Exhumed’s Mike Hamilton Wanted to Have a Career Dealing with Dead Bodies Before Joining a Death Metal Band

Stop me if you’ve ever heard this one before, but a member of an extreme grindcore band that regularly features rotting human flesh on its album covers would have loved working around dead bodies if he hadn’t become a professional musician.

That’s the information we learned from Exhumed drummer Mike Hamilton, who recently spoke with Sick Drummer Magazine. Having just released To The Dead earlier this year and recently finished a winter tour with Escuela Grind, Castrator, and Vitriol, Hamilton was asked what he would have liked his career to be had he not pursued music.

“I have a professional career in construction. I’m basically a general contractor so I can do kitchen and bath remodels, tiles and all that. But my dream job — I really wanted to be a coroner’s assistant or working in forensics. It’s just always been a fascinating aspect and it’s something I’ve been kind of like drawn to.”

Hamilton later went on to say that he actually spent some time getting to live out his dream by working as a coroner’s assistant for two years before his time in Vile, which would put that time period somewhere in the early ’90s.

Regardless of his interests, Hamilton said he was happy he went with music as a career path, saying touring and playing music “is my life.”