?
Love, hate: two sides of the same coin. It’s great being in a band on the road—hanging out with your friends all day, meeting new people, seeing the sights, and playing the music you love.
It’s also a very dehumanizing experience as the highs are inextricably paired with the lows of sleeping on floors, extended periods of feeling filthy, garbage diets, and losing out on the things going on at home with family and loved ones. It’s a real mixed bag, but we always try to make the best of it and to savor the experience. Likewise, we try and make our time at home a cherished one.
Compared to your recent albums that leaned heavily into narrative concepts, does Red Asphalt feel more immediate or visceral in its storytelling?
Red Asphalt is definitely an in-your-face assault, narratively speaking. While we like to tell an engaging story in our songs rather than just a bunch of nasty words about some edge-lord misogynistic fantasy, these songs are about what could happen to anyone at any time.
These are not fantastical stories about serial killers or monsters. Our stories are about the killers that are driving next to you right now on the highway, or the corporate penny-pinchers who’d rather pay a fine than make sure the vehicle they sell is safe.
With such an extensive 2026 touring schedule, how do you keep performances feeling feral and dangerous night after night without burning out?
We keep band life light and fun. We’re friends on the road and we banter and look out for each other. That kind of mutual support lets us really focus on the rage we’ve packaged into the songs and get into it as much for ourselves as hopefully an audience does.
We also do push-ups and stretches. Some of us are pushing the years, but we’re looking to stay healthy so we can keep doing this a long time.
Guitar-wise, what amps, pedals, or tuning choices were essential in capturing the album’s sleazier grooves and high-speed aggression?
Exhumed loves Michael Klein pedals. That is a long-standing partnership of our guitar sound with one of the nicest, most talented guys in the pedal business. We’ve always tuned to B-standard and used ENGL amps on this recording. For bass, just a DI and a Sansamp.
The real magic happened when we turned over our tracks to mixer par excellence, Scott Evans at Anti-Sleep Studios. He produced exactly what we wanted: an album that sounded professional enough to be from a studio but vibrant enough to sound live.
If EXHUMED had to design an official Red Asphalt concept car, what absolutely lethal feature would it have—and who would crash it first?
The perfect Red Asphalt car already exists, and it’s the Dreadnok’s Thunder Machine from G.I. Joe. A roll cage to protect the band, dual penetrating Gatling cannons to clear traffic, a knock-dead turbojet to make sure we get to the show on time, a tow hook for our trailer, and a cool junked race car front end to bring the party.
Matt would crash it first—that’s why we’re definitely going to let the Dreadnok Thrasher drive on this next tour.
Finish this sentence: Death metal is at its best……..when it’s fun.
With Red Asphalt, EXHUMED prove that the most terrifying horror isn’t lurking in crypts or operating tables—it’s doing 70 mph right next to you. Equal parts sleaze, groove, trauma, and black humor, the album is a blood-splattered dashboard confession from a band that’s lived every mile of it. Buckle up—this one doesn’t come with airbags.
Categories: News
Leave a Reply