Grave Secrets

Two guitars and the same record collection

Grave Secrets formed in Los Angeles in 2020 around Vinny Morales, who sings and plays rhythm guitar, and lead guitarist Kevin Gonzalez. The two met at a show and discovered they had been working through the same records from different corners of the city. Morales had been writing songs for years without a band to put them in; Gonzalez arrived with experience of running one. The band's own site names Joyce Manor, Title Fight and Tiger's Jaw as the reference points, and quotes Morales setting out the order of priority plainly: "The main foundation of the music is the lyrics."

Carlos Bayona plays bass. The drum seat is the one part of the line-up that published accounts do not agree on — Melodic Magazine's profile credits Kevin Casteñeda, while the Talon Marks feature published on 22 May 2026 names a drummer called Dylan, described there as the band's newest recruit in practice if not in print.

The sound they settled on sits between hardcore and melodic punk, with the emo end of the 2010s audible underneath. Morales has talked about the music as a way through familial trauma and personal collapse rather than as a stylistic exercise, and the writing bears that out: the songs tend to be short, direct and built around a line meant to be shouted back.

Graveboy, a split 7-inch, and a run of singles

The recorded catalogue starts with a self-titled release in 2022 and the album Til Your Lungs Fall Out in 2023, both issued through Graveboy Records, the band's own imprint. Til Your Lungs Fall Out is the record Morales treats as the proper debut, and it is the one that moved them out of the house-show circuit. There is also a split 7-inch shared with the band bēd on Wiretap Records, still listed on the label's store at $10.

Through 2024 the band worked in singles rather than albums — "Stuck Inside" and "TICKET" early in the year, then "S2L" on 6 December 2024. "BLUFFSIDE" followed in 2025, as did the EP I Wish I Was Sorry, the release the band's own site describes as a record about growing up and looking for a way out.

Asked about "Fuck Shit Up", one of the harder tracks in the set, Morales described it as "a critique of society, of LA, of the world we live in. It's a call to action." In the same interview he said the band had roughly fifteen new songs written and a studio date booked, and floated an acoustic EP, citing Bayside as the model — a band they would end up opening for two years later.

A Place Like This

The current record is A Place Like This, a six-track EP released on 11 September 2026: "Take Your Pictures Back", "The Sun", "5 Years", "Mexico", "Cherry Chapstick" and "Cut Your Hair". It was trailed by the single "Talk Less, Do More" earlier in 2026, and it is the first Grave Secrets release to arrive with the full apparatus of a professional campaign behind it.

That apparatus is worth noting because it explains the shape of their year. Booking now runs through United Talent Agency, and management through MDDN — the company run by Good Charlotte's Madden brothers. The band's contact page lists both, which is the clearest signal available that the operation has moved beyond self-release.

Streaming data points to "S2L", the title track of I Wish I Was Sorry and "Fuck Shit Up" as the most-played songs in the catalogue, with the newer EP tracks climbing. Apple Music files them alongside Chico, bēd and Death Lens — all acts from the same Los Angeles orbit, and in Death Lens's case a band they toured with directly.

The year of the support slot

2026 has been a ladder rather than a leap. In April the band played California Chaos in Chinatown, Los Angeles, on the 11th. They had already appeared at Vans Warped Tour in both Long Beach and Orlando, which Melodic Magazine and Talon Marks both treat as the jump from local draw to touring act.

Through late summer they ran a western and midwestern tour alongside Death Lens and Heart to Gold, reaching the Hi-Dive in Denver on 3 September 2026 — a 7pm door in a room that holds a few hundred, which is roughly where the band's own headline draw sits.

On 12 July 2026 Bayside announced a fall US headline tour with Driveways and Grave Secrets opening. That run went from 15 September to 10 October, taking in Riot Fest in Chicago on 18 September and Four Chord Music Festival in Pittsburgh on 25 September alongside club dates at Toad's Place in New Haven, The Orange Peel in Asheville and Liberty Hall in Lawrence. It closed at the Mercury Ballroom in Louisville on 10 October 2026, which remains their most recent show on record.

What is on sale now is the largest step yet: Good Charlotte's Motel Du Cap EU/UK tour, with Grave Secrets listed on the bill for Hovet in Stockholm on 8 November, Zenith München on 11 November, Forest National in Brussels on 13 November, the Mitsubishi Electric Halle in Düsseldorf on 14 November, AFAS Live in Amsterdam on 16 November, the Zénith at La Villette in Paris on 17 November, The O2 in London on 19 November and Co-op Live in Manchester on 20 November.

The room, and what happens in it

The band's reputation live is not built on production. Talon Marks's May 2026 feature describes shows that function as gatherings, with Morales addressing individual people in the crowd and acknowledging their circumstances from the stage; the piece records at least one attendee who had a tattoo done based on the band's work. Morales himself has described the project as "a community...for everyone who's ever felt like a loner", and, less guardedly, as "a cult, in the best way possible."

That approach scales awkwardly, and the November dates will test it. A support slot at The O2 or Co-op Live offers none of the conditions that make a Grave Secrets club show work — no proximity, no between-song conversation, an audience that has largely come for someone else. The band has not published set times or setlists for the run, and anyone claiming to know the running order in advance is guessing.

What is clear is the trajectory. In April they were playing a Chinatown festival; in November they are on an arena bill in eight European cities. Morales's line to Talon Marks — "This is just the beginning" — is the sort of thing every band in his position says, but in this case the calendar is not contradicting him.