Buy here – toliveal.ie/sp

Buy here: toliveal.ie/spy

Very excited to have gotten a /100 colorway of this amazing release on Refuse / Crimethinc. Please note my mockup shows a lot of red in the clear, some of the ones I’ve pulled out are mostly white with a touch of red/pinkish in it. Probably just how the pressing plant poured them or maybe my mockup isn’t too true to this pressing, but wanted to hedge some expectations. Either way, an amazing pressing of an important NC band’s record. Buy link is here – https://toliveal.ie/catharsis

First press sold out in about a week, now we have /300 mixed vinyl and /100 red vinyl in hand. Buy link is here – https://toliveal.ie/dsv

Brand new shirt design by Evil Jay for To Live A Lie Records, pulling from classic Morbid Angel aesthetics. Printed by Bifocal Media and limited to 300 pieces. A tribute to the DIY grind and powerviolence community—grab one and rep over at toliveal.ie/shirt

2025 has sort of been a crazy year. I shipped a few orders for the first time internationally which seemed like a cool milestone (thanks Royal Mail). Getting to see a little bit of the world for the first time at 40 with my wife was amazing and I hope to explore Europe more again in the future. I’ve had to deal with some family medical things where I have had a few weeks out of town that have slowed down shipping if you happened to have ordered at that time. And I tried to book two shows and successfully only booked a single show but it was a full rager (see previous post with Dry Socket show flier, unfortunately the Assholeparade show didn’t happen).

What will be new in 2026? Not much, a few releases planned. Will, then why post this? Finally have a free moment.

I upgraded my webstore which shouldn’t be too obvious to anyone but figured out a bit of the templating to make my life easier. I still seem to have some hosting problems but I made a backup site in case I need to move away from my host – who is legitimately kind and has let me run on free or cheap hosting for years so that has been my hesitation. The site has been fully optimize which means I took all last weekend to delete 1800 old disabled long out of stock products and resized all images down to under 200kb for faster loading. Both processes should help hedge against the issues I have on new release days.

What else is still the same? Still distribute amazing 625 Thrashcore releases. Amazing to work with Max and love that he still puts out releases and trusts me with retail. Our releases are still available from Independent Label Distribution who does a great job getting copies in mom and pop stores across the country and internationally. Ebullition is still helping getting records of ours to the DIY-sters of the world. Still trying to keep up the Bandcamp page and releases up on digital platforms (other than a lot being removed from Spotify).

I want to hear more about you personally. Well I got married last year and I work a lot. I am a systems administrator at the university here and would love to talk nerd stuff with anyone interested. Also attended a few tech conference this year. I have tried out for a backup player of a local band who worships Man Is The Bastard but haven’t had time to fully learn the songs but other than that I’m not actively playing music. I joined a D&D group with old friends from college and appreciate that other people can make it fun and creative as I am not bringing either of those to the table. This year I continued to be a heavy supporter of my local men’s D2 soccer team but in a crazy turn of events the owner has basically paused the team for three years so I’m sad to see my favorite players at NCFC announce where they are headed to next. I’ll become a strong NC Courage supporter in 2026. In 2025 I did manage to see Arsenal v. Bournemouth which was the sports event of a lifetime. Since the pandemic I’ve gotten more into PVP games and play a lot of Fortnite which includes reconnecting with members of the band Deathrats. Feel free to add me, I think my Epic name is fastcore and my PSN is willfastcore. In 2025 I watched a lot of movies, 150 per my Letterboxd (feel free to add me I’m fastcore on there, and don’t judge me that I just watched Romper Stomper). I feel like post-pandemic life has been a lot more solitary. I spend a lot of time with my wife but I think a lot of social interactions have been cut down and not reformed. I honestly haven’t had even a lot of time to interact online including the TLAL Discord channel.

Okay nevermind, tell me about what is coming up on the label now.

STRAGGLER – Without A Country 7″ – Check their Bandcamp for older material, but the material we have coming out are three songs of modern hardcore with blastbeats akin to SPY worshipping HARM’S WAY. A bit more cleaned up compare to their previous releases. Bay Area represent.

SPY – Service Weapon 7″ 2026 repress – You absolutely know what this is and love it. The new pressing has a recut B-side which I only mention because we pressed so many that the plates just fell apart. This time we have smoke vinyl with silvery definitions on the printed material and center labels.

DRY SOCKET / VIOLENCIA – split 7″ 2026 repress – This things sold out in a week so we are making another 500. Most copies are on mixed vinyl with one special colorway for DS’s overseas run

SUPER SECRET 12″ – This is a classic that I’ll try to say just enough that maybe a few people will get it. But it was pressed to a 7″ and it is two originals and a cover song. Remastered with new artwork. Bigger hint, if you have the EP you might have the country’s flag colorway and be excited you have that.

Those are the main things percolating here. Oh well wait there will be a Black Friday sale but most of you expect that, might be more generous this year however. Thank you all for all the support and stay tuned.

Portland’s own Dry Socket is bringing their raw, high-energy sound to Raleigh for one night only at RUMAH on Thursday, October 17th. Known for blistering riffs, cathartic vocals, and an unrelenting stage presence, Dry Socket delivers a sonic punch that’s impossible to ignore.
Listen here  https://drysocketpdx.bandcamp.com

Joining them are Charlotte’s heavy hitters MERC, plus local support from Natural End and Super Reg—a stacked lineup of hardcore and punk energy that guarantees a night of chaos and catharsis.

 Doors: 8PM
 Cover: $15
 Venue: RUMAH – Raleigh, NC
 All ages

Come early and get loud. This one’s going to rip. 

Presale tickets available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dry-socket-merc-natural-end-super-reg-rumah-raleigh-10172025-tickets-1628246161099

We have recovered from our hosting issues and are back in the country to have the full store back up and a 20% discount on orders over $5 until the end of May with coupon code WeAreBackBaby25 at checkout.

Hello all,

The site was down through the whole Heaven’s Gate preorder and took down our store. Thanks for bearing with us and order from the temp Bigcartel store.

What happened? I had set up a spam reporter maybe six months ago and it ended up flagging the upstream cloud hosting company in some reports and made it look like my domain was spamming users so my host got a takedown order. I think this is all related to how my domain loops emails to my Gmail aka I basically reported myself as there was an extra jump in the email so headers point to my domain This was a perfect storm because my hosting company is a one-man operation and he was away for a joyous moment in his life.

The main full store will remain down until late May and we will continue to take preorders from the Bigcartel site. We are taking a bit of a break and will be back up to full speed as soon as we can.

Appreciate your patience. We have a few releases on deck that you’ll be excited about:

• Drivel – Self Titled 7″
• Goolagoon – Patrickviolence 7″ (remastered)
• Dry Socket / Violencia – Split 7″

Really excited for this one, http://toliveal.ie/suppression and check the Decibel.com full audio stream.

Dry Socket – Sorry For Your Loss LP 

DRY SOCKET emerging from Stumptown with their debut LP featuring ten furious tracks laden with blast beats and downtrodden ethos. Chaotic, angular, and angry, the band is back after two blazing EPs and five years of perfecting their sound. If you like PAINT IT BLACK, PUNCH, or NEGATIVE APPROACH then you won’t be disappointed. One really dystopian release that mirrors the bleak
wintertime in the PNW. 

Caveman – Self Titled 7″ 

San Francisco’s CAVEMAN drags their knuckles right out of the bay and into the blasty hardcore punk zeitgeist with five stomping dirges to whet your Neanderthalic appetite. After two sold out runs of this material on cassette, this first EP is now available here as a limited pressing on vinyl. Since this recording, the band has taken on SPY singer Peter Pawlak on bass for their live show and future releases. This is pissed, fist pumping hardcore, to take our your anger after a long day with all the horrible stuff going on the world. FFO GULCH, SPY, and SUNAMI but with their own slant.

More big stuff coming up soon. I have three unannounced LPs at the plant, one remastered release from 1999 never on vinyl before and two brand new 2024 material from exciting current bands.

Insanely busy 2023, I appreciate all your support. I apologize for the quality of Photoshop but it’s serviceable enough for me to post

Three tapes up for order now! Names you might not be familiar with as they are new and first offerings. BLIND SOLUTION is members of SIDETRACKED, NATURAL END is members of JOY, and NUCLER BLUD is members of SCHOLASTIC DETH, JUD JUD, IN/HUMANITY and more. Get in at the ground floor on all of these bands!

Brand new LP from AZ industrial metal supergroup featuring band members from SEX PRISONER, LANGUISH, GATECREEPER, and more. Only 150 on purple vinyl and 350 black vinyl available. Preorder here: https://toliveal.ie/realize

With the help of Unholy Anarchy Records, TLAL is on track for a killer new four way split with some of our favorite bands

Exclusive audio premiere:

A song about disillusionment, American Scum combines blast beats, chunky grooves, and dual vocals to highlight the dark side of power and trusting the wrong people. Written primarily while touring through Canada and recorded at Developing Nations Studio in Baltimore, MUSKET HAWK calls out subhuman scumbags everywhere with a clear message: “No one gets away with it.”

GRIND AND BEAR IT It is a musical group that addresses human problems with loud sounds. You, specifically, have sixteen internal conflicts that are tearing you apart right now, damaging your mental health to an irreversible degree. First, you shouldn’t have said that to your family, and they’re always going to hold it against you, and Grin and Bear It acknowledges this fact for you so you don’t have to think about it anymore. The second internal conflict is whether or not you wasted your day today; should you have done something else, or was all your hard work for nothing? Maybe you spent hours designing and building a magnificent structure that will soon be swept away during an overnight wind advisory. Grin and Bear It knows that you did that, and they know the wind is coming, and they absorb your pain with their loud bashing and rapid screeching. Your third and fourth problem are the two insects that splattered on your windshield on your way home from the drinking party. Oh, you don’t drive? Maybe it was the bus’s windshield, or maybe they splattered on your bicycle helmet. How would Grin and Bear It know? They aren’t omniscient and they aren’t stalking you. They don’t care about your transportation preferences; they only care that it’s bothering you that those two innocent lives were lost due to your eagerness to travel. Your next ten internal conflicts are too private or complicated for Grin and Bear It to process, but, fortunately, you will be able to use their tight, quick tracks as a vague, ominous, and mildly effective balm for your fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth inner turmoils. The fifteenth internal conflict is whether you should finally see the doctor about that shift in your mind, the changes in your perception, your diminishing ability to process the world around you. Were you exposed to a mass disabling event? Or maybe, and Grin and Bear It agrees with this theory, it’s probably a throbbing mass on your brain tissue that could very well be inoperable. The sixteenth problem is more about Grin and Bear It’s specific problem they have with you, and it’s relevant to your undiagnosed neurological condition. Grin and Bear It wants you to stop listening to music and go see a neurologist, man…

SIDETRACKED has been crafting chaotic, stop and go hardcore punk for over 20 years. Along with their brand of power violence, in recent times they have also incorporated noisecore. The material found herein starts things off with a noisecore block before launching into a frenzy of fastcore tracks that they are most typically known for.

Taking conceptual queues from bands like Swans, Dystopia, and Noothgrush and adding musical complexity and depth to arrive at something disgusting all on its own, UGLY is at once melodic, looming, and horrific. UGLY builds a tonal environment that is at times, angelic… just long enough to win your trust; then tries to kill you by dragging you to the depths with primal, flesh-upon-gear, rhythmic upheaval of any notion of good faith and wellbeing.

