If you missed the previous part, feel free to go back to part III. I think I’m going to do a shotgun approach to the rest of the releases as I think I’m going to maybe go crazy and give too much information that is less relevant to anyone’s interests. Here are the next batch of releases. Hopefully the lack of pictures or media doesn’t disappoint anyone out there.

TLAL28 – Hummingbird of Death – Show Us The Meaning Of Haste CD+
After the FxPxOx CD has enhanced info on it, I had to do this CD with some cool content. Has their set from Speed Trials and a cool flash interactive menu.

TLAL29 – Deathrats – s/t 7″
My friend Chris from the early years of me living in Raleigh had moved around a few times and in 2010 he asked me if I wanted to put his band out. I honestly hardly listened to them when I said yes and when I did I was amped. I became good friends with the other band members. The record got some apt MRR hype and this record did very well. Deathrats IS a Deathreat allusion by the way.

TLAL30 – V/A – To Live A Lie Records 2010 Sampler CD
This was next in the series of sampler releases, and this was the second pro-CDr. Amazing art by Matt Gauck. Only blemish is the Tinner song because this band took my money and never pressed their split with Unholy Grave.

TLAL31 – Arctic Choke – s/t 7″
Most people probably don’t know this, they were ex-Rhino Charge. They hit me up to help out when the record was almost done. Great music. They got Matt Gauck to do the artwork outside of me talking to him so the last two releases before this have his art and so does this. The band got most of the copies of this and I hardly felt like I had my hands on the EP and it was gone.

TLAL32 – Mondo Gecko / D9 – split LP
I was so excited about this record and somewhere between the Israeli post office and my front steps, the package got annihilated and I only ended up with five copies to sell. Major bummer. Two really good bands from that area that I was hoping to get more people to check out.

TLAL33 – Get Destroyed! – Burnt Offering 7″
This band was.. amazing. I never got to see them but members went on to the band Gay Kiss. I have a good story in relation to this band I will tell on their second EP in this list. Another great release with 625 and I think also my good friend Paul from Give Praise.

TLAL34 – Thieves – Positive Vibrations 7″
Raleigh had a solid band of a strange mixture of friends of mine from different areas in life that joined and started this band. Rodney whom I knew from hardcore shows and is an amazing drummer (he played drums for Old Painless who you may know from TLAL50), Ira who booked a bunch of shows and later went to play with Stripmines, and Nick who was in a band called Over and Out, and Ben who I had recently met because of this band and he always had a funny shtick at every show. Their demo was more TLAL sounding material but this EP is pretty good although slower.

TLAL35 – Archagathus / Axed Up Conformist – split 7″
At this point I loved Archagathus and wanted to keep releasing stuff for them. Both sides are awesome grungy grindcore.

TLAL36 – Charogne Stone – Live 2008 7″
Approached by a good band from France who sounded a lot like Spazz and seemed to have his stuff together. This was one of those multi multi co-releases and later I realized this is a one man band. Too easy to say yes to this one.

TLAL37 – Sick/Tired – Highlife LP
Sick/Tired came out of left field for me. This was going to be a release on Youth Attack Records and the record was 100% ready to go with the most amazing artwork and some amazing material. Mark couldn’t do it and the band shopped it around and it landed on my plate. The guys in this band are so nice and genuine and Kirk was in MK Ultra which is super cool and Adam does really cool noise stuff in Winters in Osaka. They all honestly do such a number of cool bands that its not worth listed them all.

TLAL37.5 – Sick/Tired – Lowlife tape
Lowlife came out a bit later than Highlife and is a tape of re-imagined songs from the Highlife recording. The band said they were going to do this and I was stoked and boom… Lowlife was born.

TLAL38 – Conga Fury / Shitstorm – split 7″
This record was a long time in the making. I had the idea set forth with Dub from Shitstorm and contacted Conga Fury via a sketching looking webform on their page and lo and behold I started talking to Yoshio from the band. Yoshio was more than amazing and ended up sending me some of his labels CDs and DVDs over the years. Unfortunately the Shitstorm records I think took so long that Conga Fury had almost or had broken up by the release. This is the first and only release to date where I did a special edition on glow in the dark vinyl. This record combine raw Japanese punk with American heavy grindcore, I think a great pairing.

TLAL39 – Charogne Stone – Mr Et Mme Stone Ont Une Fille 7″
Shortly after the first EP I did of theirs this was their next release and I said yes and it’s great!

