![Album Review: Exhumed / Iron Reagan - Split [REPRESS]](https://i0.wp.com/therazorsedge.rocks/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/exhumed.webp?resize=640%2C374&ssl=1 "exhumed")
Album Review: Exhumed / Iron Reagan - Split [REPRESS]
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
No doubt buoyed by the success of Exhumed’s Red Asphalt record and their European shows with Gruesome, Tankcrimes have taken the opportunity to issue the Californian goregrinders’ 2014 split with Virginia hardcore punk crew, Iron Reagan. Having been out of print for some years now, it seemed like the perfect time to reacquaint fans with this perhaps forgotten gem of a collection.
Side one, or the first four tracks, are Exhumed’s contribution. Maintaining the personnel who’d recorded Necrocracy a year earlier, the grinders are to be found in something of a less brutal mood, infusing their two original tracks here with a thrashing sensibility. Gravewalker opens with a low bass rumble and plenty of cymbal action, before the appearance of chugging guitars. It’s only really at the end when a full-on filthy grind hove into view, as guttural vocals compete with cleaner ones. Dead to the World arrives already kicking and screaming, bolting along at a fast tempo from the start and finishing things with a ripping solo.
![Album Review: Exhumed / Iron Reagan - Split [REPRESS]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/55251206271_b20fd63f6c_z.jpg?w=678&ssl=1 "Album Review: Exhumed / Iron Reagan - Split [REPRESS]")
Exhumed’s other songs are covers of early hardcore punk classics. Seeing Red, from Minor Threat’s debut is rampant in its use of the rhythm section, mixing clean and guttural in the gang vocals and maintain a high energy throughout. The second cover is Ready to Fight, taken from Negative Approach’s self-titled EP, which finds Exhumed putting aside the gore and death for a more groove-oriented progression, which captures the street intensity of the original, yet is coloured by the band’s approach. That it ends with twenty seconds of a barking dog is not something that feels particularly surprising.
Side two, or the second four tracks, is Iron Reagan’s turn to rage; through sub-one minute flurries Life Beater and Holy Water Makes Me Wet as they bristle with USHC ire and fury, short, sharp shocks that fizz with energy, to the longer, though no less menacing, Mini Lights, whose blistering pace carries with it a memorable riff. Giving Up on Giving a Fuck feels more modern with a slower pace and grounding.
All tracks here are exclusive to this release and, taken as a whole, offer just-short of twelve minutes of punk-infused rampancy from two bands whose job it is to vent their wrath at the state of the world. Strange that in the dozen years since the initial release, the world seems to have become even crazier, proving Exhumed and Iron Reagan’s rage to be well placed.
