To The Grave: Rise Like A Phoenix

It’s a tale as old as time; the mythological phoenix rises from the ashes of its predecessor, born again and shining bright with the essence of new light. Phoenixes are symbolic of stories of hope, of progress, and ultimately of rebirth. Australia’s TO THE GRAVE are the phoenixes of modern-day deathcore.

When their debut EP – 2016’s No Lives Matter – was met with lacklustre fanfare, they threw in the towel and took some time off. Like phoenixes, they found they had unfinished business and bandaged themselves up for their debut album Global Warning; eleven punishing slabs of pure, unadulterated heaviness. Just as their momentum was mounting, Covid-19 put an end to their touring plans and soon after, founding member Josh Booth passed away following a fatal car accident. It felt like everything they had worked towards was once again up in the air with their backs against the walls. Always outnumbered but never outgunned, TO THE GRAVE crawled out of their tombs, signing to extreme metal mainstays Unique Leader and repackaging their debut as Epilogue, including re-recordings and additional tracks. 

“I think it was very much this feeling that we were being stopped dead in our tracks multiple times, with things that were well out of our hands, firstly with COVID, and then unfortunately we lost Josh, too” explains vocalist Dane Smith, who alongside bassist Matt Clarke, drummer Simon O’Malley, and guitarists John Flaws and Tom Cadden, have been through hell and back in such a short space of time, adding. “Things like that had impacted us several times so we never really got to press the start button on this and we had a lot backed up in the chamber. That’s why I’ve been branding Epilogue as closure to this period, but also, as a bridge between Global Warning and what we’re about to do.”

As part of their rebirth, closing the chapter on Global Warning was an important piece of the puzzle. In order to close the coffin, they found themselves turning to their friends to help teach their old songs some new tricks. Featuring members of ALCHEMY, ICONOCLAST and LEFT TO SUFFER among others, and remixed by TO THE GRAVE’s very own Tom Cadden, new waves of desolation are delivered in the new tracks. 

“We wanted to do whatever we could to make this something worth revisiting if you’d already heard these songs a million times, and the guests were a great idea because it was just us reaching out to friends. Some of them are just getting off the ground and have been there and helped us over the last few years, so it was us paying it back to those guys and putting a bit of a shine on what they helped us do.”

As the flames of their rebirth surrounded them, they took themselves down the rabbithole revisiting songs from the cutting room floor. Taking the bones of these, they fabricated new sets of flesh for them, resulting in their darkest and most disturbing material to date. “We took everything that was a rough skeleton in terms of a song at the times of Global Warning, and we whipped them into shape for Epilogue. For us it was a really cool thing to finally put a nail in it all” muses Josh, before adding proudly. “In terms of a rebirth, we’re always trying to find ways to flip the band on its head, and as soon as people feel what’s coming is predictable, we’ll do our best to switch it up and try something new.”

They’re fully aware they’ve tapped into a well of new possibilities. They weren’t intentionally diving into the darkness that surrounded them amongst the birth of a pandemic and the death of their friend, yet it engulfed them. “I think the proof is in the demos for some of those songs sounding completely different a couple years ago, a couple of them were ones that didn’t make the cut for Global Warning and definitely didn’t sound as pissed off as they do now. I guess something clicked with us through all of this, we didn’t even realise until we looked at the record as a whole and waited for some of the fans to check it out, and they’ve told us, like ‘guys, this is much darker than what’s on Global Warning‘. I don’t want to say it was intentional but it’s something that’s present now in our song-writing, everything’s feeling a lot darker.”

For a band that’s experienced more stops and starts then a game of American football in such a short space of time, it’s understandable that they’ve had their fair share of dark days. Following Josh’s tragic death, the band were once again on the brink but bandaged together by the bond they shared over their fallen brother, as Dane explains. “There were a lot of clouds, you know, it was a very cloudy few months for us after where it was really unspoken that we just can’t break up, Josh would not have wanted us to break up.” 

Breaking up would’ve been a worse fate than death for a band truly at the beginning of their story. With the resurgence of deathcore driving full-speed ahead, they’re primed and ready to honour Josh’s legacy and achieve their collective dreams. Starting, quite aptly, with signing for Unique Leader Records, a label that has long inspired the band. 

“For so long, we did everything ourselves, and considering most of us are still pretty rattled by everything, we didn’t expect the past couple of years at all, so to have Unique Leader, that part hasn’t really sunk in yet and it’s been months in the books but all of these things are coming at us so quickly” exclaims Dane, a man who’s clearly overwhelmed with pride for just how far they’ve come through their trials and tribulations. “Unique Leader have been absolutely phenomenal in plugging us into this machine we’ve been sat outside of for so long just chipping away at, and they’ve got the sledgehammer for the industry which is perfect, so all props to them for everything.”

With Unique Leader propping TO THE GRAVE up on their own pedestal, they’ve now got the opportunity to make music that matters. As with all humans, they’ve matured over the last few years and have found themselves reflecting on their actions. It’s what they’ve put at the heart of Global Warning and Epilogue, and more importantly, it’s what they want their listeners to learn. 

“I think we were a band for a long time that had no message, and that was cool in it’s own way, but with Epilogue, and Global Warning, diving in even a little bit deep, it’s pretty obvious that we really want people to stop hurting animals – it’s fucking everywhere and it’s terrible” Dane explains, sounding exhausted at the fact animal cruelty is still a problem in 2021. For him and his bandmates, they think it’s pretty clear what we need to do moving forward. “What I think is something reasonable is everybody needs to look within themselves and do their best to see what’s being hidden from them. It’s very clear that there’s a good reason why we show some of the images we do in our music videos, because a lot of people haven’t seen those things before, because if that was in front of everybody, they would definitely think twice about how they spend their money and who they give it to.”

Epilogue is by no means an easy ride. It’s an album that demands your attention across over an hour’s worth of tracks. It’s an album that forces you to look inwards and understand the impact we humans have on our world. For TO THE GRAVE, change begins at home. “One of the main things I like to illustrate in our lyrics is that these things aren’t happening for no reason, 98% of animal abuse doesn’t fall out of the sky, it’s there because we unknowingly demand it with our money, it’s simple supply and demand,” he explains, the passion pouring into every single word. “It’s not that hard, a lot of it really is reduced to instead of choosing this product in the supermarket, you move two feet and choose this product, it’s as simple as that these days really to avoid funding a lot of what you see, and that’s the only reason a lot of this is happening, because we’re funding it.”

With a label behind them and a message to spread, TO THE GRAVE have truly risen from the ashes of their experiences as phoenixes ready to rule the world, and as far as they’re concerned, nothing and no-one is going to stop them.

Epilogue is out now via Unique Leader Records. 

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