Matt Harvey (EXHUMED, GRUESOME): the sense of spectacle is missing from the underground

 
 

Metalfan: Hello, Matt! It’s been one year since you had an interview in Metalfan and now we decided to have another talk, because it seems to be something of good omen. So, what’s been going on since then?
Matt Harvey: Well, since last year, we've toured with Dying Fetus and Toxic Holocaust in the US and then in Europe with Toxic Holocaust again. Obviously those guys are pretty patient and tolerant to do two tours with us back to back.

Metalfan: In the meantime, Exhumed played for the first time in Romania in the summer of last year.
Unfortunately, I missed those gigs but I was happy at the moment because I saw you a few weeks before the Bucharest concert at Neurotic Death Fest and it was a hell of a show. How did you feel playing in Romania? In our first interview you said that you heard about the beautiful chicks in Bucharest. Did this prove to be true?
Matt Harvey: We did finally get to play Romania! Last summer was great, we got to hit a lot of places we'd never been before- Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland... It was a great experience. We always try to play in as many places as we can and to go to places a lot of bands skip. Even in America we're one of the few bands that play in every city. It seems like people in a lot of these less-traveled places are a bit more appreciative when a band comes through rather than someplace like Berlin or New York where they have great shows every day of the week, so it's more special for them and for us. Plus it's always good to see a new place, try new food, hear new languages and occasionally learn a little bit about the world. And yeah, Romanian women, and eastern European women in general, are beautiful. I have a girlfriend now, so it's all just scenery to me, but still great scenery.

Metalfan: Because I already mentioned the show from Neurotic in Tilburg 2013, do you guys plan another happening of that kind for a future show? I’m talking about the moment with the “death” of Bad Burke, who is then resuscitated and I think you staged this in various places, also. Are these ideas coming all of a sudden while you guys are having
a drink or something?
Matt Harvey: Well, one thing I think that's really missing from the underground is a sense of spectacle. We have a million ideas that I wish we had the money to execute to make a really memorable live show, but our budget is pretty limiting. We want people to feel like they've been entertained at our shows and feel like they're seeing something that they wouldn't be getting from other bands. There are lots of great bands and great musicians out there, not that many great shows, so we try to bring a bit of that to the table. I love seeing Iron Maiden live for example, because ultimately the show is still about the music, but it's very theatrical and has a sense of theater and massive scope as well.

Metalfan: What kind of other crazy ideas do you had in the past for live shows?
Matt Harvey: We used to be pretty over-the-top back in the day. We would spit out live worms on people, break animal bones on stage, bring out real guts and brains on stage and make a tremendous mess. We used a lot of real blood in the show, pouring it on ourselves, spitting it on people. Basically what we were doing in '96-'97 is a lot like what Watain does today, except we didn't make any money and we got thrown out of most places that we played.

Metalfan: I was very surprised to find out some melodic death metal elements introduced in the main structure of Necrocracy album. I noticed that there is more heavy metal than grindcore on this record, also some changes in your vocals, and other issues that brought together a refreshed Exhumed sound. Congrats for this interesting approach! I mean, I see Necrocracy more different than All Guts, No Glory. What is the ground of this stylistic transformation?
Matt Harvey: Well, with All Guts... I felt that we really achieved what we were trying to do – making an all-guns-blazing kind of Death / Grind record. I wanted to show people that we were still as intense as ever and that we weren't a bunch of old dudes making a half-assed, watered-down kind of “comeback” record. Since we were pretty satisfied with that, we wanted the next one to be a bit different and show some different sides to the band. There's a lot of melody on All Guts... and even on some of the earlier stuff, but it's buried by the speed of the whole thing. This time with the slower, more controlled tempos, the melodies and the little clever bits were able to come to the fore a lot more. I definitely listen to more traditional metal than I do Grindcore at this point, although I love both styles. We've always been heavily influenced by Thrash and traditional Metal, but when you aren't blasting the whole time, those influences shine through more.
 

 

Metalfan: When it comes about the lyrical concept of this new album, it seems for me that there is a critical process involved regarding people’s perception, something related to general matters. What’s your view about the nation state condition? And what’s the common population’s concern about this?
Matt Harvey: Well, I was finishing the lyrics for Necrocracy during the last presidential election, and watching it unfold was just disgusting. So a lot of that went into the lyrics. I'm not the most politically aware guy out there, but I can certainly see that, in America at least, the government and the for-profit mega-corporations have merged into a single entity that perpetuates its prosperity by concentrating resources in its own hands. That, coupled with our aggressive interventionism and massive prison system signals to me that the government is drastically out of step with the will of the people and people's best interests. That's not democracy, that's for sure. 

Metalfan: Now speaking of your place of origin, San Jose, the demographics show a diverse culture, which is a natural condition for an American large city and of course, there are also groups of indigenous people, like American Indian natives, Alaska natives or Hawaiian islander people. Do you have or you ever had connections with people in these communities? What can you tell me about them?
Matt Harvey: One of the great things about San Jose and the bay area in general is that it is very multicultural. I grew up around large populations of Asians, Latinos, Indians, African-Americans, and Middle Easterners. It definitely helped instill a basic respect for all people and an interest in travel, different cuisines, etc. I didn't meet too many Native-Americans in the bay area, but when I lived on Maui in Hawaii I met tons of Hawaiian islanders. There are definitely a portion of them that understandably resent American culture and are pretty anti-Haole (the Hawaiian derogatory term for Caucasians), but most of them were nothing but welcoming to me when I moved out there from the mainland. It's a weird thing because certainly Native-Americans and African-Americans have been victimized by mainstream American culture and expansionism, but if the defining trait of your culture and how it relates to your country is victimization, then you're creating a toxic identity for yourself and denigrating the cultural contributions and traditions that have been made.

