Hailing from Arroyo Grande, California, Gruesome are an American death metal band formed in 2014 by Matt Harvey (Exhumed) and Gus Rios (ex-Malevolent Creation) as a direct tribute to the work of genre pioneers Death. Their style is specifically inspired by the early years of Death, both musically and visually, picking up on the structures, riffs, themes and signature sounds of albums like Leprosy and Spiritual Healing. The original line-up is completed by Daniel Gonzalez (Possessed) on guitar and Robin Mazen (Derkéta) on bass. The band signed to Relapse Records and released their debut album Savage Land (2015), hailed for its fidelity to the early Floridian death metal aesthetic. This was followed by the EP Dimensions of Horror (2016), which evokes the ambience of Scream Bloody Gore, and Fragments of Psyche (2017), and then the album Twisted Prayers (2018), which pays homage to Death's Spiritual Healing era. Gruesome stands out for its deliberately retro and educational approach, assuming a role as guardian of the classic death metal style of the 1980s-1090s while producing original material. Active on the American and European stages, and particularly at festivals, Gruesome shared two EPs with Exhumed on Twisted Horror in 2020 and Sabbat in 2024, before taking a progressive metal turn with their fourth album Silent Echoes (2025).
