Mem V. Stein: Vocals
Ray Mensh: Guitar
Marc B.: Guitar
Alex Voss: Bass
Jerome Reil: Drums
During their initial run in the 1980s, Exumer were one of the most important bands in Germany’s burgeoning thrash underground, but their ongoing presence in the 2020s has nothing to do with recapturing the glories of their youth. On Death Mask Messiah, Exumer‘s sixth album, they sound as fierce, as hungry, and as creatively vital as ever. That’s entirely by design. When the band reformed in 2008, after nearly two decades of silence (save a 2001 appearance at Wacken Open Air), the agreement was that they would not traffic in cheap nostalgia. If Exumer was going to be a band again, they would be an active band-one rededicated to the craft of thrash metal, with eyes fixed only on the future.
The Exumer flame was first sparked in Frankfurt in 1985, in the crucible of a nascent Teutonic thrash movement. Stein and guitarist Ray Mensh had met briefly in 1983 on the train to the Monsters of Rock festival in Kaiserslautern, but it wasn’t until they reconnected at the Frankfurt stop of Slayer‘s Hell Awaits tour two summers later that the idea of forming a band together came up.
The world that greeted Exumer‘s first demo, 1985′s A Mortal in Black, and their now-classic debut album, 1986′s Possessed by Fire, was a world firmly in the grips of the thrash explosion.
Exumer came back to life in 2008, 17 years after the first era of the band ended.
That brings us to Death Mask Messiah-the first Exumer album since 2019, and one the band is extremely proud to have under their (non-bulleted) belts. “It’s as true as we get,” beams Stein, and he isn’t kidding. Death Mask Messiah is a hard-hitting, dynamic record from a band that could only have made it by following their own code. The longer layoff between releases is atypical, and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly had something to do with that, but Stein says he never wants Exumer to be a band that makes an album every two years out of obligation.
Death Mask Messiah would be worth any wait. Exumer are almost terrifyingly locked in, working through 42 minutes of muscular modern thrash with dead-eyed precision and an intensity that can’t be faked. The riffs are razor-sharp, the leads are molten, the drums are pummeling, and Stein’s vocal performance is a boiling cauldron of deliberately deployed rage, unleashed through a barrage of clipped syllables and strangled cries that still manages to be catchy. In fact, Death Mask Messiah is chock full of hooks, and without losing an ounce of the brutal heaviness that serves as its bedrock. The album also sounds remarkably organic, which Stein credits to Exumer‘s hybridized but fundamentally old-school writing process.
Tracking went smoothly, even with two new band members to integrate. Bassist Alex Voss and drummer Jerome Reil both make their recorded Exumer debuts on Death Mask Messiah, and together they make for a formidable rhythm section that undergirds the riffs and solos being laid down by Mensh and co-guitarist Marc Bräutigam. Death Mask Messiah also marked a major first for Bräutigam, who wrote two songs (“Frozen Ground,” “Ravishing Waste“) for the album. Bräutigam joined the band in 2013 and has long made significant, critical contributions to the material, but these are his first Exumer songs as the primary composer. The sessions wrapped up in January 2026, and Rizk completed the mixing and mastering the following month. As soon as Rizk sent over the files, the band felt confident they had something special. “When everything is done, and you hear the end result, you feel proud, because this is real music, done by real people,” Stein says. “No AI bullshit, no file sharing. It’s still real stuff.“
Death Mask Messiah should hit with even more force for those who listen closely to Stein’s words. In a suite of loosely connected lyrical sketches, Stein draws astute parallels between the hellhole of contemporary American politics and the 1993 siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas that led to the deaths of 76 people, including 28 children. “David Koresh was a false prophet and wore a death mask, manipulating and leading his followers to certain death,” Stein says. “However, the misinformation that the federal government used in the ’90s is the same playbook that is being used today and is the common denominator between leadership in the past and present.”
The bloodsucking politicians and would-be saviors who populate Death Mask Messiah aren’t the only culprits. The mirror is turned back at us, too. Stein is concerned about the endless culture wars that pointlessly divide people, and he issues a plea for real solidarity, and for a rejection of the nihilism that can look so tempting in these inglorious times. This might seem naïve, but perhaps Death Mask Messiah can give back some of the meaning that this dark world seems bent on stamping out of people. Art matters. Music matters. Stein calls this new album a “second spring for Exumer,” where “everything comes into bloom, and it’s a new beginning,” and that feeling of rebirth extends to the listener. By taking their craft as seriously as they do, Exumer represent a middle finger in the face of cynicism. If they can do it, so can you.
