New Jersey has never been a stranger to metal.

Classic bands such as Danzig, Overkill, Ripping Corpse, Whiplash and Symphony X have all come from there. The state still has its fair share of greats today including newcomers Exinfernum. In this interview, members James and Vinny talk about the band as well as some other fun topics.

How would you describe your band’s sound?

Vinny: The way I see it, we take inspiration from different forms of dark music. This includes black metal, darker death metal bands and old goth music – it all inspires us. The only term I think can describe our band is dark metal.

James: Essentially we just play really dark metal music and some of it verges on death or black metal. Metal-Archives.com even calls us blackened death metal. The sub-genre of metal we play isn’t as important to us as it would be for other bands. Really, we are just looking to make some dark, heavy music

Why did you choose the name Exinfernum and what does it mean?

Vinny: The name means “from Hell” in Latin. I was sitting in the dark one day, writing riffs and the name just hit me out of nowhere. It seemed to be a perfect fit for the music I was writing. It was also one of the few cool sounding names that wasn’t really taken.

I understand you used to be the old-school death metal band Gorematory. What made you decide to change to this new style and was it hard at first?

Vinny: Originally, Gorematory split up in November 2011 after opening for Entombed. We tried to bring the band back a few times but it didn’t work out. We decided to change the bands style. Since we went in such a new direction, the name (Gorematory) didn’t fit anymore. Our lyrics went from being gore and horror themed to more dark and spiritual. Due to these changes we put Gorematory to bed and Exinfernum was born.

James: We had alot of bad luck with the band. We started to feel the name Gorematory was cursed. This was around late 2014. We decided we were going to start 2015 with a clean slate. I also felt our style grew a little.

Vinny: To this day I am still a very big horror fan, but I needed to write about more things that are personal to me. At that point I started getting more into the left hand path.I started reading a lot more books and looking into different things. What I wanted to do was say these things but in a form of music. I guess you can say it’s something that feels more natural and personal to us. It’s more real then what Gorematory was.

Any new releases on the horizon? If so can you tell us about them.

Vinny: For the rest of this year we will continue to promote our album “The Gutting of God.” In the middle of next year we are going to start working on our second full length.

James: We have some rough song ideas (maybe around four). Cereberus, our drummer is also working on a few. Some might not make it to the next album but whenever we feel like writing we write stuff. Nothing we wrote is really concrete at the moment.

How do you feel about the state of black metal today? Do you feel the original idea of black metal is gone or do you think it just took other forms?

Vinny: I personally feel metal needs to evolve to survive, this includes black metal. As much as I like the classic bands such as Darkthrone, Carpathian Forest, Gorgoroth and Dissection; in order for the music to continue it needs to evolve. Don’t get me wrong, I love bands that are throwbacks to the old style but it still needs to evolve.

James: My opinion is a little similar to his. I feel black metal fans today take themselves and the music way too fucking seriously. I think a lot of black metal bands get too into the ideology and the image and forget it’s fucking music.

Vinny: To me, ideology and music go hand in hand.