Things Are On The Up For To The Grave…

Australian deathcore juggernauts To The Grave will return home this September for the Nail Australia To The Walls Australian Tour, delivering eight shows across the country as they prepare to unleash the next chapter of their already formidable career. Since emerging with their debut album Global Warning in 2019, To The Grave have evolved from underground favourites into one of Australia’s most successful extreme music exports. Across multiple releases and relentless touring throughout Australia, Europe, the UK and North America, the band have built a global audience while establishing themselves as one of the most uncompromising forces in modern deathcore.

In recent years, To The Grave have shared stages with some of the biggest names in heavy music including Lorna Shore, Shadow Of Intent, Carnifex, Signs Of The Swarm, Thy Art Is Murder, Angelmaker and I Killed The Prom Queen, while also performing at major festivals including Good Things, Brutal Assault, Summer Breeze, Motocultor and more. 2026 also sees the band turn their attention toward delivering new music, kicking off a new era in the imminent future. Vocalist Dane Evans talks to Rob Lyon about the tour.

It must be really exciting, inside a week now, to the tour getting started?
Yeah, man, it’s starting to all feel real. It’s been a lot of lead‑up and a lot of waiting and planning, but yeah, it’s a weird, cool feeling when it’s done, and I’ve got a few days until it starts. Just kind of sitting here, excited, waiting for it to kick off.

Is that that weird sort of limbo phase where you don’t really quite know what to do with yourself?
A little, yeah. We’ve all crammed it with day job stuff just to chill the time, keep ourselves afloat a little bit more, going overseas for a little bit, so… But yeah, definitely, this time as opposed to other record cycles, a little bit less. We’ve crammed a bunch of stuff at the end of this cycle, so we’re always working, but now it feels weird to have even a few days of just waiting.

Is it almost at a point where you guys are able to go full‑time, or are you still having to juggle work commitments as well?
We could. We could probably make some zig instead of zag here and there, and definitely make something happen. I love my day job. We all kind of do the things we love, so it’s a good balance. Yeah, good balance.

It’s an impressive lineup — No Cure, Algon Mortis, and Bloodmouth. Were they all picked by the band?
Yeah, bro, all the… yeah. Which was crazy. We’ve had some headliners in the past where we’ll want this band, can’t have them for whatever reason, that’s fine, usually something you expect. This time everything, even the local supports, we were like, well, we like this band, boom, they jumped on. It was unreal, really cool. Yeah, thank you, is it?

No Cure’s a big get as well. A lot of people are excited for them as well as you guys.
Oh, me too, yeah. Definitely, man. Massive. Been huge into them a year and a bit now, and one of those bands where I was like, if I don’t see them on a line-up out here soon, I’m getting them on our tour and it was really cool that they said yes. I’m so keen to watch them every night.

Have you toured with them before, or do you know them well?
No, not quite. Follow a few of them on social media and stuff like that, but I really like the band. What they’re about, their music rips, live shows look sick, so… yeah.

It’s a massive couple of months, straight after the Australian tour you head over to the States. That looks like a massive tour. Are you ready for that sort of tour grind?
Never. Never. But after a bit of a while on the road, it all sets in, you get into the routine of it again. Starting next week or whatever, it would have been about a year since our last lap‑of‑the‑country tour in general, so it kind of feels like starting fresh again, but very quickly you get into it. You get all the nerves again, playing a show, playing new songs…

With the interest everywhere, do you start to feel like the hard work’s starting to pay off, and that finally with the eighth album you’re getting the attention you deserve?
Pretty much, man, yeah. Deserve is a funny word, right? I look at it like we’re very fortunate to have the attention and eyes on us as we do. I know a lot of great bands, hard‑working bands, that just don’t quite break the surface. But to answer your question, yes. Very, very happy, very stoked and fortunate to be where we are. Yeah.

The new album, is that the focus for these Australian shows, or are you doing a bit of that and a bit of everything else?
A bit of everything, I reckon. We’re gonna hit them with a bunch of singles that they’ve already heard, a couple that they haven’t. Throw a cover in there, we love doing that, no matter how big the shows get or whatever, we love doing that. It feels like that’s what we got into bands to do, have fun with it. So always little treats for the fans, trying to bring in some older songs that we’ve neglected to touch for a while that they really want to hear.

It must be tough having that much material to draw on. There’s always going to be one song that someone loves that doesn’t quite make the set.
Yeah, exactly.