We pushed to ship all the Crom preorders out and have run out of packaging and steam so we are taking a week off and will be back up probably 3/20 for some new 625 releases. Stay tuned the week after for a TLAL preorder.

Okay jusr one piece of housekeeping to get past first, the Prayer For Cleansing LP went up for preorder about three weeks ago and sold out completely in minutes. No current plans to repress, I sold 100% of my copies, and I do not know what stores got them from me. I appreciate everyone’s excitement as I am flipping out at the record and the response.

Getting to the main topic but let’s start with backstory. I grew up in Winston-Salem which is a pretty plain and easy town in North Carolina. As I’m nearing 40 that sounds nice but at sixteen that is stressful because you watch Suburbia, and Hackers, and skate videos and CKY and you’re a nice quiet kid but you’re smart and you want more out of it all than working a job and going to high school. So you skate. And through skating you find music. In fact I found a show flier for Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Cave In, and Azazel on the wall at Surf Report and I decided to go. At this point of my life my parents are strict but oddly let me drive on my graduated license to this with the notion of if I get pulled that’s on me.

The show clearly lit a spark. I now had three main focuses in my life, skateboarding, technology, and music. The show was at 533 Uprisings, run by Paul from Azazel and Dave from Codeseven. If you’re familiar with Winston-Salem, there was a similar DIY venue run by Dave called Pablo’s. So at this time I knew and loved Dillinger Escape Plan above all because Under The Running Board came out and you know to this day its an insane record. I guess any of this is odd considering my love for hardcore punk and blastbeats, punk came first and blastbeats came later. Metalcore, punk (some cool stuff like Conflict but some mediocre stuff too at this age), and a light smattering of industrial powered me back then and seeing how it all worked and seeing how you could run a venue just for us really warped my thoughts of what was possible and opened my mind to bigger possibilities.

Youre wwondering why I’m going on this nostalgia trip now, well it all will come full circle but before we get there I started a band with my friends called The Dead Body Men. We played heart felt political punk for whatever that could mean for a 16-18 year old. Our first show was at The Somewhere Else Tavern and I first officially met John that night. I honestly sort of forget to pinpoint it to that night but photos prove we were there talking in the parking lot. John was somewhat of an enigma to me. I was new to this scene of people and John might not have been the king of it but he was the prince or something of that nature, existing so easily amongst these people. I would see him bellied up to the coffee shop bar at The Missing Link which was next to venue on Trade Street and he’d be in an engaging conversation with Frank the owner and some folks more my age who were wasting time to go to the show.

So those were the early years of knowing John as an acquaintance. He then was living in Greensboro with Andy and some other folks sort of living this anarchist life after I turned 18, did the college thing all the way through and then was spit out on the other side working and going to shows. This was more my reintroduction to John where we started to piece together a lot of similarities. I’d say let’s fast forward a bit more time to maybe 2010 and John and I are talking often. Usually on AIM but maybe at that point on FB chat. We would nerd out about what computer projects we were working on or we would talk about bands from the old days or we were both running labels so we might talk over that. It would be some combination of nerd and music items and I honestly didn’t have anyone else I could connect with so closely on those subjects so we talked a ton and got close. It’d be amazing to see him in person and hang out but I think our friendship really shined as a nerdy culmination of spitballing things that were possible.

John came up with Punks On Paper and was really exited to talk about how he was hand coding it all. I offered him help but it was really an outlet for him so about all I did was contribute some fliers for Raleigh shows to fill in some gaps, as well as some old Winston show fliers I had amassed and scanned.

John some breathing issues a few years ago and scared the crap out of all of us who really care about him, probably most of all Caroline his partner. He then had a stroke and he had surgery that was supposed to really fix the root cause of these in his brain. Unfortunately John passed away from his health conditions.

My interactions with John as someone who grew up in the same scene and he liked to talk to and respected were no different than his interactions with a lot of other people – he was kind and engaging to everyone in the music scene and beyond. At his memorial show I met a few people who had interacted with John as a stranger to him and he treated them with kindness that struck them as special and notable.

So fast forward to some months ago and I was reached out to by Caroline to plan something special in John’s name. Me, Grant from Bitter Melody Records (and John’s best friend), Dave from Codeseven, and Paul from Azazel formed the show planning committee. I would like to say I was more the moral support, sound board, direction pusher and the rest of these great folks made the show happen. It was exciting early on as Caroline would ask some bands that had not played since John and I were kids and they were confirming to play the show in his honor.

I don’t want to make this overly long of a narrative as I’m typing it on my phone into WordPress after mightnight on Christmas day. Fast forward to the shows and Sunday wasn’t just a big nostalgia trip but it was a gathering of old friends and seeing these bands again was a very real and modern exciting experience that wasn’t fully trapped in that old 533 Trade Street room. I’ve been bothering everyone by reposting a lot on social media from the show but my brain has be a bit locked on that show and in the past. The one thing I kept thinking and everyone kept saying is that John would have really loved to have been at that show. I couldn’t decide if he’d be obcessively filming the show for posterity or if he’d be doing flips over the barricade into the crowd but I’d know he’d be the very first person I’d have messaged the next morning to nerd out about our nights together with.

John was a supporter of the scene and asked for very little back. I’m not candy coating this like we do when someone dies, everything so far is accurate as I know it. He deserved two bands who I never thought would ever play again to play in his honor. He deserved for Codeseven to play the album he loved start to stop. I just would take all the amazement of that show back to have my buddy around to talk about benign stuff like databases and Rapsberry Pi projects back. I know Caroline misses him in similar but different ways and I know Penny has a father sized hole in her heart and I know they know how special he was to a lot of people.

In the end a lot of people had a fun time seeing some fabled bands they saw or didn’t see back in the day in the town where I grew up, blocks from our old 533 stomping grounds. John Rivera was a name and image around the show that everyone knew they were there for but some might not have known him or cared. If you read this far then you may have felt a bit of what made him special and that really was the main point of me spilling this out there on Christmas day as he’d have been on of the first people to get a “Merry XVXmas” text from me this morning and depending on my timeframe I might swing through Greensboro to see him before heading back into Raleigh.

In some other metaverse or some other scene there’s a quiet guy working his ass off on things he finds important for his own obcessive love of it and not for the recognition. If you are that person or know that person then you know John Rivera. North Carolina lost one important guy and a blog post won’t really explain why he was loved but his memory will be echoed in all that he did.

Its with a heavy heart that our close friend John River passed away a few weeks back. A collection of friends have put together his dream show to honor his memory and benefit his family. Undying, Prayer For Cleansing, Catharsis, Codeseven, Funeral Chic, and Riot States are slated to play.

Hey all,

It’s been an insane 2022. We have been pushing releases through as fast as we can and obviously the Spy LP was a huge push to get into hands a few months back. It was a huge success and a second pressing has been queued up. We also did a run of promotional posters. The fourth press of Service Weapon has almost sold through and we are revving up to have a fifth press. A CD version of Habitual Offender is in hand and is great to listen to full blast in the car, plus its professionally replicated as TLAL doesn’t do CD-R duplicated CDs (other than our old sampler CDs). We are also spooling up to do some shirts and banners for the band.

The TLAL Discord is my favorite place to go and talk these days, please head over for some great conversations – https://discord.gg/bB3nEaCJ5t

Peace Test LP flew off the shelves and into hands, as did the NoComply discog LP and the new Backslider full length LP.

Also totally fresh and new in is the Nashgul / Teething – split LP which is an amazing 200 gram picture disc of these epic Brazilian grindcore bands. Hot on its heels is the almost sold out Obsolete Man – Glory Be To The Bomb CS.

Not old but less fresh than the above two coming out in the last week are No Comply / They Live – split 5″, Deliriant Nerve – Post Collapse Cannibal Fantasy CS, and Chulo – Global Grindcore Alliance Vol 2.0 2021 Live CS. The NxC/TL split is awesome pv, DN is new grindcore from some Needle members, and Chulo you know as a great fast hc from Brazil

I don’t think I’ve officially announced this anymore but TLAL is very excited to exclusively license the  Prayer For Cleansing – The Rain In Endless Fall LP from Tribunal Records. While metalcore is in my blood from growing up in Winston-Salem and going to shows at Pablo’s/533 Uprisings, not a lot of the music comes through in the label. Here is my chance to do a high quality reissue of one of the bands that meant so much to me growing up. We have taken the original mix and had Nick Townsend do his amazing work to give the release the bigger sound it deserves. This one is being pressed in Belgium and is a long way off in the release timeline but be prepared because this one rips.

I went and saw the last Joy show in my hometown. Wish the best to them and still have a few of their LPs bumping around looking for homes.

Lastly, I know I’ve been bad at posting here but it’s been an insane and hectic 2022. Our friends who we distribute at 625 have a big release schedule in addition to ours including the Stockholm Syndrome – Death Watch LP, Suffering Mind – Lifeless LP, and a few others. Make sure to lurk Preorders/New Releases in the store for the freshest releases.

Stay safe y’all. Oh one last thing, have one show on the docket in Raleigh at The Pour House . Tickets available here.

So I’ve left this blog in a bit of void but don’t worry I’m back with lots of major news.

The biggest news is the new Spy record preorders are up. The bad news is most of the colors sold out about instantly.

The next big things is this beast dropped:

And then last week these also dropped:

More big stuff planned for the end of 2021 possibly but more than likely 2022.

It has been a wild ride for everyone this year. I know a lot of you are forced into unsafe work environments and are faced with depression head on and I really have so much love and respect for all of you. Anyone with the virus and any other disease right now I have the same love and wish you all speedy recoveries.

I have been lucky over on my side of the world. I am privileged that I get to work remotely at my day job and my family and friends are generally healthy and I hope all remain that way. My boss at work has left so I have some more responsibility than normal but my band, shows, and a lot of other things on life are on hold.

Also the label is doing amazingly. Major respect for all your orders. I’ve been shipping fifty to a hundred orders every Saturday.

Earlier this year I finished up my archiving project so head over to Archive.org and grab the new vaults –
https://archive.org/details/TLALVault01

Okay on to the more fun stuff. Lots of pre-orders this summer and a lot of them have shipped – Water Torture shirts sold through and I made new ones and did a preorder and shipped those (unless held with other preorder items), ACxDC – The Oracles Of Death collection LPs have shipped, and Peace Test EPs have shipped on out. Livid LPS shipped out as well. I also did 25 grab bags that were totally loaded out to get some overstock out of the HQ and were really a great deal.

New in hand now are both the Shitstormtrooper EP and the Sidetracked/The Seeker split EP.

Spy tapes (which sold out in two hours) are shipping out this coming Saturday. Good news on the Spy release, Service Weapon will be pressed to vinyl!

Last, the four way 2×7″ I have coreleased overseas apparently is shipping to the European label which means the copies will come to me from overseas, then I’ll ship to all USA co-releasers and bands, and then will ship pre-orders out! Sorry for the wait on those!

So we have a lot out but a lot on deck. At the plant are: Needle EP (but out VERY SOON), following that is the live Capitalist Casualties CS (from a live video I recorded in 2011, RIP Shawn), then the Fuck On The Beach/Endless Swarm split is hot on it’s heals, followed shortly by the new Gasp EP. Headed to the plant is a very special Bastard Noise split LP that will be fully announced soon. The TLAL200 covers comp is still in the works but almost ready

Last bit of news is just sort of a quick teaser… but TLAL will be taking on the major shipping operations of a very inspiration label and I cannot be happier to announce that.

