Some deathcore records are violent because brutality sounds good. TO THE GRAVE’s new album, Liberation Front, is violent because the reality it reflects is worse.
I had already spent plenty of time absolutely hammering this album before speaking with vocalist Dane Evans. It is a savage return to the deathcore extremity at the heart of TO THE GRAVE, but its heaviness is never there without purpose. Every breakdown, blast and graphic image points back towards real systems of animal exploitation, the beliefs used to justify them and the lives hidden behind industrial language.
During our conversation, Dane took me inside the creation of Liberation Front, the disturbing reality behind “EYESTALK ABLATIONS,” the role TO THE GRAVE’s music plays for animal rights activists and the individual stories captured in the album’s artwork. We also spoke about the band’s massive Australian and North American touring schedule, along with the unexpected connection between professional wrestling, Mudvayne and John Cena that first pulled him towards heavy music.
Wrestling, Mudvayne and a John Cena Album
Before tearing into Liberation Front, I took Dane back to his earliest core musical memory. Slipknot was already floating around the house through his sister, but it was professional wrestling that truly opened the door.
The riffs attached to WWE entrances and pay per view events led him towards bands including Mudvayne. He remembers being around eight years old, hearing one of their songs and trying to work out what the hell had just hit him before loading it onto a small MP3 player. The first CD he bought for himself was not deathcore, though. It was John Cena’s rap album, You Can’t See Me, which Dane still reckons had no right to be as good as it was.
That connection makes perfect sense. Wrestling taught an entire generation that heavy music could carry character, confrontation and spectacle. Those same qualities now live inside TO THE GRAVE, only here the violence carries a very real target.
The Blood of Director’s Cuts in Something New
Liberation Front began with the idea of creating a sequel to Director’s Cuts, but Dane explained that the record quickly developed an identity of its own. The original concept never disappeared completely. Its blood remains in the sharp titles, the real photography used for the artwork and the central sigil connecting the visual worlds of both records.
Musically, however, the band wanted to push beyond imitation. Recent TO THE GRAVE material had pulled more hardcore and death metal into the attack, while Liberation Front drags the focus back towards their most savage deathcore instincts.
“We did want to make it just fucking violent, dude. Ultimate violent,” Dane said. “Definitely something we wanted from the start and executed.”
The creative process changed as well. Guitarist Nic Webb took on a greater writing role, with Dane pointing towards “EYESTALK ABLATIONS” as an example of what that expanded contribution brought to the record. The band also worked with Clayton Segelov at The Brain Studios, introducing an outside producer into a process that had previously remained largely within the group.
For Dane and bassist Matt Clarke, that outside perspective meant they could return to songs at different stages and hear changes they had not personally made. Instead of remaining buried inside every detail from beginning to end, they could react to the album as it evolved. That shift helped give Liberation Front its own weight while preserving everything recognisable about TO THE GRAVE.
The Real Horror Behind “EYESTALK ABLATIONS”
“EYESTALK ABLATIONS” is a perfect example of how TO THE GRAVE uses a title to send listeners searching beyond the song. Dane remembers encountering the term and immediately needing to know what it meant. What he found was another practice so disturbing that simply naming it could produce the visceral reaction he wanted.
The song does not stop with that single form of exploitation. It expands into vivisection, slaughter, fur and the idea of destroying any space used as an animal prison. Dane traced part of that fury back to watching the documentary Earthlings around 2017. The section dealing with the fur industry and animals being skinned left images in his mind that have never disappeared.
That trauma became fuel for a song built around reversal. Rather than allowing listeners to keep suffering at a safe distance, TO THE GRAVE asks how the same treatment would feel if it were happening to them.
“The second it’s you in that position, it’s not okay. It’s completely fucked,” Dane said.
That question sits at the centre of Liberation Front. If an act becomes unacceptable when the victim looks like us, what moral distinction allows it to continue when the victim is another species?
