The album draws some similarities to early Carcass albums “Symphonies of Sickness” and “Surgical Steel”, where catchy guitar lines and fast sections ooze with a slab of brutality on the opening track “Unsafe At Any Speed”.

In this regard, the guitars channel melodic sensibilities and unique riffs, which add a full, inspiring sound to the album; vocals are nasty, full of blood-curdling, fevered barks. It’s great to hear Matt Harvey infusing the songs with maximum aggression. The drums inject a packed full of brutal grinding beats with some frenetic percussion on the eponymous track “Red Asphalt”.

Although I didn’t expect to encounter such unabashed grindcore attitude, the melodic tonality of the songs is apparent from the onset of the album. The fantastic performance of the guitars and drums showcases the brand of composition on tracks like “Shock Trauma”. The four-piece incorporates elements of thrash metal heaviness with a catchy chorus melody, without departing from the flow of aggression and brutality.

A quick recap of the band’s latest albums, “Necrocracy“, “Death Revenge“, and “To the End“, ensures a mixture of galvanic hook-laden grooves and gore-filled riffs throughout the album. In many ways, the album intersects with Aborted and Carcass, but Exhumed has managed to pull out some ballsy groove to keep the severed heads rolling.

“Shovelhead” shows us how well Matt Harvey and co. have mastered their own method by consistently pushing the songwriting beyond the barriers of their sound. Be it modern or brutal, “Red Asphalt” is possibly one of the band’s best efforts to date; the tracks are entertaining. There are no fillers, even when the drums and the guitars propel the listener with maximum intensity.

The guitars are laden with heavy chugging riffs that contain plenty of hooks; the band remains tight in executing a sonic barbarity, and the swell of aggression delivers dueling guttural barks. Filth-ridden brutality takes an infectious edge on “The Iron Graveyard”.

Despite modern inclinations to death metal and grindcore, “Red Asphalt” breaks the loop of recycling and extends beyond the loop of mediocrity. There are no filler tracks; the breakdowns and guitar melodies are infectious, but there is something vicious that is reminiscent of the raw, old-school grindcore bands like General Surgery and Pathologist.

You can expect maniacal zombified growls, intricate lead guitars, pounding drumming, catchy melodies, and a gruesome approach that overflows with energy. Tracks like “Crawling From the Wreckage” and “Signal Thirty” balance death metal drumming and swift rawness. While the latter track is a nasty grindcore-infused sickness, there is also a technical aspect to the guitars that provides off-kilter solos and excellent lead guitar work.

The classic blood splattering theme of gore and horror enhances the trademark of Exhumed, yet the album contains excessive elements of old-school gore that the band has been releasing for a long time. It also displays the individual skills at utilizing a hefty filthiness, melodies galore, and stomach-churning bass guitar that explodes in the track “Death on Four Wheels”, which is full of technical and brutal delivery.

“Symphorophilia” is the shortest track, clocking in at one minute and fifty-three seconds, full of galloping drums, razor-sharp riffing that packs in some old grind fashion.

The album concludes with “The Fumes”, which is more versatile than the previous ones. The viciousness is widely showcased on this four-minute track, which is a raw-filled horror all its elements and presents the extremity of the band’s trademark. While there is little to complain about here, I felt that the album’s cover is classic and true to the style of grindcore, but the band could have chosen something more suitable for their album.

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