One more more bit of news, I took the time and upgraded the TLAL site to run on HTTPS/SSL, so please check that the GoDaddy cert is in place and you see the encrypted lock by the URL and shop with total safety. Vaguely related to that I also learned to query the Zencart DB and import it into Facebook Commerce which sounds really boring but it means I can now tag and link products in Instagram and Facebook posts. I know that sounds boring because you’ve seen that before but most people pay for a certain expensive monthly cart software but TLAL is running on free open source software and I actually put my SQL code on Github to keep my work to make free things better for other people! Last piece of nerdy news is I have also allowed image linking from the TLAL page to Facebook and Twitter. Why do I not allow image linking you ask? I have a great host who keeps my site a low price so I do them a solid and try not to use too much bandwidth.

That is what is new here! Sorry for any slowness in responding to any of you, my day job work life is hectic and orders are pretty stacked up (luckily I’m shipping everything as fast as I can), and I’m still doing all my normal QA on new releases. I hope everyone stays safe. Anyone dealing with some tough situations please look to a friend in the punk community and don’t go through it alone. I wish you all the best and I’ll see most of you in your mailboxes via a freshly delivered order!

In this world of being isolated, I decided to revisit the TLAL Vault that I put together five years ago. I was missing a lot of tracks and split sides of records so I put in the time and obsessively tagged MP3s. I split the first 100 into two so that Volume I is TLAL001-TLAL050, Vol II is TLAL051-100, and made a new volume of 101-150. All are free to download. Please share on all P2P media and to anyone you like.

VOLUME I – https://archive.org/details/TLALVault01

VOLUME II – https://archive.org/details/TLALVault02

VOLUME III – https://archive.org/details/TLALVault03

Only up for a week or two –

Order here

Joy – No Light Below LP/CS

Occasionally in life you run across something that tugs on your heart strings. You feel smitten and smile all the time and feel lifted from this awful world. I hate to break it to you but No Light Below pulls on your heart, it firmly grasps and rips each ventricle one by one popping and sputtering until your blackened hard is encased in the mire which is this world. Vindictive, nihilistic, spiteful, and completely vitriolic is how you’d best explain Joy. The band has risen from their crushing first EP and produced a masterful freshman full length that oozes hatred. Those unfamiliar with the band will be greeted with bile and blackened hardcore that can only be broiled out of the oppressive North Carolina sunshine. Breakdowns, blastbeats, BOTCH-esque brutality. In this modern day where nothing makes sense, JOY bash and beat you back to reality.

Stream:
https://soundcloud.com/tolivealie/sets/joy-no-light-below/s-CoGwv

Music Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvBK6Ybpvw

Release date: 10/11/2019
Pressing:400 black vinyl
100 black and white in clear splatter vinyl
100 glow in the dark vinyl (Holy Mountain exclusive)
100 cassettes

Preorder (including bundles):
http://bit.ly/nolightbelow

Newly out:
TLAL137 – Hummingbird Of Death – Forbidden Techniques LP

Newest release from these Boise fastcore freaks.

TLAL138 – WVRM – Can You Hear The Wind Howl 7″

SC grinder’s crushing Kurt Ballou recording session

TLAL139 – Marx Bros / TRAVØLTA – split LP

Members of Seein Red/Larm pair up with Chris Dodge of Spazz in MxB and Travolta is crushing Belgian fast hc.

TLAL141 – Gasp – Sore For Days cassette

OG demo reissue, almost sold out. Stay tuned.

TLAL142 – Sidetracked – Impediment cassette

Lightning quick fifteen songs of fastcore in two minutes or so.

TLAL143 – ACxDC / Goolagoon – split 7″

West Coast grindviolence meets East Coast hc punkviolence

TLAL145 – Six Brew Bantha – Blight LP/cassette

Best grindcore you’ll hear all year

TLAL144 – Depraved – s/t EP

Cali PV

TLAL150 – V/A – To Live A Lie III 7″

Last in the comp series. Best? You be the judge.

Out Very Soon:
TLAL140 – Realize – Demo LP
– FFO GODFLESH, SKINNY PUPPY, and FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY, all music by Kyle of SEX PRISONER

TLAL147 – Regional Justice Center
– World Of Inconvenience LP/cassette – raging Cali pv

TLAL148 – Bruised Ego – Roman Numeral One LP/cassette
– ripping Baltimore HELLNATION worship

TLAL149 – God’s America – The Undeserving cassette
– noisy Vegas hc punk

TLAL151 – Failure – s/t 7″
– Italian powerviolence

TLAL152 – Escuela / Reeking Cross – split cassette
– super popular split between Ithica and Baltimore grinders

The cassette treatment:

After an absolutely crushing demo in 2017, we are proud to announce that we are co-releasing the newest Regional Justice Center LP in 2018.

Please also catch the band on tour

Jason and two of the other members of Sebadoh are headed out on a crazy house show tour of the US and they are gracing Raleigh with an intimate night of heavy indie rock.

Snag tickets before it sells out, grab em here

The TLAL comp has been a huge excitement and a great labor of love for me through its two iterations. My initial thinking was to do a serious of three EPs that I was super hyped on over a period of time, and there would be #1 the bronze EP, two the silver EP, and last the gold EP. Well I put together the first one and focused on grindcore. The second I focused on powerviolence and accidentally asked too many of my favorite bands and made it an LP.

Getting back to the series as I had seen it the gold EP is coming together. Due to things I’m seeing in the world under our new president, the fire and completely unwarranted hatred of people towards the Oakland fire victims, and the rise of certain anonymous extreme political groups, there is more of a need for angry voices to be heard. The gold EP I wanted to continue to both focus and give voice to women, non-binary, queer, people of color, etc AND show some of my favorite heavy bands in the same breath.

I’m excited to announce and post some music of the first confirmed bands:

Nosebleed

Claw

Memory Loss

Rare Form

Lowhangers

Oxidant

I have a few more bands waiting to be confirmed but I’m beyond excited for the bands I have confirmed and have coming up. This will be an amazing third and final TLAL comp.

This is an unholy pairing of Baltimore’s TRIAC and Chicago’s SICK/TIRED and To Live A Lie’s first split LP record release. The split is the best material to date of either band. TRIAC brings to the table their patented no-nonsense darkened grind hardcore that makes you feel a little uneasy. They are kind of like a NAILS that would let you be one of them. SICK/TIRED unleash their grindiest material that seems almost inspired by TRIAC. They still weave in some grindviolence and the opening track is almost a mincecore song. A perfect pairing for 5pm when you’re off work, sitting in rush hour traffic, and done with the day and people. Play this at max volume and your day will melt away. Euro pressing available early 2017 on Psychocontrol Records. White with blue splatter limited to 100 copies, black vinyl limited to 400 copies.

Order here: TLAL Webstore: Triac / Sick/Tired – split LP

After being a band for fifteen years, NASHGUL has put together the most maniacal sophomore full length that will leave you with your jaw agape. Taking seven years to hone their sound since their initial full length offering, Cárcava is a touch over thirty minutes of grindcore perfection; blasty, angry, crushing riffs. If you have a love for honest, old school grindcore then this is going to be on your top ten for years to come. This LP will be a defining grindcore LP of TLAL along with the ARCHAGATHUS, MAGRUDERGRIND, and THE KILL records.

Pre-order here: TLAL Webstore: Nashgul – Carcava

Have two shows coming up, come out if you can!

Lightning Born
Voidward
Skemäta
Bandages
@ The Pinhook 6/22/2016
Facebook Event Link

Iron Cages
Blackball
Bad Eric
Bandages
@ Triangle Sound Factory 7/9/2016
Facebook Event Link

Come out and support a good cause and a new DIY spot in the area!

If you missed the previous part, feel free to go back to part IV. I’m going to keep up the quick approach and highlight anything particularly exciting or notable.

TLAL56 – Charogne Stone – La Main de L’ange 7″
Had the chance to work with this talented one man band again so said yes. It has boobs on the cover, not my ideal thought for a record but did not seem to come from a sexist place so was fine with me.

TLAL57 – Sidetracked – Uniform 7″
I consider this another big release. I could be wrong but I think this is the first time a band approached me for art. I love hacked up slashed up artwork and tried to do it digitally. I like the way it came out but didn’t love it. See it here. The border was completely stolen from a MITB scan online and hacked and slashed up. The inside I think opened the wrong way, oops! The record is one-sided and that one side is perfect in my opinion, heavy, fast, modern hardcore mixed with short aggressive fastcore ideas. The first two or three songs are a true story about a relative of the singer dying which makes it so much more emotional. The b-side label of the record, since the band is from Seattle I thought they might love Twin Peaks which they hadn’t seen and I think are now fans, so its subtle homage to the black lodge. I have second press copies of this available because I brought it back into print!

TLAL58 – NoComply – One Sided 7″
2011 I had maintaned a good friendship with Justin from NoComply and he asked me to be in the band and put out a new EP when we recorded and I’m on it. He sent the record in on a colored CD-R and there is an actual CD skip on the record which actually sounds pretty cool.

TLAL59 – Sakatat / Mesrine – split 7″
Another chance to work with both bands. I’m still mad about trying to see Mesrine at MDF on the first day and being stuck in line for an hour and missing them.

TLAL60 – Capitalist Casualties / NoComply – split 7″
After lots of talking with both Justin and CC guys and learning about CC recordings from the Live Butchery session that were leftover, we put together a split! Cap Cas is a band I had encountered early on in my pv early interest and was/am so floored to work with them. They all are amazing people and just couldn’t believe it. The NC session is also throwback material from the 90’s and much to my excitement had Travis from Assholeparade featured on vocals. Justin is a main homie and I decided to do something extra special for him on this one and he is the only owner of a 10″ sized lacquer on the material (pre-test press of the cutting of the record).

TLAL61 – Black Hole of Calcutta – s/t 7″
I did very little work on this but its great. I tossed in cash and sold my copies and was stoked on the material.

TLAL62 – Mind As Prison – Maryland Grindcore 7″
Mind As Prison is ex-A Warm Gun and feature Mough who is an amazing guitarist and was in Magrudergrind for an amount of time. These guys are so raw and so badass and I love the fact that the masters got lost and I couldn’t get them to put them up digitally because that seems to represent this band in my mind. Offline, slightly mysterious, only brutal. I still have copies of this, you all are sleeeeeeping.

TLAL63 – Get Destroyed – Shut In 7″
I just want to use this space to write an interesting story about this band. I saw Gay Kiss and finally met my homie J I’d correspond with from Get Destroyed. GD I’d worked with because 625 asked if I wanted to and I wasn’t familiar with some 625 related bands at first but this is one I’d want to keep up with, amazing pv. Well J played in Raleigh and we got to talking in the stairwell up to King’s and he told me the story of the Get Destroyed LP which never happened. I never heard why it didn’t but there was talk about a final EP, then LP before they broke up. Well all the songs were written and J recorded the drums and on the way back from the studio he got jumped and to quote him “I got the songs beaten out of my head”. I’m glad he is okay and Gay Kiss and his other ventures are amazing and he can still play music but there is a Get Destroyed LP that exists in an alternate world.

