“Reckless” Rexx Ruger of Pod Scum recently asked Exhorder’s vocalist Kyle Thomas (who also fronts Trouble) if a follow-up to their fourth full-length, Defectum Omnium (March 2024, Nuclear Blast Records), was on the horizon. Thomas offered a status update that suggests the gears are already turning, even if no one’s racing the clock.
“At the moment, I’m kind of in the middle of recording a new Trouble album. I gotta get back on to it and get busy with it again. We’re planning on releasing that next year and doing some touring. But Exhorder is back in the mindset of, okay, in March it’ll be two years since this album was released. Touring cycles for albums are typically a two-year run now instead of a one-year run like it used to be. So we’re feeling that, okay, now it’s time,” he explained (via Blabbermouth).
“The good news is that we’ve fulfilled our contractual obligation to our label. But we’ve already talked with them about, ‘Well, if y’all wanna work again, let’s talk.’ So I have no concern about whether or not we’re gonna have a record deal. It’s just a matter of how it’s gonna happen and when,” Thomas added.
“We have just really gotten started on the content for that next album. I’ve got probably fewer cohesive ideas than [bassist] Jason [VieBrooks] does. Jason’s got probably four to six structures and skeletons of songs that will eventually be songs, and he’s recorded four of those with [drummer] Sasha [Horn], just to kind of see what’s gonna work and what’s not — just pre-production, normal pre-production. My stuff’s a lot more jumbled. I’ve got so many videos of riffs — a lot of good stuff, and I know a lot of it’s probably not gonna make it to the album, but I haven’t had the time really to focus on it that Jason has, and I’m okay with it because Jason, musically, has been the one carrying the weight on his shoulders, as far as coming up with songs for last couple of albums,” Kyle expanded.
“So I’m happy that he’s good at that and enjoys doing it because it takes a lot of responsibility and burden off of me if I’m not able to get to it soon enough. So it doesn’t matter to me if this time I only have two songs instead of four that made it to the album. And now that we’ve got [former Cannibal Corpse guitarist] Pat [O’Brien] interested [in contributing to the songwriting], say Pat’s got two of ’em. Let’s say Pat’s got two or three of ’em, I got two or three of ’em, and Jason’s got four or five of ’em, already we’ve got more songs than we need.”
Asked whether fans should circle 2026 or 2027 for new Exhorder music, Kyle didn’t hedge: “I’m gonna say 2027. We don’t wanna ever be in a rush.”
If that sounds measured, it tracks with where Exhorder are coming from. Defectum Omnium featured 12 tracks wrapped in ominous Travis Smith artwork (credits include Katatonia, Opeth) and followed the band’s widely praised 2019 comeback, Mourn The Southern Skies. The album sessions ran through Fat Track Studio in Cincinnati with engineer Rob Nadler and marked the first Exhorder studio appearance for Pat O’Brien, who stepped onstage with the group at Maryland Deathfest in 2022.
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