Music That Makes People Think
Dane has always been open about being vegan and an animal rights activist, and that conviction is inseparable from TO THE GRAVE. He explained that the band does not necessarily begin every writing session by consciously planning an educational campaign. The lyrics come from thoughts and emotions he feels are far removed from the way much of society views animals. Once those thoughts are placed into the music, they can make somebody stop and question what they have accepted as normal.
The band were initially warned that their message would attract constant abuse on tour. Dane found almost the opposite. People began approaching them to explain that the music had encouraged them to research an issue, change their habits or feel less isolated in their own anger.
“Either they’re vegan and our music helps them not fucking hate their life a little bit more, thinking about what’s going on, feeling like someone else is as angry as they are,” he said. “It’s therapeutic for people.”
That part of our conversation became personal for me. I spoke openly with Dane about sitting in remission from stage four bowel cancer and the changes I have been trying to make in my own diet. I am not claiming a deathcore album holds every answer. What music can do is make us stop, question the systems we accept and look more closely at our own choices.
If TO THE GRAVE can give existing activists somewhere to place their rage while pushing somebody else to investigate what inspired a song, the brutality has already achieved more than empty shock ever could.
Religion, Dominion and Dead End Justifications
Religion is another target running through Liberation Front, particularly on “NAIL MARY.” The song attacks the way belief and scripture are used to proclaim human dominion over animals and justify acts that would otherwise be recognised as cruelty.
Dane described appeals to God as a “dead end justification,” particularly when they are used to excuse killing animals or oppressing people. The target is not simply faith existing in somebody’s private life. It is the point where belief becomes moral cover for violence.
Elsewhere, “TORTURE PORN” channels the exhaustion and defiance that comes from carrying the band’s message while people dismiss it from the sidelines. TO THE GRAVE know some listeners will reject their decisions, just as parts of the audience rejected Everyone’s A Murderer. They have also accepted that compromise has never been the point.
The unreleased tracks push those ideas through different perspectives. “YOU KNOW THE DRILL” reflects the dairy industry through the treatment of mother cows and their calves. “LIMB FROM LAMB” enters more cinematic territory with Dane imagining an activist killed while trying to rescue an injured bird during Victoria’s duck hunting season. She returns as a witchlike presence haunting the forest and tearing apart the hunters who enter it.
These shifts allow Dane to move between activist, victim, witness and avenger. The perspectives change, but the purpose remains the same: place human beings inside the reality they have learned to ignore.
Every Individual Story Matters
The most powerful moment in our conversation came when Dane explained the imagery surrounding the closing track, “THE WORLD IS A SLAUGHTERHOUSE.”
The scale of global animal exploitation is almost impossible to comprehend. Statistics can become so enormous that individual lives disappear inside them. Liberation Front deliberately pulls the focus back.
“All photos taken from one slaughterhouse, on one day,” Dane explained of the album cover and booklet. “Just the stories of those animals there, it kind of puts you there, as it should, because each individual story fucking matters. The fact that it is on such a scale doesn’t diminish any of that.”
That idea changes the way the album’s bookends land. “MEAT THE HUMANS” turns the language of consumption back onto humanity. “THE WORLD IS A SLAUGHTERHOUSE” then closes the record by confronting the machinery of killing on both an overwhelming scale and an individual level.
The album is a call to action, but it is also an act of remembrance. Those animals are not props placed around a deathcore aesthetic. They are the reason the record exists.
Submit Yourself to the Road
Before Liberation Front arrives, TO THE GRAVE will bring the Nail Australia To The Walls Tour across the country with No Cure making their Australian debut, joined by Algor Mortis, Bloodmouth and local supports at each stop.
Dane is genuinely excited about the package because these were the bands TO THE GRAVE wanted. He described Bloodmouth as a sick vegan band with an equally savage sense of humour, Algor Mortis as a brutal emerging force and No Cure as one of his favourite bands lately.