TLAL64 – ACxDC – He Had It Coming 7″
I was around for the first rise of ACxDC. I just loved them. I distributed the first EP and talked to Sergio often. Liberate continued on but ACxDC seemed to fade away into what appeared to be obscurity. I sold the crap out of the first EP and kept it in stock as long as I could. In 2012 the world saw a new ACxDC form out of seemingly nowhere and Sergio asked me to do their new EP. I heard it digitally and was beyond floored. I think it was my idea to repress the first EP and I’m glad I did. Did 1500 copies including the pink vinyl double EP gatefold which I LOVE and was the original idea for part of the pressing of this record in my head.

TLAL64 – ACxDC – Second Coming 7″
Sharing the same CAT # with its little brother, this record came out great. I pressed two thousand copies and have maybe 25 hanging out of the green vinyl pressing. I read a book about Lookout Records and talked about selling 5k CDs like it was no problem but 2k EPs is nuts to me. Sex Prisoner sold this many. These are good honest songs in the vein of their first EP but with an updated and heavier sound. There were some cool record release covers.

TLAL65 – Lapse / Eddie Brock – split 7″
Two Baltimore area bangers, I was excited about this and got to see EB’s last show I believe. I haven’t kept good track of these folks but I’m sure they are all still playing or involved in music.

TLAL66 – Curmudgeon – s/t 7″
Love this band, and got to work with Will from BSP again. The art is killer, the barn door style cover opening was great, and the obi-strip with the band’s name is great. I only hate getting orders for this with the second press as making the record takes some extra time. Krystina, Ryan, and Ryan all still play music and I’m glad and happy for them as they are all talented but Curmudgeon was a high point for all of them I think. True punx playing real punx heavy jams.

TLAL67 – Sidetracked – Wrench tape
The one thing I will complain time and time again about this is the tape ‘pressing’ plant took six months to get these tapes to me after I ordered and put a deposit down. I’d get asinine emails about “hey you didn’t send in the art files” or “we don’t have the audio masters” which they 100% had and I’d either tell them they did and they would find them or would send them again. They were specially cut to be short in length but the wait on this was nuts. Since this release I have slowed down doing tapes as I don’t want to go through that again because it stressed me out way too much and the plant is a major tape plant.

TLAL68 – The Kill / White Eyes – split 5″
Well I love The Kill and had planned to do their full length LP with them (I think at this point that is true) and they asked me to do a split before then. White Eyes is a band who had a number of releases and this is their last recording as the singer had an aneurysm and had to learn to talk again. I still have copies of this, a grindcore split in a small package.

TLAL69 – P.L.F. – Pulverizing Lethal Force CD
I will always do anything P.L.F. I love Dave and his riffs and this record is no exception. First time working with long time friend Ralph from Haunted Hotel.

TLAL70 – V/A – To Live A Lie 2011 Sampler tape
Tape sampler of the newest on TLAL. Was good then was gone.

TLAL71 – Fatal Nunchaku – Paving Stone Under The Beach CD
A super mega split release CD for another great French pv band, I said yes. It is still in print and it is super good.

TLAL72 – Chest Pain – s/t 7″
I think CP was over at my house nerding out to my record label room and Matt Needles told me he really wanted me to re-release this EP of theirs he put out. I did because it is perfect. The first time I heard of this band they played a Dreg’s Grotto and were asking my roommate if I was at the show, knowing that TLAL was from Raleigh. I couldn’t make it out for whatever reason and felt honored anyone cared if I was there so checked them out and was blown away. This EP is masterful and I re-released it and it sold quickly.

TLAL73 – P.L.F. / Downtrodden – split 7″
See TLAL69, will always do anything P.L.F.

TLAL74 – Mind As Prison / Disciples of Christ – split 7″
Got to work with two bands filled with friends (love Tristan, Mough, Nolan, Tim, and Chris.. sorry for the MAP people I left off here) and labels of great friends like Nolan from above and Blastcat who is Pat from Backslider. Artwork by Nolan. Lots of Nolan on here. Great record, DC/Baltimore grindcore mainstays.

TLAL75 – Osk – Wretched Existence // Bleak Future : 2007-2010 CD
I’m not sure how this came together but Osk is members of Mass Grave and I liked their songs being more modern grindcore and shorter and to the point. Put out this CD and I’m not sure the band ever took off that much but its a perfect grindcore CD with no fluff. I have a ton of copies, I think I put them up for $5 so if you like grind, grab one and you won’t be disappointed.

TLAL76 – Needful Things / Roskopp – split 7″
Another great grind split. I think this is another one I just put money in and another one I’m surprised I have copies still.

TLAL77 – Tinnitus – Gehenna 7″
This young band approached me with some ripping powerviolence songs. I was a bit hard up on money at the time and the band tossed in a little cash and we did only 300 copies and it honestly sold quickly. A smaller run for a TLAL release but some perfect powerviolence tracks from Boston.

TLAL78 – Unholy Grave / Nak’ay – split 5″
Cool small record. Love both bands. I missed Nak’ay when they played Raleigh because I was super sick and was bummed out.

TLAL79 – Nashgul / Malpractice Insurance – split 7″
Stoked to finally work with Nashgul. Huge fan for some time now. Spanish grindcore legends in my mind. This record’s artwork was perfectly drawn by illustrator Luis from the band. Saw them play in Richmond post MDF and had a blast and was great to meet them. Malpractice isn’t without their high acclaim, I met 1/2 of them at either Gilman Street or at MDF one year and super nice guy. Powerful split on both sides.

TLAL80 – Magrudergrind – Crusher 10″
When Scion’s claim to the pressing ran out in their contract this record got repressed overseas and Avi asked me to press this in the US. While I was nervous of the Scion affiliation I had also seen the band spraypaint over the center labels that said the car company’s name and use different covers so I was pretty confident in their intent and really love the care that went into the all analog recording. This record is a perfect grindcore record. Their last record with Chris on drums and until now the last recordings they did until II just came out six years later. I recently did a second pressing of this to get more back into the world.

TLAL81 – Protestant / Suffering Mind – split 6″
Corey from Protestant and Halo Of Flies and I had been in constant contact at this point, the last few years I’ve lost track of him. I got to see them play twice in my area. Good contrasting split. SM is a band that you easily hear about in the international grindcore arena because they had been making huge waves and for good reason. Really good cool sized record. Sold through them quickly.

TLAL82 – Rape Revenge – Paper Cage 7″
I had gone out on a limb and heard the band and written them and asked about doing their next record. Had heard some weird things about the label who did their first EP and promised I’d do them right. They were excited, I was excited. We all share a lot of similar ideals between veganism, straight edge, politics, and feminism. I love this record. It comes with a zine of song explanations. The record lies somewhere between powerviolence and grind and modern emotional hardcore but never tipping the mixture over into full fledged screamo. Interesting story, years later the Library or at least the country of Canada in general wrote me to purchase a copy for their archives. Unfortunately it was long sold out or I would have been excited for that. I should have written them to tell them they could buy a box of Osk CDs or my remaining Archagathus represses.

TLAL83 – Backslider – Maladapted 7″
Backslider is great. I’ve known Logan for years when Raw Sewage crashed at my old house years ago. While that band wasn’t my cup of tea, Backslider definitely was and is. Pat I’ve known but didn’t meet for a bit of time as he sang in Common Enemy but by the time I helped book them in Raleigh they had a different singer. This EP is just barely still in stock at this time but I’m about to have the amazingly cool discography CD out super soon. The band recently added Jake, another old face I know from Republicorpse, on bass.

TLAL84 – Torch Runner – Committed to the Ground LP
One of the best heavy bands from this area approached me about doing a record. I said yes right away. What I didn’t expect is for them to fine tune their sound almost exactly in the way I’d want. I don’t think they did it for me but they did it and it suited them. TR in the past hadn’t entered the blackened hardcore arena on previous recordings but did that with flying colors on this and also mixed in an ample amount of grindcore drums. This record is perfect and I love this guys. You can’t go to a show in the area without at least seeing Scott’s huge beard somewhere in the crowd. Josh does a great screenprinting company and Rob does an equally cool gym.

TLAL85 – BearTrap – Sleep Eradication 7″
TLAL’s follow up from the well selling first EP I did for them. This record was more raw recorded but the songs are bangers. I think this came out at the wrong time as the band had toured all over Europe and then calmed down a bit I think because of family member reasons. I still have limited copies of this and it is great hardcore punk.

TLAL86 – Six Brew Bantha – s/t LP
I think SBB had a full compliment of labels ready to release this and they shyly asked me to help. A grindcore band doing a full length LP is a ballsy thing to do… a split you only need three to five minutes of music. A full length you need at least fifteen minutes and you need to make things memorable between songs. I’m not sure why they were semi-scared to ask me, I think they were scared of me saying no which is silly because I’m not a large label, but you know I was honored and the record sounded amazing. Well it did well, we pressed more copies, and now I only have a dozen left of that. The band played Raleigh to give me the first pressing copies of this to me and on the road their van completely flipped over, rendering their guitar player in a full leg cast. They still killed it and they gave me undamaged copies of the LP to me which also surprised me. A lot of things about that story surprised me but the way they still played a killer show in a small bar in Raleigh with all their might while having sustained injuries was the most surprising.

TLAL87 – Suffering Luna – Blood Filled Bong tape
SL asked me to do a tape and I said yes. I love this band… so creative with samples and tape loops and catchiness. They are undefinable. They also oddly know how to market themselves as a band… in fact I be they could run a better label than I could.

TLAL88 – Catheter / Mass Grave – split 10″
Another record I couldn’t say no to. I’d wanted to work with both bands for a long time. The best part of this is one side of it the masters got lost (which I don’t understand as it got released as a CD, couldn’t you just use those tracks?) and I think it was the Catheter side that got re-recorded because it got lost which is really cool to me, makes this special and unique. This is a perfect grindcore pairing and lots of good people in both bands including H-Murder from Cap Cas and Bad People Records, who honestly looks frightening in appearance but then you talk to him and he is such a great and friendly person. The Murder part of his nickname does not fit the person at all.

TLAL89 – Mindless – Planet of Pestilence 7″
Mindless’s first EP blew me away. Faiza was the female voice of Hatred Surge but I don’t think harping on that is important as this current band killed it live. Mindless I think is no more and Faiza is in Body Pressure who is like what Mindless is to grindcore as they are to hardcore punk. I have a bunch of copies of this release and I think people are complete idiots because this is a flawless grindcore release.

TLAL90 – Manchild 6: Bye Bye Punk Rock… Hello Adulthood book
Some releases take more sweat than others and this took all my blood, sweat, and maybe a few tears. I scanned each page and laid everything out in InDesign myself. I was the producer and releaser of this book, mainly to keep it DIY, with no ads, and to bring it into the world. Brian Walbsy is an amazing punk artist and at the time was the drummer of Double Negative. Manchild series was continued on in release form by Charles who had a baby and think he sees doing shirts as a better use of time and revenue generation than books, which I don’t blame him but I kindly signed up for the book. This sold strongly and even got to be on the merch table for all Melvins tours as Walsby himself tours around with the band. Only complaint here is the fact that I got served with a big import bill years after putting this out since it was printed in Canada. Now that I have done tape, CD, every type of vinyl, and book… I need to put out a DVD. Maybe Manchild 7 will be book+DVD?

TLAL91 – T.F.D. – Childhater 7″
Flexi from Rich Hoak’s insane spazzviolence band. Rich is better known to most as the drummer of the now finally defunct Brutal Truth. Amazing nerdy great guy and I think the full length Hater was great. I think I said unfortunately no to a vinyl release of that which maybe I should have but Childhater didn’t do as well as I’d hoped so maybe TLAL and TFD weren’t quite meant to work together but I think this flexi is great and fits on TLAL well!

