More than a decade on from their “Expect Resistance” debut album, Sydney’s TO THE GRAVE have elbowed their way to the front of the deathcore queue. The genre has its fair share of generic also-rans, but it is also soaring to new heights thanks to the likes of WHITECHAPEL and LORNA SHORE. TO THE GRAVE seem more likely than most to follow their zeitgeist-surfing peers to the top. Their last album, “Everyone’s A Murderer”, spanked the opposition last year, with a brutal but weirdly accessible, updated sound that encompassed the influence of early 21st century American metal (and SLIPKNOT in particular) and the juddering grooves of ’90s hardcore, coming across as deathcore’s most impactful hybrid yet. TO THE GRAVE make music designed to incite riots, and they seem to be growing more and more adept at their chosen skill as time passes.

The Australians’ evolution continues here. “Still” is an intermediary stopgap between albums, and therefore unlikely to be hailed with quite the same enthusiasm as its full-length predecessor, but in terms of the sheer quality of this band’s output, nothing has changed. Across six new songs and one highly fitting cover, this EP provides a timely reminder that TO THE GRAVE are routinely transcending the expected.

Very much the heavyweight pit-starters, TO THE GRAVE start “Still” with an oddball flourish. “Forced Diet Reassignment” is ugly, muscular and skewed: a violent blur of slow-motion grind and off-beam, staccato breakdowns. It lasts for less than two minutes but feels like an ominous and substantial starting point. When “Sawed Off” erupts, the sheer, groovy girth of TO THE GRAVE‘s advancing sound is laid bare. Multiple tempos and all the usual brutal tricks are in evidence, but the sum of those parts is somehow greater even than the biggest hitters from the band’s last album. Already a live favorite, it is clearly designed to cause injury.

Next, “Show Them The Bodies” is an elongated caustic beatdown with a bad attitude; “Hunt The Hunters” retains a ruthless grip on the Australians’ swinging death-saw, but with melodic hooks and lurching grooves that refuse to quit; “Emesis System” is a blunt battering, 75 seconds long and thrillingly uncompromising; and “DNA (Do Not Amputate)” takes TO THE GRAVE closer than ever to mainstream metal, but delivers the goods with as much sledgehammer spite as humanly possible. A nasty cover of “Death Walking Terror”, one of the most iconic tracks from CANNIBAL CORPSE‘s 2006 masterwork “Kill”, brings this 21-minute gem to a broken and blistered end.

Once again, there is a tangible sense that TO THE GRAVE have the sound, the songs and the swagger to conquer the world. “Still” is another important chapter in their ongoing mission to grind us all to dust.