Exhumed

Two years ago, contemporary gore-grind legends Exhumed returned after an eight-year silence with a killer comeback disc, All Guts, No Glory. Now they're back again (with main man Matt Harvey and a completely different line-up) with Necrocracy, and you just know it's going to shred — and it does. Exhumed always did the second-gen Carcass thing better than anyone else, creating tunes that stick like the raw, bloodied slabs of metallic meat they are — the chorus of "The Matter of Splatter" getting stuck in my head at random way too many times over the past decade. Here, the band do what they do best: grinding like Carcass, riffing like Sodom, making it memorable, raging and just melodic enough (see: "The Shape of Deaths to Come"). The grind is not strictly enforced, as the band have definitely veered toward Heartwork territory over the years (Necrocracy's title track is a great example of this, the glorious guitar work soaring, tempos mid- to fast, songwriting skills all over the place). However, the extreme grind spirit is still present, the guitar solos and endless amounts of great riffing highlights, as always. Necrocracy is as perfect as we're all hoping Carcass will be when they bring their good ship back for another gruesome go at it.