The song Torture Porn, what’s the background or the story behind that one?
Yeah, man, that one’s a bit of a response, I guess you could say, which a lot of our songs are. It’s funny that that one was a more intentional… how do I say it? The majority of our songs are a response or a targeted attack, whatever, on how people think, on how people treat each other, and treat animals specifically, very specifically. And we’re a band that gets a lot of flack for that, which, you know, we live by the sword, we die by it, whatever. Put under a microscope a lot of the time. If we zag instead of zig here or whatever, we’re under a microscope. Criticisms fly and whatever. But we don’t care, that’s us just saying we’re going to do what we want. We’ve always been a band that doesn’t really care what people think about what we say or what we do or whatever, because that’s going to come with the territory and that was just an angrier kind of vent at that. Don’t come to me talking about playing this line-up with this band, or at this venue, or whatever, if you don’t have a pretty solid ground to stand on as well, which I’m happy to talk about, we talk about it in all of our music. But yeah, it was just more of a… we get a lot of “hey, fuck you,” so this was our “no, no, fuck you.” We’re a death metal band, and we have fun with that stuff.

I think some people have clearly got nothing better to do. We should be supporting Australian bands, not tearing them down.
It’s… man, we’ve grown to almost appreciate it as part of everything, right? Negative press is press. Negative comments are comments and there’s just as many positive. So it’s fine. We don’t care and it’s also… if people have an issue with the sound of our music, or with “these lyrics suck, you could have illustrated the message better” or whatever, I’ll hear ya. I’ve got bad days and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, we’re very proudly vegan, animal‑rights‑focused band. If you want to come and light a fire under us about ethics or anything like that, we’ll chat, but we’re going to be just as angry about it and yeah, people… I guess when we’re a band that most of our songs are talking about and criticising 99% of the population, it’s expected that a majority of that crowd is going to look for something to hate us for. That’s fine.

It sounds exhausting that people are like that.
It’s planet Earth, bro.

Has the band’s sound evolved between albums? This feels like a bit of a new entry point with a new label. Does it almost feel like a rebirthing of the band?
Yeah, definitely a good way to put it, man. A bunch of people I’ve spoken to have said, “Oh, it’s a return to form, you’re clearly grabbing this and this and combining them, and that’s what this is,” and it’s cool that people have those perceptions of it. Whenever I listen to this new stuff, it feels like new stuff. It feels like a new swing with a new bat. But it’s cool that people are picking up older vibes, newer vibes. We just definitely wanted this to be fresh. We always… unless we tell you, it’s going to be something different. We’re going to try to do something different. Try to expand the sound, try to expand how music tasted. So different and evolve all the time, man, so we always try to throw that in there and end up with whatever we end up with.

Was the vision for you pretty clear in terms of what you wanted to do with this album, or did that come later once you started jamming ideas or writing in the studio?
I want to say a bit of both. We always come to the table with a vision board kind of thing. I always have lyrical ideas thrown around. The Torture Porn thing was, like, I’m going to make an angry response song to this and that, that’s got to be on this next record, it’s got to sound punishing and angry and slip‑naughty even, or whatever. That’s about as far as things like that went and then throughout the creation of things, it’s like, oh cool, it’s almost evolved into something else, but I can still see traces of the vision there.

Do albums get easier to make? This is album number eight, does the process get easier, or does each one still have its own complexities?
I guess because we’re always trying to chuck something new into it, right? This is the first time we’ve worked with a producer outside the band. First time we’ve had Nick, our newer guitarist, writing for us. Drums written from a drummer we all look up to and are inspired by. Little things like that have presented new challenges, but also made this a really cool, unique process. I don’t know how to explain it.

Are you harder on yourselves now in terms of what you’re creating, and what will or won’t make the album?
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think it’s just a natural thing, right? We don’t even catch ourselves doing it as much as, oh, we got to be critical, we got to cut this, this, and this. But the more you mature, the more we tour and stuff, the more understandings we get of the things that work, the things that we like to do. So definitely, if something… I mean, this last record, if something didn’t make us laugh, whether it was stupidly heavy, the lyrics are ridiculous, or the part is just impossible and claustrophobic and scary, if it didn’t hit any of those things, it didn’t make it.

How do you think that will go, translating that to live?
It’ll be fun. The rehearsals so far are cool. That’s always the stress, you go, oh shit, now we got to present these to people in another setting. It’s something you think about, but then when it’s action time, you’re like, right, okay, it’s a different beast.

I know you’re overseas when the album comes out, but how do you plan to celebrate the release?
I think so, yeah. We love to do that, man. We get those days once every couple of years, and it’s a big thing for us, we spend all that time working on stuff. The day it comes out, who doesn’t love all the “man, this is cool, we love this,” listening to new To The Grave. We all love that. Never gets old seeing support and things like that. So we’ll definitely take a minute. I think someone said we’re in Atlanta that day, so maybe just go out for lunch and appreciate that we’re in Atlanta and our album just came out. Sometimes hard to stop, always moving the goalposts, but days like that force you to go, wow, made it here.

When you look at your passport and see all the stamps, you’ve got to be pretty stoked with how far and wide your music has taken you.
Yes. I did lose one passport years ago, and that is forever in the back of my mind, like, I’d have more stamps. I should have more stamps in here. Looks like I haven’t toured. But yeah. But I got a flashy new passport that the other dickheads in my band don’t have, so…

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch To The Grave on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…