Metalfan: Now, if you ask me about religion and worldwide consequences, I think its manifestation it’s still not recognized, no matter how funny it may sound. I tap a subject like this thinking about your lyrics, for instance the ones from The Glory of Death. On the one hand, religion it’s just a habit of the blind sects or some kind of nostalgic people, but on the other is just a political tool and so it has been since millennia ago. But nowadays gods were replaced by money and this matter is more obvious than ever. Do you think this world will reach a state when people will literally worship coins, papers or bank cards? I mean, can you imagine a moment when people are making icons and monuments with these items?
Matt Harvey: I think the religion of America is consumerism. The illusion of upward mobility has somehow made it okay to flaunt wealth, to flaunt status, to flaunt access to things. Certainly the rich have enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle unknown to most people for as long as commerce has existed, but it seems that in the past 30 years of American culture, certainly since the Reagan era, it's been fashionable to flaunt wealth and status in a very tacky and gaudy way. Looking at American currency, the symbols on it are straight out of religious iconography, the “all-seeing eye” and all of that crap. It's also a way to deify our leaders and turn the “Founding Fathers” as well call them into unassailable figures that are quasi-religious already. People always talk about shit like “what would George Washington think about Twitter?” and meaningless questions that sound deep but are essentially exercises in projecting one's own opinion on something onto an unknowable concept and then adding imaginary “validation” to your opinion that way. It's pretty nuts.
 
Metalfan: You said in an interview that you do lot of reading even when touring with Exhumed. What’s your favorite type of literature?
Matt Harvey: Well, I dropped out of college after one semester so I suppose I'm overcompensating for a lack of education by reading a lot of “literature.” I'm currently reading Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller as well as Extremity Retained by Jason from Misery Index, which is a cool verbal history (a la Studs Terkel) of the Death Metal scene. This year I've read Ape and Essence and Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, and some others that I can't remember right now, haha! I try to always be reading something. I started Anna Karenina this year, but haven't quite had the attention span for it. I love reading fun stuff like the Game of Thrones  series as well, though.

Metalfan: Is this a phase of vacation for Exhumed? Are there other plans for the band except the tour announced for this late autumn?
Matt Harvey: There are a couple of things in the works, but nothing 100% solid at the moment. We'll see what exactly shapes up for fall. We've been slowly writing new stuff as well, and I'm recording an album with my new project Gruesome right now, so the break has been healthy. The Gruesome thing is like a flat-out tribute to Death – like my attempt at making a Death album, and it's been really fun to work on and the other guys, Gus (Rios, drums), Dan (Gonzalez, guitar) and Robin (Mazen, bass) are super talented and cool, so it's been a blast. 

Metalfan: I saw that you also go in for teaching people play guitar. How’s this working and how much do you like it? I assume that young men make the most part of your students. Can you describe somehow the young metal fan generation?
Matt Harvey: Well, my students tend to be intermediate players who are kind of stuck at a plateau in their playing and need some theory background to progress with leads, songwriting, and stuff like that. It seems like a lot of younger players, not so much my students in particular, learn to run before they can walk – they want to learn sweep arpeggios first before just learning some basic riffs. So a lot of fundamentals are missing and a lot of basic concepts that create what I would call “Musicality” are never really hammered in. So  I deal a lot with that- how are chords built, how do scales work together, how do songs work, what do they have in common and how can we use that information to play better music – not faster, not more technical – just better.

Metalfan: Is there a very weird place where you played with Exhumed? Do you have strange memories from tours?
Matt Harvey: We've played a lot of weird places, man. Before we got signed we used to throw our own shows in the basement of a public library. We played in the back of a truck one time in Croatia years ago. We played behind a Mexican restaurant in a storage room with chicken coops in it way back when we were first starting out.

Metalfan: I know that at one point you were working at a script for a comic book. What’s the status with that?
Matt Harvey: Well, it's kind of like music in that it's pretty difficult to get anyone who can do anything with it to look at it. Also, I'm very much in the learning stages of how to do it. I found an old friend of mine who works in the industry and I've been bugging him to read it and give me some feedback. Hopefully it helps. Comics are also like music in that they're a dwindling, nostalgic medium that has been replaced by technology – in this case movies and video games. Regardless, I had a lot of fun writing it, and have a few more ideas I'd like to develop, so we'll see what happens.

Metalfan: Because you pay a lot of attention at the opening acts from your shows or at other bands that you share the stage with, can you recommend us a new metal band?
Matt Harvey: Well, the new Seprevation record, Consumed is so fucking good. We did seven shows in the UK with them and they were great live, great guys, and I love their sound – late 80s thrashing Death Metal, but not purely nostalgic. I've been listening to new material from Coffin Dust and Mangled a lot lately as they just recorded. I'm looking forward to hearing the new Madrost record, another killer Death / Thrash band from California. Their last one was awesome.

Metalfan: Thank you so much for your time, Matt! For the end of this interview you can write us anything which crosses your mind.
Matt Harvey: Thanks for the interview and some interesting questions man! I appreciate it! Hopefully we'll get back to Romania sooner rather than later! Cheers!!!

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