The wait is over! Exumer’s new album, Death Mask Messiah, is here, and it’s fucking insane!
The Exumer boys have been busy delivering their sixth studio album and their first since 2019. Death Mask Messiah is also the first Exumer recording to feature the new rhythm section of bassist Alex Voss and drummer Jerome Reil.
They slot in perfectly alongside the massively talented Ray Mensh and Marc Bräutigam, who bring the brutality on guitar, while Mem V. Stein ties the album up in a tight metal bow with his vocal voracity.
I could sit here all day going through the press release and repeating the whole spiel, but I’m going to give you my impressions of the album before getting into its main story, if you don’t mind?
I listened to Death Mask Messiah about five times before I decided to write about it because there were a few things I couldn’t get past.
The first was how much the album took me back to a wild time in metal. This was not Exumer’s intention, quite the opposite, in fact, but it reminded me of old school, good time metal. It sounds like a mixture of Annihilator and Kreator, but it remains Exumer all the way.
The guitars…fast.
The drums…destroying!
The vocals…intense.
This is modern old school thrash metal. There are so many hooks that grab you and have you flailing like a fish out of water. There is so much rage that it could turn a growing metalhead into a full blown metal tragic.
Each song tells its own tale, forming part of an overall story: a reflection of a society now in its death throes.
Division over the smallest things creates a mountain out of a molehill syndrome, but those mountains are the fucking Himalayas right now, politically, socially, spiritually and personally, when all we should be fighting for is solidarity.
We live in a tumultuous time of constant misinformation, political malpractice, savage social conditioning and endless attempts to turn people against one another. Death Mask Messiah has a few things to say about those who seek the proverbial “tying of the shoelaces together,” setting us up for a fallacious fall.
Having said that, I’ll now give you a bit of the inside baseball.
Think Waco.
Think of the god complex of David Koresh. Think about the manipulation, exploitation and eventual deaths of 76 people, including 28 children, and then look around at the world today.
It is the same type of manipulation, but on a global scale.
Look in the mirror. Take a fucking good gawk.
The walls are closing in, and Exumer capture that feeling in the best way possible. They bottle it, ruthlessly rip the veil to shreds and open our eyes to a much larger problem through robust lyrics and a masterclass in contemplative thrash metal.
With beats that will blow your mind and an exuberance of extreme artistry, Death Mask Messiah is a wonderful creation from the German stalwarts. It is destined to stay on repeat for you, just as it did for me.
Death Mask Messiah represents a new era for Exumer, a second coming, if you like.
Now stick it in your headphones and start bouncing off the walls!
Or is that just me?
Exumer
Mem V. Stein – Vocals
Ray Mensh – Guitar
Marc Bräutigam – Guitar
Alex Voss – Bass
Jerome Reil – Drums
Album Details
Artist: Exumer
Album: Death Mask Messiah
Label: Metal Blade Records
Release date: August 28, 2026
Country: Germany
Genre: Thrash metal
Order Death Mask Messiah:
metalblade.com/exumer
