(written by Islander)
By this point the Bay Area grindcore miscreants Deathgrave probably need no introduction to the kind of miscreant listeners who visit our site, but there’s also a chance someone just awoke from a long coma or just recovered from a debilitating mental disease, so we’ll make a quick one.
Originally formed in 2013, Deathgrave brings together the talents of guitarist Greg Wilkinson (Autopsy, Brainoil), bassist Fern Alberts (Amber Asylum), vocalist Andre Cornejo, and drummer Clint Zane (Owl). Even from their earliest releases, they were prone to stewing together differing genre ingredients from punk and metal, but the stew has become more rich over time. Their new album Hell Is Evil is the richest yet.
We’ve already published a review of the album (here), which concludes with this paragraph:
This is the sound of what happens when grindcore grows up. Fans of the more feral punk-tinged offshoots of death metal would be advised to give this album a listen. Overall, it proves it does not matter how heavy or intense your sound is; there is always time to slow down and create memorable songs, without having to sacrifice the confrontational elements of your sound. This is the primary reason why this is one of the best albums on the more extreme side of things so far this year.
And today we have the pleasure of premiering the new album’s title song in advance of the record’s release by Tankcrimes on August 21st.
As the PR materials from the Tankcrime label accurately portray: “On Hell Is Evil, Deathgrave expands their signature brand of grind adding musical stylings of death, thrash, punk, industrial, doom, noise rock, and d-beat into a seamless concoction.” You’ll get some sense of this from the title track, about which we have this comment from Greg Wilkinson:.
“This is the first track written for our upcoming full length which will drag the listener through a handful genres. Hell can be many things to many people but this specific version is awful. Fold your teeth back til they snap, drink acid, eat vipers, listen to torturous sounds while bathing in pus-filled rain. Demons cheer while you are here. Hell is evil.”
The song has a fantastically hellish beginning. It brings together brutishly slugging grooves (segmented by bursts of maniacal battery), sinister sequences of descending arpeggios, and shrill notes that miserably shimmer and frantically shiver, like the wailing of tortured souls. In addition to being a hellish manifestation, that opening amalgam not only seizes attention, it gets its big hooks dug deep into a listener’s grey meat.
And then foul grunts emerge, the drums go wild, and the riffing begins to convulsively squirm, both dismal and deranged in its sound. The vocals convert into mad screeches and then fervent gang yells. Deathgrave also repeatedly reprise both their hellish overture and the song’s more berserker phase — and then, with a feverish guitar bridge leading the way, they close with a panoply of crazed vocal cacophony, skull-rattling beats, and fiendishly writhing riffage.
It definitely is an evil song, a macabre but highly infectious experience that manages to come across as cold and cruel but also diabolically delirious, both steeped in agony and frighteningly jubilant, and it’s a prime example of the point our reviewer made about the album as a whole — it’s an example of very effective and memorable songwriting.
Hell Is Evil was mixed and mastered at Greg Wilkinson’s Earhammer Studio and includes guest and backup vocals by Chris Reifert (Autopsy) on “Hard To Swallow” and art by Max Rain.
Tankcrimes will release the record on CD and digital formats as well as variant vinyl editions. Find pre-orders via the links below. Also below you’ll find a stream of the album’s previously released single “Born From Death“, and we’ll share this comment about it from Fern Alberts:
“The concept for this song arose from a conversation the band had regarding the horrific condition of a woman who was nine weeks pregnant when she was declared brain dead. While her brain was not functioning, her body was put onto life support so that it was forced to incubate the fetus. This was due to the new, heavily restrictive laws in Georgia regarding abortion. No one, especially a dead person, should be forced to birth a child. RIP Adriana Smith.”
PRE-ORDER:
CD: https://tankcrimes.merchtable.com/tankcrimes-music/cd/deathgrave-hell-is-evil-cd/
Vinyl: https://tankcrimes.merchtable.com/tankcrimes-music/vinyl/deathgrave-hell-is-evil-vinyl-lp
Bandcamp: https://tankcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/hell-is-evil
DEATHGRAVE ONLINE:
https://linktr.ee/deathgrave
https://deathgrave.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/deathgrave408/
DEATHGRAVE LIVE:
8/23/2026 The Holding Company – San Diego, CA w/ -16-
9/11/2026 Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA w/ Necrot, Iron Lung