TLAL40 – XBRAINIAX – Deprogrammed gatefold LP/CD+
I try to reserve round numbers for milestone releases and this is definitely one of them. Originally the band tried to include 625 as both them and I are fanboys but Max ended up not being able to help on this one. The artwork was put together, another example of me not knowing that Matt Gauck was in on this. The CD came first and the bonus CD+ menu again was a pain in the pass to produce and in true DIY nature I fixed all the artwork to the templates and obsessed and perfected this. The CD came out perfect. The LP then, I decided last minute that this had to be a gatefold because the artwork was too perfect so we did that. If you didn’t know… doing a gatefold is hugely costly so that idea is a big deal. I love these songs and I love this release… I wish the band had continued much further on from this. The LP is a great version of this, Matt’s artwork as well as Lucas from the band’s artwork really comes through here. The grooves are hilariously small. I ended up repressing this a few years ago on split color and it looks amazing and perfect and is still available.

TLAL41 – Disciples Of Christ – Demo 7″
Chris Moore asked me to do put this out and sort of split it with the band. I was already very familiar with the band and I said yes yes and yes. I knew Nolan because a long time ago I was going to do a split with Coke Bust and this band called Juice Tyme and Nolan had played in JT. Tim from the band I met and I think he’s an amazing person. I thought this band was odd because why would Chris want to be in two semi-similar grindcore bands but after he left Magrudergrind this band made more sense. I love this band and this record was repressed twice I think and I have just a handful left and they sell here and there constantly.

TLAL42 – Agathocles / Violent Gorge – split 7″
I was excited to do another AGx release and VG is basically Archagathus minus Dan after Dan made Archagathus not a solo recording project so I threw in on this and it was out and then sold out.

TLAL43 – Sex Prisoner – s/t 7″
Another milestone release. I had communicated with the band when they send me their previous band when they were in high school called Female Snake. I got a SP demo after the fact and I’m not 100% sure what set this into motion but I think it was more or less a lame “heard them on MySpace, I have to do a record for them” kind of moment. I always wanted to do something for Female Snake but didn’t think they were quite there as a band (I sound like a critic here don’t I, just being honest).. but Sex Prisoner they were ready. The first pressing I always hate the insert being separate from the cover so the next pressings those were combined. The cover have spot metallic silver ink and I love the style. All the songs on here are heavy and perfect and I think SP and TLAL reached each other at the right time because this record went through two set of plates to reach a total of 2k pressed (which is a lot for a small label). The band went on to sign to A389 but have played the two TLAL fests and always have a home with TLAL. I will be pressing their demo (which is raw versions of this EP) to vinyl in 2015.

TLAL44 – Archagathus / Pizzahifive – split 7″
Following the tradition of raw grindcore, this record is an excellent split. I like to say that I prefer well recorded, well thought out releases.. but there is something amazing about brutal raw sloppy and choppy grind. It reminds me of Neanderthal in its rawness or Siege. I don’t listen to much black metal but I feel the rawness in such genres makes sense and makes it special.

TLAL45 – Assholeparade – Live in Rostock 10″
I know exactly how this record came into being. AP are heroes in general to me. They were one of the first OG pv bands I ever got to see and saw them quite a few times. They made a point to come through and play Raleigh early on and I had mad respect for that. The vocals are awesome, the themes are great, this band is a perfect band. Anyway Travis Ginn started talking to me super late at night on new years 2010 and said that I should put out a live record of theirs. Apparently they had a nice clean soundboard recording from a set from Germany. It took a few months of me asking if he was serious when he asked me that to finally get the audio files. I then went to get them mastered and I don’t think the guy mastering them understood music like this with short fast songs. I gave him all the meticulous time breaks on this so he could master the songs out and everything. Of course I wanted to push the envelope and did some gold foil covers. The covers ended up being floppier than I wanted. The plant I went through said they couldn’t do 10″s with spines and although I could have upgraded the stock to make them nicer, I never did 10″s through them again for covers (inserts they’ve done ever single one of them though). This record sold through so quickly at first and I repressed them and luckily I did enough because I still have some kicking around so this is still available.

TLAL46 – Magnum Force – Self-Loathing 7″
My friend Pat (from Backslider) put out this band’s demo and this band put out some raw grindcore. They happen to be homies with Sex Prisoner so I ended up talking to them about doing this record. It was SUCH a sleeper record. I pressed 500 of them and sold a few at first. Sales trickled, trickled, trickled. Finally people got into them maybe a whole year after this release and it started selling steadily. Y’all need to wake up to these releases, this one is great! It finally sold out. I upgraded the stock on the covers and it was strangely scored because when I folded them it almost seemed like the paper split. The heavy stock feels amazing though.

TLAL47 – Backslider- s/t 7″
Backslider was a household pv name by 2010 and I dig them as people and as a band. They were a two piece and I know the band members separately from awhile ago.. Logan first from Raw Sewage who played in my town and slept at my house a long time ago and Pat who was I believe the original singer for Common Enemy. Odd they ended up in Philly together in a band. Even weirder is Jake who I know from Florida and the band Republicorpse, joined the band later to be their bass player. Pat from the band helped put this out as well as Nolan from DOC and a German label too.