TLAL92 – ACxDC / Sex Prisoner / Magnum Force – split 10″
This is a landmark split in many ways. It bridges the gap of friendship and all bands I’ve worked with in the past. So this started as a conversation between me and Sergio. We wanted something cool. ACxDC and SP stuff had done well so talk got higher up in cooler ideas and I knew it would do okay. The final idea was a three way split. How were we going to put three bands on a split? I suggested a one-sided record. To one-up it I had the idea of an etching which I had never done before. We did fold-over covers for the first press and it sold out right away. I didn’t like how the fold over covers looked so subsequent pressings had full 10″ jackets. The second pressing I asked for a burst of black in the white vinyl and they did it amazingly.. but they did it all by hand and the plant asked if they could just do the rest on white which is how the pressing went. The second press sold out almost immediately like the first pressing did and I hardly got any to a distributor who was asking for more. The third and probably final pressing I just pressing 1000 copies, biggest pressing I have ever done of any large vinyl record on TLAL and it has sold steadily. Great concept record, well executed, love it. Only gripe I have is that Magnum Force maybe didn’t realize the extent of this and only gave two short songs and wished they gave me more.

TLAL93 – The Kill – Make ‘Em Suffer LP
The Kill is a perfect grindcore band in my eyes. They are the P.L.F. of Australia and their singer/guitar player Robbie gave me a huge kiss on the cheek when I saw them play. Not that I have high expectations of anything I do but I’m super surprised I have copies left of this record as good as this band is. The split color vinyl looks amazing, art is perfect, band couldn’t be better. I’m super happy with this record and you’re in luck if you’re reading this as it is in print.

TLAL94 – Last Words – s/t LP
I want to start out by apologizing as I am an ass in a few ways on this record. I had talked initially to another NC label about getting help on this but closer to the release I kind of just needed to do it myself, for my own sanity mainly. Karma jumped up and bit me hard here… there were issues with the initial artwork, there were issues with spelling of song names on the final insert (my fault) and there were issues with the pressing. So lets start out with the pressing. I always always always do a side A and side B master CD, guess when I decided to not do one.. on this release. If I don’t do two CDs I at least master the songs together to a side A and side B WAV file. Well one song got put onto the B side that shouldn’t. Then plates were supposed to be remade but only one got remade, so then the other plate had to be remade, so there were two different mistake test presses. I sold them to pay for the plates I had to rebuy. The third test presses were finally perfect. The record came out great except the song Worth Nothing is called Worth Norhing and Worth Northing depending on if you look at the LP back or the insert sleeve. I had some great recordings of the band and the limited to 100 copies version of this came with a DVD-R I mastered down. LW put on some of the most energetic shows in NC and this and the Abuse. LP coming up are some of my favorite haydays of Raleigh hardcore punk and powerviolence in my eyes.

TLAL95 – Seasick – Eschaton LP
Mark Bronzino is an old homie and this band was ace. I had seen them play a warehouse with Magrudergrind, Stout, Surroundings, and Triac. This was originally pressed as 100 test presses by the label and I don’t know why! I did a pressing and got it out as it should have always been. I almost repressed the Surroundings LP in the same manner. Its still great and should be repressed.

TLAL96 – Abuse. – Self Titled LP
I bought noise equipment mainly to try to join this band in some kind of context. They were a perfect powerviolence band of friends from my town. I was so jealous to not play or be in this band but second best is doing all the artwork on their first EP and their full length and putting out their full length. I was supposed to do their EP but got graced with their huge sounding LP. Its perfect and interesting powerviolence. Everyone in this band still plays music and plays it well.

TLAL97 – ACxDC – Discography LP
As I said earlier, I can spend money on ACxDC and not lose it as people will buy it. So what do you do with their discography, lets make a cool picture disc. And we made a cool picture disc. I did a limited run of black vinyl for those who can hear that bit of surface noise and want to enjoy the record a bit more for the sound. Second pressing, the purple color didn’t come out well and the records look similar but that pressing is almost gone too so no worries in cool collector land as you can generally tell and people wanted them enough to buy up a thousand copies. Great mastering by Dan Randall of Mammoth Sound.

TLAL98 – NoComply / Suppression – split 10″
In the last few years Suppression showed back up as a band. For years between the 90’s and now they either disappeared or played more noise than powerviolence. I think Jason split his noise into other projects and the stripped down two man Suppression of yesteryears returned to the delight of damn near everyone. I did the art on the NC insert. This record rips… could have easily come out in the 90’s but came out now! I think I sing and play bass on this too, you know.

TLAL99 – Backslider – Discography CD
Originally TLAL99 was held for NC/Bastard Noise split LP but that was ill fated. I think I jinxed things by doing the artwork already. Backslider discography isn’t out but it was just sent to the plant. I paid the big bucks and got test CDs and they sound perfect. This is going to be a great showing up the pre-bass, pre-three piece lineup of the band. Mastered perfectly and comes with a cool Japanese style OBI strip. CDs might be a tough format for the punks but a great way to compile 51 songs on something that isn’t a 3xLP.

TLAL100 – V/A – To Live A Lie Vol II 12″
I hate comps, I hate comps, but this was worth it. So my first thoughts is TLAL50 is a comp, it was colored bronze and would be the first in the series of three. TLAL100 would be the silver release and would be an EP featuring more powerviolence whereas TLAL Vol I was grindcore slanted. All these came true but the EP grew to a 10″. Okay I can do an EP for TLAL I (bronze), a 10″ for TLAL II (silver), and an LP for TLAL III (gold). Well I got more and more good songs and its an LP. I think I waited the longest to finally get a Low Threat Profile song but totally worth it. A bummer that Andy Beatie (of No Comment fame) was no longer singing but Joe Denunzio took over vocals for the first time on an LTP song and its on my comp! There is a lot I can say about every song and every band on the comp but maybe I’ll leave that for another day. The Mad Dog song, the vocals were recorded in my room where I am typing right now and originally it said “fuuuuuuuck Will Butler” at the start of it. I took that part off. This record took probably two years to compile and happened to hit around the ten year mark. Perfect for 100 releases.

TLAL101 – Cave State – Self Titled 7″
Cave State approached me to do an EP and I’ll be honest, its hard to see gold. I knew I liked them and would love to do a record for them. Hoy Pinoy is great and CS was way more polished. Here is where I still make rookie mistakes (I never said this out loud but I said no to an Insect Warfare EP at one point once, but to my credit they were brand new and had no recordings online anywhere and didn’t send me anything to hear). So I had cold feet at first and they were nice enough to offer to toss in. I didn’t let them toss in too much but they fact they offered meant they cared about TLAL as a label and believe in their band. Well this record did so super well. The record sold out and I wanted to repress, they said to hold off and they would do another EP and I assumed I was going to do that but next I hear is that they would be working with Deep Six. Serves me a bit right for taking their money on this amazing EP and I’m happy they did a great sophomore record on Bob’s label! It hurts the ego initially of bands not sticking around like ACxDC doing an LP on another label and the same with Sex Prisoner but both those bands did release on great DIY labels. I don’t do contracts with bands for the fact that I want them to work with me as long as they like and if they get a better deal or can do more with their band with another label, then great! If they moved up to a major label I might beef them for a bit but so far no beef to be had. In the end I do TLAL to support the music I love and want the best for the bands.

TLAL102 – Chest Pain – Weltschmerz LP
You know I said yes to the CP full length. They said it would be a bit weird and its perfectly weird. It is inventive and perfect. The band wanted to do an optical effect on the center label but that didn’t end up happening. The cover artwork was drawn by hand and is completely amazing and the record comes with a poster of it.

TLAL103 – Impulse – Chula Violence 7″
I came across this band upon researching bands for the TLAL100 comp. Their EP had become obscure and the label wasn’t going to repress it. I got the plates from the label and did more copies to give the recording another life. This may have been silly as I still have most of those. I have the bands next EP at the plant which almost might be silly but this band is perfectly the sound I want to capture with my label. They blend youth crew with powerviolence.

TLAL104 – Holders Scar – Sin Without Doubt 7″
Greensboro NC’s Holder’s Scar puts on every show in their area and each member has so much heart I approached them to do a record and they excitedly said yes. Younger folks and very passionate, they seemed confused on how the whole process worked. I think at some point they asked if they could do a poster but that didn’t happen. The record is great. Oddly their demo sounded more like a TLAL release and they stopped blastbeating for this EP but it rips so hard still. Win another one for NC hardcore punk and friendship. They are playing Damaged City Fest this year so be on the lookout.

TLAL105 – Fistula – Vermin Prolificus LP
Sludge veterans Fistula approached me passively about doing an LP, I think thinking I would say no. I got an old CD of theirs off an old member when I bought a 16 CD off them on Myspace years back. I had good thoughts of the band as I was no one and they sent me a free CD and others CDs. I re-checked them out and listened to their last LP and it blew me away so I said yes. There was enough fast parts and blasts to go out to the TLAL folks I thought. I wasn’t wrong, the first press sold through. Second press on glow in the dark vinyl looks cool! I’m not sure if the band will go back to putting out records on their singer’s label, who seems to have done a good job so far, and I’m not sure why they didn’t put this on that label, but I was glad to work with them!

TLAL106 – Sex Prisoner – Demo 7″
The singer hinted at me pressing the demo to vinyl the last two times I saw him so I finally pushed them to get me masters from the demo. This itself took half a year to track down and I got the best they could find and got it mastered to make it sound better and boom, a SP demo EP. The band asked for glue covers, did 500 vinyl, and decided to cap it at that. The demo is raw, the guitars sound slightly out of tune, and the songs are mainly the songs on the EP. Its great but it should be a collectible for the die hards, the rest should grab the EP. I decided to be immature and do it on doo doo brown and pee pee yellow like I’m a ten year old, I don’t know why. The band its great and serious but I think they find humor in such things. I did the layout and got it pressed up and its almost sold out.

TLAL107 – The Afternoon Gentlemen – Grind In The Mind 7″
Great UK powerviolence outfit, asked me to repress this. I got the plates from them and pressed some up.

TLAL108 – ACxDC – Fiction Monger 8″
Did a limited lathe of the tracks from the TTP split. Sergio from the band screenprinted the B side and hence a cool collectible record was born. One track was added that wasn’t previously available on vinyl, Cheap Ass Punks.

TLAL109 – Six Brew Bantha – Intraveniously Commodified LP
How surprised do you think I was when the band I was surprised that they did a first LP did a second LP. This time just a joint effort between SPHC and me and I think there was a Euro pressing too. Second pressing on white is about to come out as this sold well too. SBB for a band with a silly name has some traction and some serious riffs.

TLAL110 – ACxDC – Postcard Flexi
Maybe keeping with some of the novelty ideas, ACxDC gave me actual great tracks for this and printed up a bunch of flexi post cards. Its a lovely little record and I’m happy with it!

TLAL111 – Impulse – Backbreaker 7″
This is at the plant now but is the extraordinary return of Chula Vista’s young powerviolence heroes. I’m super nervous about this one as I don’t know if people know this band so make me less stressed and listen to it. The riff are on point, they hardly repeat everything, and they start and stop on a dime. I want this to be the breakout band that no one has heard of.

TLAL112 – Humus – Eterna Condanna LP
Still getting pressed, this is a multi-co-released record of crusty hardcore from Italy. I tossed in with a bunch of labels and we will see how it is. I won’t have a ton of copies so snatch it up while you can.

