WHETHER they are touring relentlessly or releasing a new recording, vegan deathcore unit To the Grave are one of the hardest working bands in extreme metal. With six full length studio albums, a live effort and a string of EPs and splits since their 2013 debut, they have carved out an impressive niche while maintaining an uncompromising, almost incorruptible stance on the issues they support.
Their hardline veganism puts them at odds with even the most extreme supporters of similar causes, like Cattle Decapitation. That band’s vocalist Travis Ryan has rejected the widely-perceived idea of them as a vegan band, claiming instead to be vegetarian and saying in interviews such as this one back in 2015 that being on the road often makes it hard for them to know what’s in the food they’re getting while on tour.
As we settle in to discuss the band’s latest album of unapologetic misanthropy in opposition to humanity’s cruelty to life on our planet, Liberation Front, To the Grave’s frontman Dane Evans scoffs at that suggestion.
“We have never had a problem finding plant-based foods or vegan food at Walmart or whatever when we’ve been on tour,” he says. “When you make a commitment to the cause you can’t just cut corners or take shortcuts. Maybe that’s just the way it is for people who don’t have the full motivation to look a little bit harder for vegan food. Paying a bit more, sometimes… whatever you’ve got to do.”
LOUD: It’s not something you can half do, is it?
Dane Evans: No, definitely not.
L: I’m really interested in the philosophy behind the music you make. You certainly take it to an extreme level!
DE: That’s something that we certainly hear a lot! I always challenge that, and I always like to say something that was told me, and that’s something like – If I was speaking the way I was speaking, but I was speaking on your behalf, and if someone was going to bite your head off tomorrow morning, it wouldn’t look so extreme then, would it? It would probably look fair and just. I advocate for animals how I would want to be advocated for if I was in that position. I wouldn’t want people to be wusses about and be like, “Oh… please… Let’s talk about it over a picnic” or this and that…
L: Are you pessimistic about the way you see things going?
DE: It depends on the day you ask me, I suppose. Some days are a little bit better. Some days we’re making music, making a video, seeing the video come out, watching people pay attention to what we’re saying. Then I’ll be on the highway and I see a truck full of animals that within an hour will all have their heads chopped off. All of them begging me from this truck to let them go. That’s the world we’re in. Then I fucking lose a bit of hope. Because how could you not, when you open your eyes a bit?
L: I’m not vegan, but I am vegetarian and haven’t eaten meat for seven years. As a person who once raised chickens from eggs and got to understand how beautiful they are as creatures, how they problem solve, set hierarchies and care for their young, it can upset me a bit when I see hundreds of them stuffed into crates on a truck headed to a processing plant somewhere. So I can get behind the message you’re trying to deliver.
DE: I think the majority of people, deep down, do. There’s a lot of conditioning that goes into confessing that we don’t care about animals. But most people do care about their dog, their cat, companion animals, or they don’t want unnecessary cruelty to happen to animals. But that’s what happens every time we eat these products. It is flat-out unnecessary cruelty. I feel like most people would agree if they understood it a bit more.
L: Dane, is that the message you’re trying to get through with this album?
DE: Look – we’re not a band that’s going to get up there and make it really obvious. We’re not going to beg people. I’ve tried that. We’ve tried being nice. We’ve tried that approach and people are numb to it at this point. My band is there to remind people of exactly what they’re paying for three, four times a day, and what that would look like if it happened to you. All of a sudden, you wouldn’t like it. That’s definitely something we pulled from Cattle Decapitation. Put people in those positions, and all of a sudden it’s a horror movie. Put animals in there, and it’s just business as usual. So that’s what we’re there for, man. To make you think. The Golden Rule. How would you like it if it was done to yourself?
L: That is the Golden Rule, and what you’re saying is almost Biblical in some ways. I’m not a Christian, but one of the things that’s taught in the early scriptures is that man was put here to be a caretaker of the earth, and we really haven’t been that at all, have we?
DE: No, not at all. When you think about Noah’s Ark and all the early scriptures, the ways that we’re supposed to treat animals. It’s insane how we got here. It’s way we wrote a song like Nail Mary. I don’t think any benevolent, all powerful, all kind God would want a world like this, or would want this for His creatures.
L: Before we move on to the tour, tell us a little about Torture Porn. Because it’s not about what most of us would consider torture porn, right?
DE: No! More so the title than anything else is a commentary on how people can think about what we’re talking about and reduce it to another horrific thing that we just like to write about, or that we’re exaggerating. It’s like when we’re talking about a human rights issue, it’s a very serious thing, and we all agree, and we should be really angry and almost violent when we need to help people, and to liberate people. But then, when we’re talking about animals we get called extreme and all kinds of shit. So we just wanted to have a song that’s commentary on that. We’re a band that actively tells 99.5% of the population to go fuck themselves. This is just one of those songs where we’re like… don’t think that we won’t – you might have met a million vegans whom you’ve bullied or talked shit to, but not us!
L: We should talk a little bit about the tour because you’ve got the Australian dates, and then it seems like you’re touring forever after that!
DE: You’re not wrong! We finish that Australian tour and then we fly from Brissie to the States, and then we head back from there for the Hellbound Cruise. And then we might get a second to sit back down.
L: Even for young blokes like you, that’s a lot of shows in a row.
DE: You’ve definitely got to make sure you’re on top of your game and that you’re hydrated and you can sleep in. After a while on the road, you kind of get used to it. It’s like, a show tomorrow, and you feel great after that one, and before you know it you’re home. It’s sort of crazy.
L: You’re the first band I’ve had the chance to talk to about Hellbound. Looking at the line-up, you guys are probably by far the most extreme band to be playing it. There’s probably going to be people there who’ve never seen a band as extreme as To the Grave before.
DE: Yep, that’s going to be a very cool thing about it.
L: Do you think you’ll be able to get through to some of the people who’ll be there?
DE: I don’t think we’ve ever gone somewhere and not had that infectious energy. It’s been pretty effective everywhere we go with it. So I’m very confident. It sold out really quickly and it’s very cool anytime we get to play to an entirely new crowd. This is Parkway’s fanbase, and I’m looking forward to that. I’m curious! I’ve never been on a cruise before. I have no idea what to expect. I’m just pretty excited for the whole thing.
Words by Belinda Quick Photos by Justin White Special thank you to Destroy All Lines “Nature is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men” – Galileo Galilei, Letter to Grand Duchess Christina The mission statement […]