TLAL48 – Godstomper / Dos Amigos – split 7″
Two man powerviolence band split. Godstomper I have mad love for as I talked to Paul Barfo for years and I ended up talking to DxAx guys a lot too, and such a cute name for a two piece band. I don’t think I had these in my hands for long.

TLAL49 – Mehkago N.T. – Massive Fucking Headwounds LP
I have major love for Mehkago, they seemed the perfect fusion of Shitstorm’s fastness and the heaviness of taking the time to slow down songs some. I was amped to do this even though I believe Rick was out of the band by this release and I think Dub was only there to do the vocals for the recording. The CDEP was perfect and I think this wasn’t quite on that level but it was close. I think this was way less popular and the artwork took so long because the ideas didn’t quite pan out as expected and by the time this came out I think we were a month away from their breaking up show. Unfortunate timing but it didn’t kill the record. I have about six copies left to date so it definitely cut off on sales but as with any release, I wouldn’t have said no.

TLAL50 – V/A – To Live A Lie 7″
Round number records as I said earlier are important. Halfway to a hundred is the most important and I reserved fifty for the comp that I ended up stressing out putting together for a year and a half. I decided I wanted to do a series of EPs focusing on different genres and counting up in color combination. The first one, this one, is dedicated to grindcore and would be bronze colored (first of three, bronze, silver, and gold). I asked some of my favorite grind bands and waited way too long on some of them and then this was out. On this was: Mind As Prison, Matka Teresa, Disciples of Christ, The Kill, Old Painless, TFD, Archagathus, FUBAR, Bud Spencer, Worlds, Spoonful Of Vicodin, and Magrudergrind.

TLAL51 – Suffering Luna – s/t LP
Justin Abare connected me with this band and this was going to originally be a NoComply split. I think this maybe bummed out Justin a bit that this became its own release but I owe Justin 100% on this coming together. Suffering Luna you may have heard of as a 90’s powerviolence/noise outfit doing splits with Dystopia and Gasp. This record I was scared wouldn’t sound good as we pretty much maxed out the time length on it, maybe I would have been safer doing this as a double LP but Aardvark did an excellent mastering and plating job and the test presses sounded PERFECT… heavy and trippy. This record is one of the most experimental ones I’ve put out and I adore it. I grew up listening to industrial music and this band weaves so much into their music it reminds me of a powerviolence version of Pigface. I used to talk to Shawn all the time and by the time this came out I got really busy with the label and I think I became a space cadet, think he understood.

TLAL52 – Archagathus – Canadian Horse LP
Another heavy hitter, this is the definitive Archagathus album. The band put together Coffee Grinder right before or right after to offset the fact that they recorded their heaviest and most illustrious release. Oddly their first not lo-fi release to date. The recording was meticulous. The masters I got I couldn’t even play and got a separate disc as reference material which I could hear. The recording was sent to Chicago Mastering to get cut and they did the job this recording deserved (I wish Steve Albini was the engineer who did this project though!). The cover Dan told me was a secret but he would share with me once he got the negative back and that intrigued me. He asked me if we could do a large format poster and yes of course we could, this might have been the first big poster I ever did. The artwork is Dan on a horse playing a saxophone and then him with no pants on the back which has to be the most interesting artwork, to a weirdly well recorded grind/mincecore album to make it a very memorable release. This went on to a second pressing which I have some of on split color vinyl left to round out 1k pressed.

TLAL53 – Sissy Spacek – Vanishing Point 7″ flexi
I never dove very deep into noise but I was familiar with John Wiese because the first Sissy Spacek CD I bought blew my mind. It is like an odd grindcore glitched out CD of utter confusion. This release was the same session that the AGx split came from and I think I accidentally got mad that I thought they were the exact same songs at first. This went on to be featured in a book of John’s EP art. This was a weird release and I think this is shortly after the flexi machine was re-setup and flexi’s began to exist in the world again.

TLAL54 – BearTrap – Nailed Shut 7″
Another important release, Beartrap is mainly the brainchild of Mike Assatly. I was not familiar with his band beforehand but he had put together a great set of songs and an unrelenting EP was the result. I wasn’t too in love with the artwork because it wasn’t punk looking in my eyes but I love things to be different and of their own intent and this was exactly what Mike saw. The release sold fast. The band toured Europe once or twice and people were excited about this band. It was great to work with someone so motivated. I believe Mike toured with Caulfield as his backing band if I’m not incorrect and he posted a pretty interesting tour blog when he was overseas.

TLAL55 – Deathrats – Give Up 7″
Give Up is the second and last of Deathrats records. Chris, my original friend in the band, was long gone but the band continued on full steam. More Skater Action Matt artwork shows up on this one and this time I did glue pocket covers. This release was a big more mature in writing and I think a bit angrier. DR might have been the first TLAL-only released band so I keep them pretty close to my heart in that way. They definitely had a period where they were very popular and could have probably done their second EP with anyone they wanted so it meant a lot for them to come back to me on this one.

Go on to check the last chapter in part V.

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