TLAL113 – Sidetracked – Hired Gun LP
This isn’t even recorded yet but I guess there is enough story behind this and the next one to talk about it for interest sake. Jay wasn’t sure about writing a full LP, as you can tell they’ve been a band so long and have none. I guess I could have asked to do a discography CD but in 2015/2016 I want to challenge bands. I asked ACxDC and Sex Prisoner to do LPs and although they didn’t do it on my label, they did produce LPs. SBB impressed me that they did an LP. Last Words and Abuse. surprised Raleigh with perfect LPs… its time for a Sidetracked LP. I think Jay has written stuff that might have become an LP but liked it more as other material and so the writing method goes on. I think his mind thinks as a final product and not just a collection of songs put together which is a great way to think.

TLAL114 – Rabid Pigs – Spoiled Heat LP
All material by this band has me excited. Reminds me of a different take on modern hardcore much like Coke Bust does. I’m thinking writing a full length is going to be hard for them too, if I’m not mistaken the band might be a bit in disarray or at least putting together a full length might be tough to do as it is. Anyway I believe in them if they pull it off, if they don’t at least it was worth an effort.

Hopefully at the end of this you know more of my thought process. Most of you might not care and might look at me from different angles. I’m just a guy who likes music and likes what I like. This has been my ten year struggle to work with the music I love and bring it to you in the way I can. Some days it makes me crazy, sometimes it makes me antisocial, but in the end I have loved every minute of it. I think 2013 or so marked the point it grew too big to where you could tell something was wrong and I had to cut it back and not set up any new releases for a year. A lot of people thought TLAL was going to die there. I’m still here. I want to keep doing it. Maybe send me some encouragement sometimes and support these bands I’m working hard for and TLAL will keep moving along into the future. Thank you for the support for ten years of time! This has been TLAL’s ten year history of releases as I know it.

If you missed any of the other history posts here are the links:
Ten Years of TLAL – Part I
Ten Years of TLAL – Part II
Ten Years of TLAL – Part III
Ten Years of TLAL – Part IV

Due to the amount of hype and wanting to be fair, I’m going to make an official announcement here. The ACxDC – Fiction Monger 8″ lathe and the TLAL Vault USB stick will be available to order: AT A RANDOM TIME THURSDAY 10/8/2015 via the TLAL Webstore. Most likely this will be after 5pm EST as I will be off work but I may surprise you. I just think this will make this the most fair to people who are excited to grab this.

TLAL100.5V/A – TLAL Vault USB
A 8gb flash drive with all first 100-ish (TLAL99 isn’t out) releases and bonus content. Has TLALVAULT printed on the side. Please note I’m doing a cheaper version of this as a DVD-R in the near future but this one is also pretty price conscious. I made this available to regulars of the webstore last year and these are the remainder.

TLAL104Holder’s Scar – Sin Without Doubt 7″
North Carolina when you think of hardcore and punk you may think of Corrosion of Conformity or even Double Negative but not much else. This state is amazing for music because scenes form in clusters and build up and then unfortunately implode… so when the scene expands it is a really special and ephemeral experience. Up north there is a never-ending supply of raging music but when it comes around in NC it is special. Between my label and Sorry State we were able to capture a good cross section of the hardcore takeover of Raleigh a few years ago between Abuse., Last Words, Thieves, Double Negative, Cross Laws, Stripmines, etc. That bubble burst and there is some exciting stuff forming in the ash of it here (Skemata, Blackball, ands No Love). Right now Greensboro has a thriving scene revolving around some younger blood, primarily the guys in Holder’s Scar. Members of the band separately book almost every single DIY show in town. On top of that, HS puts on an amazing show and this record rips so fast it will make your head spin. Recorded at the world famous Legitimate Business by master audio technician Kris Hilbert (who also recorded the Torch Runner LP and half the bands mentioned above), this record lays down some raging hardcore punk akin to a lot of the punk of yore in NC: Stipmines, Thieves, and maybe throw in some of the new blood from Virginia like Barge and Meth Lab. Be on the lookout for Holder’s Scar coming through your town as they aren’t a band you want to miss out on. You also won’t want to miss slew of members-of bands like Wriggle and Bad Eric. This is actually already up and the limited white vinyl is going faaaaaaast. Buy it now in the webstore here

TLAL108ACxDC – Fiction Monger 8″ lathe
Limited to 75 copies, this silkscreened lathe cut 8″ record features their split material with To The Point and an unreleased early demo version of Cheap Punks recorded during the same session. PLEASE NOTE, a lathe is a special limited run and individually cut record, it will not sound as good as a normal vinyl record and you will need to turn anti-skate on and lower your needle weight.

and new stickers will go in with your orders:

I have one last piece of special TLAL merch for the ten year anniversary, stay tuned.

Oh and don’t forget, the really amazing Fastcore Photos #4 is out too!

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.

If you missed part I or part II click the links.

The Split Release Years: 2007-2009

A multi-label release (or I call them split releases) are a great way to put out more records with less of a risk with a smaller amount of money put together and damn did I do a lot of those between 2007 and 2009 so lets call these the split release years.

I started talking to the skate thrash punk band LxExAxRxNx from Italy about doing a crazy dozen plus co-release for their EP First Lesson. This whole thing went over pretty easily and quickly without much of my involvement, I think I got something silly like a dozen black copies and less of the red copies for my minimal money thrown in. Definitely a cool record. Good artwork, fast music. I was excited to work with a good band from Italy! I know there was at least one less in the world because the postman epically broke a copy and someone emailed me to show me how badly it was broken. The irony here was how it survived the trip overseas and got destroyed within the country here.

This next album is one that I was and still am in love with. My friends from Shitstorm, who as you remember from part I have been a critical part of my label from the beginning, started a new band called Mehkago N.T. This band has been termed a lot of genres that I don’t really associate them with exactly, specifically crust and d-beat. I really think they are like a deconstructed and more raw and less grindcore version of Shitstorm… which I think is perfect and original. Very memorable parts. It seemed weird to do a CD-EP type thing but I loved the songs so I definitely signed up to help them out. It was good to actually do a split release with them after having talked about doing the first record with their labels. I wasn’t asked to help on the vinyl release or I would have been all over that. I had the luck of seeing them at This Is For You Fest (not the year I mentioned previously but another year) and then they played in Raleigh two years after this.

You know how I fan-boyed out to a 625 co-release before? Well the second chance happened for a release with an interesting story. Athrenody was an old Bay area grindcore band that Matt Harvey from Exhume stepped in and did vocals posthumous about fifteen years later. I think this one surprised me at how much it cost to master and get the artwork done for but it sold and in the end I have no complaints.. I was just starting to learn the fact that you should put money in to make something worth it which is something I still have to remind myself of today.

It all came back around to me needing some money for another release and 2007 was a hard year on money so I basically talked two separate friends into doing labels and thus began Bullshit Propganda and there began and ended Pile of Bile. My friend who ran POB didn’t end up giving me all the money she was going to go in on it and I was sort of miffed on that but I guess that happens. Will who helped on the Skate Attack tape started BSP and did about twenty releases up until 2012 until he decided that putting out records was terrible and I agree it’s not for everybody. I made some silly tinfoil with rocketship spraypainted stencil covers for the test presses of these which I cannot find a picture of easily off hand but I assure you they looked crappy and not many people luckily have them. Of course back then I was amped to do an Agathocles record and SMG from Malaysia is a pretty killer band. Glad to have my hands more in the pot on a release again and to put some more unlistenable stuff out there for people to have to collect to keep up with the never-ending AGx catalog. I’m sure people joke that ever label has done a release for them so here is my one release for them. Don’t worry, I’ll also put out Unholy Grave records too.

Another 625 co-release was the Bloody Phoenix – War, Hate, and Misery CD. I said no to doing the vinyl which was talked about a few months after talks about the CD started and already felt it was a stretch of my budget to throw in on the CD. BP is ex-members of Excruciating Terror, Jerry is a super nice guy and I had the luck of doing a small DIY show in Raleigh for them as seems to be the pattern of the early years. Show was fun and the one thing I remember is that no one moved from Bloody Phoenix but then the applause was huge… everyone was just astounded by their sound and how fast they played. I saw them again this year in 2015 and everyone stood around but in a bad way but there was a competing more popular show later in the day that was free so not everyone was a trooper like me and drove to Greensboro and went to both shows.

Matt Gauck drew a nice flier for the Raleigh show and I want to say he might have actually been in town and was able to go, but that may have been a future XBRAINIAX show.

Everyone standing around for them but I’m glad to see that Eartworm who played in MWDH in the flier above, is there front and center watching them stoked:

Unfortunately shortly after this video, the band broke up so BP is no more.

As stoked as I was to put out SMG from Malaysia, I was pretty stoked to work with Proletar from Indonesia. The first pressing of Back to Hatevolution, which is a discography at that point, came as a CD in a 7″ sleeve. I remembered (not in a racist way at all) the sleeve smelling like curry or some kind of delicious spices, which I thought was awesome. Future pressing of the CD came as an actual CD in a jewel case and was less-curry flavored. Very cool release, very many labels involved on this one. I was impressed at the contrast of how full the recordings are on a portion of this compared to SMG. Again not in any kind of racist way but I know smaller countries in SE Asia have less access to recording studios and I think the first batch of songs on here sound like it could be a Magrudergrind recording..

After I helped Will Toftness start BSP, I got called in to help with his band Hip Cops and a band from Japan called Gate. Hip Cops came through and we did an unfortunate show for them in Raleigh and then I went down with them to Columbia SC and the show there was a ton of fun at my friend Kelly’s house and we all went swimming after it. I don’t have much more to say about this one, it’s a quality grindcore split EP.

The Final Draft EP I love a lot. I quickly formed a friendship with Luis after the split with ARM and quickly said yes to Hirax Max to do this. Since I didn’t have my hands in the mix of this too much, I don’t have much to say. I think I remember there being a California release show for this and being excited about it.

Much as I had formed a friendship with with Luis from a previous release, I had kept up with Vasko of FxPxOx from Macedonia via email and said yes to helping on their 2003-2007 discography CD which also had enhanced material on it which is super cool. I’m actually uploading it right now, now that I remember that it exists. Vakso still pops up every few years which is amazing! Last I heard from him a few year ago is that he had just booked a Beatrap show there via his promotions called Junk Cola. Glad I got to do another amazing long discography (Magrudergrind and Proletar ones had done so well so far!).

TLAL #20 was a sampler CD. I’ll skip over this because I feel like this post is getting pretty long. Pro CD-R, it looked super good. Artwork colorized by me but drawn by none only but Matt Gauck aka Skater Action Matt aka Next Stop Adventure aka Circle Takes the Square merch guy.

So I had distroed at a weird fest in the town of Wake Forest which no one has ever heard of except for the fact that Wake Forest University was once located there but then moved the hell out and I was next to a nice band called Kakistocracy. I got to know Jason from the band pretty well and still run into him and talk to him every once in awhile. He is the one guy everyone knows in the punk scene in Asheville. Their band killed it and their first record was on Profane Existence. I then had the chance to do either or both their newest EP and/or their split with Nux Vomica. In retrospect I love the tracks on the EP and should have done both or maybe just that EP but I’m also happy to have worked with Nux Vomica from Portland. This record is a great piece of NC history as Kakistocracy is an amazing representation of crust punk. Last I heard a bunch of years ago is that they recorded a full length and was shopping it around and then they were no longer a band. I heard that full length and it sounded heavy, wish it saw the light of day.

