Australian deathcore outfit To The Grave has released its fifth studio album, LIBERATION FRONT, through BLKIIBLK.
And just in case the title didn’t sufficiently communicate the band’s mood, the record opens with a song called “MEAT THE HUMANS.”
Message received.
The Sydney band is celebrating the album’s arrival with a new single and music video for “LIMB FROM LAMB,” a slower, brooding entry by To The Grave standards, which presumably still leaves plenty of room for structural damage.
Bassist Matt Clarke says the track underwent significant changes during recording and nearly didn’t make the final album.
It was vocalist Dane Evans’ lyrical arrangement and delivery, Clarke says, that ultimately pulled the song together.
“It’s a bit of a change of pace from the previous singles,” Clarke said. “This one is slow (for us), brooding and heavy.”
Those parentheses are doing some fairly important work.
The accompanying video leans heavily into horror-movie imagery, connecting the band’s longstanding fascination with the genre to the real-world subjects addressed in its music. For To The Grave, those subjects center heavily on animal cruelty and environmental destruction.
That activism has become inseparable from the band’s identity.
Since forming in 2010, To The Grave has built its reputation by pairing confrontational subject matter with equally confrontational deathcore across releases including Global Warning, Epilogue, Director’s Cuts and 2024’s Everyone’s a Murderer.
LIBERATION FRONT pushes the band back toward the more savage end of its deathcore roots after recent releases incorporated a stronger hardcore influence.
Evans describes the album as landing somewhere between a sequel to Director’s Cuts and “a more pissed off brother” to Everyone’s a Murderer, with the various elements of To The Grave’s sound pushed considerably harder.
Apparently the previous album titled Everyone’s a Murderer wasn’t angry enough.
To The Grave is currently bringing the new material to North America on a co-headlining tour with Crown Magnetar, joined by Face Yourself and additional support.
For a band using some of modern metal’s most extreme sounds to confront real-world brutality, LIBERATION FRONT isn’t particularly interested in making the message comfortable.
Then again, comfort probably left around the same time subtlety did.
Information provided by To The Grave’s publicity team.