Yeah, but we changed our name because our bass player sucked.

Did you ever think you guys would be around for 20 years?

Not really. Not at that time and not later either I think. I think we started doing more demo stuff and things like that initially in the underground scene and we felt maybe we could release albums like the bands we grew up on and admired. It turned out to be that way also but I never thought that we would still be here many years later.

Did you ever think you'd be such a major influence on other bands?

Yeah, that's very cool to hear. We don't see ourselves as idols or anything like that. We realize that when we meet other bands at shows, I guess we made a big difference in people's lives and maybe helped their need to do music. Perhaps made someone pick up a guitar and start playing or start playing drums because they heard Grave. That's very flattering too.

What inspired your interest in extreme music? What influence you guys?

When we were pretty young, we started playing together in seventh grade. I was 13 at that time, that was in '84 and we listened to all kinds of stuff like Accept and a bunch of good old metal bands and then we turned more towards thrash metal with Kreator, Destruction, and all the old German thrash bands. Celtic Frost was always a big influence for me and also the Bay area thrash bands like Slayer and Testament. Just a bunch of those bands that came out in those years.

I did an interview with a guy named Albert Mudrian who wrote a book called The Improbable History Of Death Metal I think it was called and he said there was a lot of tape trading going on. Did you guys engage in that sort of thing yourselves?

Yes, absolutely. That was the way to enable the band in those years. We sold demos through the post and also traded a lot of stuff with other bands. I have the original Morbid Angel demos and demos from Immolation and a lot of the American death metal bands that came out in those early years also. It was very cool to share your music with other like-minded people and be able to see what's going on over there and we share what's going on over here.

When you guys first started out, did you guys know what direction musically you wanted to go in or did that just come as time went by?

At the start we were very thrashy. I don't know if you heard the Corpse demo in '86. There's much more thrash to it. A lot more like the German thrash bands. Maybe a little bit Slayer influenced also. The first Grave demo has also that kind of Slayer influence. I think it's only from the second Grave demo which came out in '89, that's when we really started going into more extreme and death metal influences.

You guys just came out with a new record, As Rapture Comes. Can you tell me a little about the record and how it differs from your previous releases?

It's the most aggressive and brutal album we've ever done I think. From the first track to the last track there's no stopping. It's just very fast and it goes back to the first couple of albums in that kind of style, the classic death metal style. There are also solos with that kind of groove and heaviness. We were also incorporating newer and faster stuff than we ever played before. It's a very dynamic album. It's got a lot of variation but it never really gets boring. There's just a lot of energy all the way through.

I noticed on a lot of these records that people play really, really fast. How do you manage to do that?

You'd have to ask the drummer. I can't really figure out how he does it either. It's just crazy to watch him play and it's not that hard to follow with your guitars and vocals to the drums. It's harder than playing a heavy riff but it's surprisingly easy I think to play guitar and sing to that kind of fast stuff. I have no idea really how he does it. To watch him rehearse is just amazing. I have no idea what's going on really.

To me it's just absolutely amazing that people can play that damn fast.

Yeah, absolutely.

Are you planning on doing any videos for some of the songs on that record?

We're planning on recording a live DVD next month of some shows we're doing in Europe which will be a live DVD to release which should be out in November. That's a total concert plus a lot of bonus material like video clips of our older live shows and on the road stuff and just us drunk and silly. We decided to use a lot of older material combined with all the other stuff.

When you guys sit down and write a record, what is the recording process like?

Earlier I've been doing most of the stuff. I always do all of the lyrics. The previous two albums now I've been doing most of the guitar parts and planning and trying to structure up songs but for this album it's much more of a team effort which seems very good. All the members have been more involved in the songwriting process. Everybody has come with ideas so it's more a team effort than anything before really.

You guys are doing some North American dates with Dismember, Vital Remains, Demiricous, and Withered.

Yeah, it's not a very long tour. It's the first leg of the tour. We're doing the East coast first in October. I think it's about seven shows or something like that. Then we're coming back in December to do the West coast. We're covering everything plus there are also some Canadian shows over there. We're really looking forward to getting over there again.

Are you doing anything in between?

We're doing Europe here in November. We're doing a European tour.

When is As Rapture Comes going to come out?

I think it was released in Europe this Monday and I think actually yesterday was the U.S. release date. It's out now really.

Any other thoughts or comments?