The fist Archagathus split I did was annoying because the primary label was super flaky so I was glad to help with a split between them and Sakatat from Turkey and not have to deal with another “am I getting the records I paid for” situation. I guess I have a lot of similar patterns with music… much like FPO, Semih from Sakatat pops up every now and then. Last I hear from him is that he is booking in Istanbul under the name Atom Kule Collective. I personally got pretty into making sure I had all the Sakatat records as they were a killer band.

Holy crap I finally found a release in all these that isn’t a co-release and it is AMAZING. I approached Mesrine about doing a split and they were super excited and asked me who I thought would be a good band to do a record with. I mentioned a number of Texas grindcore bands and mentioned both P.L.F. and 50/50, to which they replied that they’d love to do it with P.L.F. I hit up P.L.F. aka the band who hates to go by their original name, Pretty Little Flower and they were excited too so this split was born out of nowhere. I, as normal, got Matt Gauck to do some really good art. I told him I’d love to have something crazy with plague doctors on it and that is exactly what he came up with. I’m super proud of putting this record together and putting it out. The only bummer that happened is I was doing a special repress for a tour one of the band was going on and the screen-printed covers ended up looking exactly like the normal covers.

Some years ago I met Corey from Halo of Flies/Protestant who is in Party by The Slice and have or had after then talked to Carlos from ¡Malparido!. Seemed to make sense to help them both out on a cool yet funny record. I consider the PBTS material really good and heavy but definitely joke band material as far as the content is. Carlos helped me put together the enhanced material later on the Hummingbird of Death CD+. He is currently doing really amazing illustration if you look up Carlos Patino Artwork you will see his stuff that is much like the graphiti artist Nychos, with cross sectioned chopped up characters.

So, working on this CD was amazing but about killed me and Justin. The A Product of Six Cents II CD was the continuation of Justin Abare’s baby (I mean other baby besides his very real physical child). The first comp was incredible with some amazing OG pv bands and we came up with the idea to do a sequel LP which hasn’t happened to date but we did the CD version of it. We both found bands and I obsessively put the order of the bands together. The cover concept I came up with in the shower and wrote a huge email detailing an antisocial powerviolence toddler or middle school kid which Scott Bentz drew to a T. I’m sure I have a ton of stories to this comp as Justin and I talked for hours and perfected everything on it. The cherry on the cake was getting a brand new Assholeparade song, I have always been super into that band and that was amazing. Coke Bust gave us a song, PHC somehow is on there, we got an exclusive live Spazz song? I don’t even understand how any of this happened but Justin pulled his OG NoComply strings and made it happen!

Illegal Grinding CD was another crazy co-split release with a ton of labels. International grindcore where I honestly don’t love every single band but if I remember the way it worked out is labels were matched with bands from that country so TLAL and Goner were paired up which I’m fine with. Goner was a two-piece (I think?) band from Cali which is a ripping grind band.

This last co-release is a banger. XBRAINIAX challenged themselves to do a 101 song album but I think realized how impossible that would be so their discography ended up being a 99 song rager. I had helped on the NoComply split and they specifically wanted me to help along with 625 which they were totally nerding out about Max helping on any of their releases which I was in the same boat. Hail Fastcore sold like a wildfire and we did probably two pressings and then when those were gone people kept asking about that CD. The band played Maryland Deathfest pre-fest and played second to an unfortunately small crowd but they were happy to be there and play and see a bunch of metal. I see Sean at MDF anytime I go. Lucas does some really amazing art these days. I believe Zach still does a label which name escapes me but was always putting out killer noise/grind stuff.

Go on to read part IV in the series.

The Second Year of TLAL

In case you missed Part I of this post, please rewind to the first portion of TLAL history.

The second year is still when things were brand new, 2006 was full of fresh newness and peach fuzz of a greenhorn rookie. I had the luck of living in a house next to a house that could put on shows, which was incorrectly called Flint Street House. Life those days revolved around simple things, biking around, hanging with friends, doing stuff with music, and I had the unfortunate predicament of becoming a 8-5er, so I was the boring one of the batch because I couldn’t party that much… but that first IT job out of college in 2005 was the seed money that started and grew the label. Anyhow, started throwing some shows for bands I liked and had the luck of book I Object! along with a handful of other bands (including tight friends Magrudergrind who took me on a few day tour down to This Is For You Fest with them).

I Object! had a super cool veggie fueled decommissioned ambulance they drove around and I thought I was lucky to not be stuck in the vehicle that smelled of french fries. I Object! wasn’t signed to Alternative Tentacles yet but had adopted a similar touring pattern as Magrudergrind… tour as much as possible and also go to the ends of the earth with your music because DIY friends in places like SE Asia for instance, are so happy to have music come through to see. I became friends with IO and they asked me to do a split record for Macedonian band Forever Positively Obsessed (FxPxOx) with Ryan from the IO’s label and my newer friend Josh from Dead Tank. I became friends online with FxPxOx who tried to tour the US but couldn’t get over here due to the government there not allowing them over. The record is awesome and special, the one thing I was a little bummed on is the red/yellow copies were supposed to be one color on one side and another color on the other but they just look like a haze around the center of one color and the other outside of it.

After the IO/FPO jam I had been talking to a band called ARM from California about doing a record and then all of a sudden it became a split with one of my favorite labels, 625 Thrashcore. I wasn’t very familiar with Final Draft at the time (sometimes listed as FinalDraft) but compared to Apathetic Ronald McDonald’s weirdo off-the-wall spazz punk, I think the heavy nature of Final Draft ended up being the stronger portion of the record for my personal tastes. Working with 625 is a bit different in a few aspects but also nice in some others. Max has an artguy who gets things done and that record’s layout looks rad. The other side of that is the price of getting an artguy to do things. TLAL has had and continues to have a good history of doing layouts myself, and maybe I should either get better (although I’m self taught to keep the prices of my records down, so I basically do layouts for free) or hire a graphic designer myself. Any way around it, it was amazing to work and communicate with Max Ward aka Hirax Max aka Max from Spazz aka Max 625. In 2015 I’m reflecting on it and I’d do those splits with 625 again and again and again. In those days I had free reign to do trades and Max had Ebullition be his distributor so I traded them away and sold them direct and built up my distro hardcore with those.

At some point I formed a friendship with two people from New England… Will Toftness from CT and Paul Sunderland from Cape Cod area. These two guys were like if I had a formal business and had a board of directors. I’d add Ralph from Haunted Hotel in NY in that too, but that doesn’t related to this story. Paul and I tossed around an idea to do a skate comp tape. Paul magically had some cool artwork and I jumped on it to ask bands and I knew that Will is pretty active with skating so I asked him to give me some skateboarding sounds for the tape and that is what you hear opening and closing the tape.

Here I am with Sandro from RSR and Paul at This Is For You Fest and below that is Will with a TLAL sticker on his bass:

Paul nerded out and got Killed in Action on the tape, I got my friends from Shitstorm (Ricky pops up multiple times in TLAL history, but he plays drums on the Temper track, and apparently this kid who sings, this was his first time singing on anything ever), Street Sharks are friends from my town (one went on to the Sorry State Records band Whatever Brains who just broke up), I was approached by Indonesian band Makhlok Perosak and they ended up on there, homies ANS (Annihilate New School) of course made the cut as they are a great skate band and all of them pop up throughout TLAL and Raleigh punk history here and there, Nicktape gave me some Bail Out! songs (Nick is now in Coke Bust and a number of other bands), Concrete Evidence who I am totally spacing on who that is.. I want to say it was a band with Dub from Shitstorm in it, Common Enemy when Pat from Backslider was in the band, Badeatinghabits who had Dan Rossiter who did the Rhino Charge artwork and went on do keep doing awesome artwork, and finally one last band from Raleigh called Media Circus. Wow I guess I gathered all but KIA on this one. Paul got the infinitely long j-card printed for these and we got the tapes printed up for too much money in the US because neither of us wanted to give our SSN to get them made in Canada. Very cool tape, wonder when volune II will come out.

Nick from Bail Out! Skateboard action:

It would make sense to do a skate LP after a skate tape right? Right. Ended up putting a four way split LP together called Four Bands to Drain Your Pool LP featuring Badeatinghabits, ANS, NoComply, and Rat Byte. All homies bands and I think this is the first time I had talked to Justin from NoComply who stay a TLAL major supporter and bandmate. I feel like this also relates back a lot to This Is For You Fest because almost all these bands played the fest. Funny story I remember is how limited the red copies were and then ANS came through and played Raleigh and almost left a whole box of the red copies in the middle of the road.

This is for You (TIFY) Fest, there is Paul from Give Praise Records and Ryan from I Object:

Justin pops up again and so does Max Ward. This is my second 625 co-release of XBRAINIAX and NoComply. Solid release. I believe there was some major controversy with this release in the fact that somehow some weird information got snuck into the layout by the person doing the layout. I don’t really want to stir the pot here, it was a pretty juvenile thing and was overlooked in printing the record up. I have little to say on this one, was a great jam.. very interesting matchup of bands. I guess the 625 releases I didn’t touch as much because I was mainly just tossing in money and the pressing and art was handled. Glad I did this record though, its so good.

Last of 2006 was the Terminal Youth LP. I was low on funds and got this screenprinted promo for the band. I was familiar with the band previously because I knew their split from Moo Cow Records. When I tossed this into the CD player I was 100% expecting to say no and when I heard this I knew I had to say yes yes yes. Amazing Boston hardcore LP (the band went on to do Boston Strangler, Brain Killer, and Chain Rank to give you an idea). I so amped on this but so low on funds but was able to get Give Praise and De Rok to toss in. You know I should have done this myself because this was the first record I did that I sold out instantly of. So the pressing was supposed to be 400 black and 100 on actual metallic silver but guess what going through a new record pressing GZ broker gets you… “oops we didn’t communicate well enough with the Czech plant so there are no metallic silver vinyl copies”. So major disappointment there but the spot color metallic silver on the covers look great and we did some 11″x17″ photocopied inserts to save money. I could not have been more happy and proud of this jam. Funny story, Ryan from the band really sold me on doing a show for them in Raleigh. I was very excited. He told me he’d have a bus of Boston punks roll down with them and it would be a great show. It was a great show because not only did Seasick play, but Blank Stare ended up playing too if I’m not mistaken. It was a terrible show because not many Raleigh punks or much of anyone else showed up at all. Will Butler show booking failure for a band where this was supposed to be their big record release show in my hometown. You can tell I’m bitter about that even today. I got this cool full color Matt Gauck artwork for the flier too:

That pretty much sums up year two of TLAL. Definitely a great year of music and really making connections and staying in touch with some of my favorite people who would continue to make my label become an organic thing of supporting friends bands and putting out new bands that would become friends.

Go on to part III.