Five days after the Australian run ends in Brisbane, TO THE GRAVE begin the Sawed Off Suffering Tour in Chicago alongside coheadliners Crown Magnetar and Face Yourself. The rotating support lineup includes Backbiter, Tracheotomy, Squelching, I Declare War and Ameonna. Liberation Front will arrive while the band is already on the road, landing on the same day as the Atlanta show at The Masquerade.
When I asked Dane how he prepares for that kind of schedule, his answer summed up the TO THE GRAVE mentality perfectly: “Just kind of submit yourself to the road, bro.”
Liberation Front Track List
- MEAT THE HUMANS
- NAIL MARY
- TORTURE PORN
- EYESTALK ABLATIONS
- LIFE AMONG THE SEPTICS
- CALF SLICER
- LIMB FROM LAMB
- YOU KNOW THE DRILL
- TERRORFIRE
- THE WORLD IS A SLAUGHTERHOUSE
Nail Australia To The Walls Tour
With No Cure, Algor Mortis, Bloodmouth and local supports
- September 2: Perth, Amplifier Bar with End It All and Our Demise. Algor Mortis and Bloodmouth do not appear.
- September 3: Adelaide, Lion Arts Factory with Chapel Hill and Anathame. Bloodmouth does not appear.
- September 4: Frankston, Singing Bird Studio with Scattered Limbs.
- September 5: Melbourne, Max Watts with Body Prison.
- September 6: Canberra, The Baso with Slaughtercult and Rodenticide. Algor Mortis does not appear.
- September 10: Sydney, Crowbar with Gosika.
- September 11: Newcastle, Hamilton Station Hotel with Fatal Excuse.
- September 12: Brisbane, The Triffid with Onvoy.
Sawed Off Suffering North American Tour
With Crown Magnetar and Face Yourself
- September 17: Chicago, IL at Subterranean *
- September 18: Detroit, MI at Catacombs at The Sanctuary *
- September 19: Cleveland, OH at Mahall’s *
- September 20: Pittsburgh, PA at Preserving Underground *
- September 22: Toronto, ON at Lee’s Palace *
- September 23: Montreal, QC at Foufounes Électriques *
- September 24: Hartford, CT at Webster Underground *
- September 25: Brooklyn, NY at The Meadows *
- September 26: Harrisburg, PA at Capital City Music Hall *
- September 27: Worcester, MA at The Palladium *
- September 28: Baltimore, MD at Metro Gallery ^
- September 30: Asheville, NC at Revival ^
- October 1: Nashville, TN at The End ^
- October 2: Atlanta, GA at The Masquerade, Purgatory ^
- October 3: Jacksonville, FL at The Albatross ^
- October 4: West Palm Beach, FL at The Banyan Live ^
- October 6: Dallas, TX at Club Dada $
- October 7: Austin, TX at Come and Take It Live $
- October 9: Mesa, AZ at Rosetta Room
- October 10: Los Angeles, CA at Echoplex +
- October 11: Roseville, CA at Goldfield Trading Post +
- October 13: Portland, OR at Hawthorne Theatre +
- October 14: Seattle, WA at El Corazon +
- October 16: Salt Lake City, UT at Soundwell ~
- October 17: Denver, CO at HQ ~
* with Backbiter
^ with Tracheotomy
$ with Squelching
- with I Declare War
~ with Ameonna
GET NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TICKETS
Join the Liberation Front
Liberation Front arrives October 2 through BLKIIBLK. It is a record built to hit like a weapon, but the lasting damage comes from what it asks listeners to recognise after the breakdown ends.
TO THE GRAVE are not interested in making their anger comfortable. They are putting the cruelty in front of us, naming the systems that protect it and refusing to let industrial scale erase individual suffering.
As Dane put it before signing off: “Listen to this record when it drops. Join the Liberation Front.”
BLKIIBLK: https://frontiers-us.shop/pages/blkllblk
Watch my complete conversation with Dane Evans above for more on the making of Liberation Front, the stories behind its songs and the brutal year of touring ahead for TO THE GRAVE.
