Survived by Nothing carved their lane by force—off time, off axis, off the leash. The Croatian four-piece doesn’t care what you call it—metallic hardcore, hardcore, metalcore—just let them play and let people spin-kick. On their new EP Welcome to Your Grave, they make their clearest statement yet: this is a band pushing chaos as a method, violence as design, growth as a battlefield. Lyrically personal, sonically belligerent, the record delivers its thesis plainly—grow or get left behind.
Grga, who fronts the band and writes the lyrics, puts it flat: “If I had to choose a main topic of ‘Welcome to Your Grave,’ I’d say it’s growing as a human being and the consequences of doing the opposite.”
There’s straight edge energy here—he’s the only member who is—but it’s not a crusade. It’s more personal than dogmatic. “Some of these songs are about growing as a person, and some… about people who refuse to grow.” Even the sword-heavy lyrics owe more to the books he was reading (World of Warcraft, Taiko) than any genre trope.
But if you came for the breakdowns—good. You’re in the right place. The EP, mixed and mastered by Matt Guglielmo (The Acacia Strain, End), sounds like it was built to cave in ceilings. From the relentless stomp of “Warpath” to the grinding detest in “Welcome to Your Grave,” every song is calibrated for maximal pit movement. “It’s more chaotic and violent than our previous releases,” Grga says, “and that’s the direction we’re headed now.” The goal isn’t to impress. The goal is to ignite.
And yeah, it’s about moshing. Not hypothetically. Literally. “We want people spin-kicking, two-stepping, doing fake karate, and crowd-killing,” Grga says. “We don’t want push pits… we want our crowds to either mosh or make space for those who will mosh, because I play that show for them first, for all others second.”
View this post on Instagram
In Croatia, though, that’s a mission, not a norm. “When you go to a show here… people look at you weird. Sometimes they tell you to calm down. Sometimes they want to fight you.” It’s not a theory. It’s lived. “We want to end this.”
That mission sits beside another: defining a scene. “When it comes to this style of hardcore… we have quality, but not quantity.” There are no tour circuits for chaotic metallic hardcore in Croatia. Most shows are patchworks of different genres—crust, punk, deathcore—because there’s simply not enough stylistic overlap. That isolation might frustrate a lesser group. For SBN, it sharpens the focus.
Their friends, though? They shout them loud. Let’s look who we have recommended today.
Reach A.D.
“Our biggest friends in the scene and hands down the hardest band in the region. Fighting music at its best. These guys are getting better and better with each show, and each show is getting harder and harder. I bet their next release will be heard far and wide. If you love hardcore music, this band is everything you need. I love them so much.”
Neven
“These guys are insane. However, I can’t really say they’re going under the radar. But they still deserve a shout out—it’s a big inspiration for me, what they’re doing. What they accomplished with their songs written in Serbian rather than English is just amazing.”
Boneash
“Hardcore/crust band… their new record Remnants—I heard a bit of Converge, a bit of Fall of Efrafa. It’s melodic, emotional, fast, hard, heavy.”
Drown
Shoegaze/grunge and it’s so good. They have only one live release for now, but my guess is that a looot of people outside our scene will also enjoy this music once it’s released.”
Ponor
“Ponor still does it and they are amazing. I went to their show recently and I always forget how good they really are. They play a bit darker hardcore punk, and in this new song they played, they even had a heavy-ass breakdown, which was unusual for them—but so cool to me.”
Sentence (RIP)
“Another important local band from the days when we started going to shows.”
Now back to Welcome to Your Grave. This isn’t a concept record in the theatrical sense, but it has a through-line: duality. The self you abandon and the self you grow into. Machines and humans. Power and consequence.
Grga’s track-by-track commentary strips back the noise:
Warpath – This one is pretty personal. In Warpath, a version of me that I’m trying to be is talking to a version of me that I’m trying to change. It’s basically a “fuck you” to my old self that I left behind to die. It had to be hard and hateful because that old me deserved it. So again, it’s about growing. Also, with “watch me rise” in the last line of this song, I’m paying homage to Have Heart, which is the first hardcore band I heard in my life and my favorite to this day.
Tremble – This one was inspired by Luigi Mangione. I don’t even care how radical this is, but the world would be a better place without some people. People in positions of power destroying the lives of others for profit… there should be no place for them. In Tremble, I’m trying to emphasize fear because I believe that only true fear for their well-being could possibly force these people to change.
Pledge of Blood – This one is pretty personal, and I don’t really want to go into details, but it’s trying to say that you can make it up, whatever you lost. If you lost a loved one, of course, you will never replace that person with another, but you should never give up on trying to build new friendships, new relationships. We only really have each other, and that’s what everyone actually needs. Nothing good can come out of dwelling in the past. Honor it, but forge ahead.
Embrace the Machine – I believe that in each of us is a machine that can be turned on and off. In order to turn that machine on, you need to turn off the human inside you. This machine enables you to shut off and become numb to what’s real and important. This song is for people who deliberately shut down the human inside them to embrace the machine.
Upon Heaven’s Will – This song is inspired by the book Taiko. This song is about finding your way even when it feels like everything has given up on you. That’s what the main character of this book did—from growing up in poverty, being exiled from his village, to becoming the most important man in his country.
Welcome to Your Grave – This is the only song written by Vedran. It’s a straight-up hate song, nothing more, nothing less. A “fuck you” to all human garbage who pollute this earth. (Shout out Human Garbage—great band.)