The Early Early Years:

August marks ten years of running my label. I honestly don’t know how to start this post because as I’ve said time and time again, DIY has been a huge part of my life as soon as I discovered punk at the ripe age of 14. I loved skateboarding, I loved computers, I loved punk music and everything else didn’t matter as much. I got involved directly with DIY when I was 16 and I started a band with some of my friends I skated with, here is me on bass at a show I booked fifteen years ago:

It took trial and error to establish ideas and ideals of DIY back in those days growing up in Winston-Salem. My band first tried recording ourselves but then realized we should pay and get legitimate recordings. We put out our own CDs, did our own merch, I did the website (which I resurrected from the Wayback Machine here: http://dbm.tolivealie.com/), booked our own shows, etc. During those days, the band was what mattered and people around town started to seem to be on board with us. We lost Philip on drums which was a huge bummer to me because he had been a childhood friend but I liked Phil on drums and near the end we lost Chris on vocals and our friend Will sang for one show. The band dissolved when we went off to college and that was the end of that era for me and for us.

The First Year of TLAL:

I became infatuated with vinyl when I was around that age and had a good slew of records but then I went off to college and DIY dripped away. I went to Virginia Tech and the house that had shows called the Solar Haus, had a show where people fell through their window a year before I was in town and the whole place got shut down so I tried to find punk and skateboarding where I could there but ultimately failed. I transferred to NC State and found DIY in the form of emotional hardcore locally and started a distro selling both punk records (Spazz, Charles Bronson, etc) and for the lack of a better word… screamo records (Orchid, Neil Perry, etc) under the name of Stronghold Distro. That connection with screamo lead me to meet the guys in Shitstorm throught their screamo band Tunes For Bears to Dance to. Those guys tried talking me into putting out a Tunes EP if I remember correctly and I wasn’t that sold on the idea but then there was talk of them starting a label and putting out a split between Godstomper and Magrudergrind which I had a major interest in. I remember talking to Avi shortly after I met him (went to see them at Charm City Art Space) and he got me jazzed on how it would help my distro to put out a record and trade records, I did and he was right. Actually that release I hardly traded it sold super well and went onto a second pressing. The label I put that out with showed me the ropes of record pressing and I think a lot of the early ethos I learned from these first releases and communicating with peers in bands and labels.

From there I put out the Rhino Charge EP on my own with some help here and there from other label friends (Paul from Give Praise helped me get the covers printed up at his printing shop). I couldn’t believe it but I think between some Internet hype surrounding Rhino Charge, them getting the cover of the last issue of HeartttaCk, and the fact that Ebullition helped unload more than half of them onto the world… the first pressing sold out pretty quickly. Second pressing came out right around when the band broke up but it sold through steadily. I remember being so new to it that I asked my mom her advice and she told me to not put anything more into it that I wouldn’t mind never seeing again which was good advice. Honestly, looking back on it… Ebullition (the combined efforts of Kent and Lisa) had a profound affect on my label sustaining itself through the early years and I can’t thank those two enough.

The last release of first year of my label was the Magrudergrind discography CD called 62 Trax of Thrash. I had no idea what to expect out of a CD release but we did our best to pack as much music into one place as we could and although Magrudergrind had only been a band for three years, they had a stockpile of songs and releases. This release was a three way co-release and I think we ended up doing two runs of 1000 so there are 2k of those beasts floating around. Putting out CDs is a different story but they are oh so swell to trade overseas when you can break them out of the jewel cases and ship them cheaply. Magrudergrind had always been super active and this was around the time when they started to go through some guitarist changes I believe but the guys were actively touring and had done some European/SE Asian trips. I never wanted to go out of my way to do a CD ever but my outlook has always been to put out releases that I myself would be stoked to own and the prospect of having all the early Mgrind stuff in one place was a major interest. I’m not sure this CD put me out there as a new label as much as the first two but it definitely got the name overseas and also into the hands of people where vinyl isn’t as accessible to them.

Honestly the first year was a whirlwind. I was so amped on everything and I was so into making cool friend editions, and test press covers, and putting weird little inserts into each record. I drew on every mailer and usually taped weird pictures on them. It was a special time where everything was so new and exciting and every order was someone I wanted to communicate with and share with. Today is no different but the time I have to do those things is far more limited. Also at this time I lived at 1306 Flint Place, which was a super low rent house near NC State and people were always around and wanting to help out and be involved. Next door at 1304 Flint, they had shows pretty regularly but I will leave that for part 2 as that is further down the timeline.

Skip on to part II of the TLAL saga.

also check out this Sex Prisoner set from MF’s final show…

Most TLAL records are pressed at one of these two record pressing plants. Cool to see all they’ve come through since the old days of vinyl.

More about Musicol here

Plenty of other great plants out there as well, not in any way saying these are the only or the best ones out there. These are where 95% of our records have gone through!

Also TLAL deals frequently with Aardvark for mastering/plating, some good videos here:
http://www.aardvarkmastering.com/videos.htm

And I couldn’t find any videos for the following but please support:
http://www.mammothsoundmastering.com/ (pre-mastering)
http://www.econopressprinting.com/ (packaging)
http://www.iloveimprint.com/‎ (packaging)

I try to keep up with where things were manufactured on the Discogs.

Play the full episode below, three hours of music and phone interviews:

Mr. The Lizard is nice enough to host a special To Live A Lie-centric episode of his radio show. This is slated to be… three hours of music and talk!!

Special guests expected: members of ACxDC, FinalDraft, TFD, Abuse. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to call in, but I’ll be at a show supporting bands like I tend to do!

Giveaway includes: The Kill LP, AP 10″, Mehkago NT LP, Backslider – Maladapted EP, PLF CD,Osk DC, XBRAINIAX CD, and an Archagathus poster!

Tune in on Wednesday, 8/14 at 9pm EST http://www.coreofdestructionradio.com/.

Show will be recorded if you can’t tune in.

Free Assholeparade 10″ with any large vinyl order

2013 we have some pretty split color LPs for you. Also slated for the split color treatment: Last Words LP and the Abuse. LP.

Try and steal my silly record label name, anyone in the US!

4/3 – La Jolla, CA @ Che Cafe [FB Event]

4/4 – Claremont, CA @ Smith Campus Center [FB Event]

4/5 – Bakersfield, CA @ The Killer Clam [FB Event]

4/6 – Camarillo, CA @ Rock City Studios [FB Event]

4/7 – Camarillo, CA @ Rock City Studios [FB Event]

4/8 – Sylmar, CA – TLAL92 Rec Release [FB Event]

TLAL Vol II is following the sold out volume I comp which featured mainly grind bands, volume II brings you mainly pv/fast hardcore bands.

TLAL II will feature:
Abuse., BearTrap, Bridge, Cheap Art, False Light, Grit, Hummingbird of Death, Lapse, Low Threat Profile, Mad Dog, Rabid Pigs, Scalped, Sidetracked, Softdov, Street Pizza, To The Point, Vaccine, Water Torture, Weekend Nachos, and xSwampx.

To be a stickler, TLAL I was a bronze 7″, TLAL II will be silver 12″, and one day if I make it, TLAL III will be a gold ink colored probably LP. Here’s to then! Until then I’m very excited to be bringing you this amazing comp in mid-2013!

TLAL is sponsoring a fest! Up to date information here: Punk Is Dead Fest – FB Event

I have historically been bad at announcements list so bare with me, but this makes it so I can email an announcement in and do it from the web so I’m way more apt to do this. There is also a seperate one for distros/stores to know what I’ve sent to my distributors, and one for reviewers/radio stations… email me if you fall under those other two categories because those lists are a little more restricted.

Please add yourself:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tolivealie

Yeah its baaa-aaaack! Chris Brown approved. Get your TLAL scarf now that it’s cold.

http://www.tolivealie.com/webstore

Started a wiki to list information on underground music that isn’t notable enough to appear on Wikpedia. Please sign up and list information on bands you have knowledge on. Include your own band/label/zine too!

http://diymusicwiki.com

4Shared changed their policies. Per their FAQ “Your files can be shared only with verified 4shared users. They will be able to download your files, as soon as they log in their accounts. ” This was the price of doing this DIY, I will need to find a new host that allows anonymous downloads and find the time to fix all these that already exist. For the meantime you will have to make free 4Shared accounts to download digital downloads, which was not my original intention and not the way the site was set up.

This is word for word taken from Grind To Death and reposted with permission of Alex Layzell. To tell the truth it looks better on their page, go look at it there!

It is with great delight that I finally resume the Girls that Grind mini-series, for those of you who missed the original half a dozen posts, the Girls that Grind series aims at bringing to the foreground praiseworthy bands that feature the fairer sex to highlight their ongoing and exemplary contribution to the realm of extreme music.

Today’s Girls that Grind post will be centered around three graduates of the ever reputable To Live A Lie Records, with that in mind you know straight off the bat these bands are mandatory listening and are likely to be no strangers to your listening regime.

(A quick note regarding matters of canon, unlike the other girls that grind series whose banners are essentially their logos, the first two bands were somewhat harder to find logos for, so their banners are a personal amateur attempt to give them a banner to keep the structural norms of the series.)

 RIP Deathrats, short-lived, but whose output is by no means short of greatness. In their 2 year stint of output, the band put out 2 7″, Deathrats in 2009 and Give Up in 2011 both on To Live a Lie Records and both immediately procured Deathrats with well deserved underground fame. Their fast and aggressive breed of angry hardcore is worthy of going toe to toe with some of the gilded home hardcore heritage, of which Washington D.C can boast some highly influential and impressive acts.

A must listen to band, who would comfortably slot into the listening schedule of hardcore and powerviolence fans alike.

I am pretty sure Calgary’s Rape Revenge have stumbled across a new threshold of indignation; their outburst of seething rage is just a fraction shy of breaking down into an outright haemorrhage of animalistic fury. This is mostly attributed to the compelling vocal tantrum which repeatedly and without rest spews out a boiling mix of anger and bitterness, never has the voice of feminism been charged with so much wroth. The heaviness and integrity of their music is only matched by their hard line moral mantra predominantly centered around feminism and sexuality, but also entails other aspects of liberalism, veganism and possibly the promotion of a straight edge lifestyle (a guess given their Myspace name was xRapeRevengex). Although a vocal dominated affair this 3 part girl to 2 part guy quintet 3 guys to one girl quartet on the instrumental front offer some serious sonic intensity, adding a remarkable amount of fuel to the fires of rage that powers and defines their sound. Not only one for the books, but one to add amongst your personal favorites.

Not as hot tempered or irrational as the name Curmudgeon may suggest, these Boston based purveyors of powerviolence are all about the attention to detail rather than notions of sonic brutism. Their music is highly engaging, and employs a vast number of dynamic developments to give their release that unique yet stern comfort to it. Things that give this band a departure from traditional power-violence throws, include the more comprehensible vocal employment, the progressive flow and coaxing of slow and fast tempos, and an all together avoidance of the all too familiar Infest/Crossed out worship that is seemingly becoming a “must have” qualifying value amongst much of the talent out there. Its biggest success is that their music is engaging on all fronts: rhythmically, atmospherically and lyrically, a multi-layered experience well worth the plunge.

I’ve gotten in the bad habit of posting on Facebook but not on here. Let me summarize then. Oh before I do that, above is me hanging with my new friends Curmudgeon.

Four new stickers are ordered. Huge silver shiny ones! Crown of thorns no music note (aka godlines) design, eye gouge, American flag with TLAL no music notes, and the tofu monster appearing as a non-TLAL related sticker that says ‘Go Vegan’. So technically three new stickers for the label.

My house now has a whole room dedicated to the label. My distro is too massive to move out of my closet at the moment.

Status of releases: Magrudergrind Crusher packaging is in (poster, covers, download cards) and I think test presses are in the mail to me as of this morning. Tinnitus EP is in transit from the plant to me but cover design isn’t done yet. Curmudgeon EP is in but no covers on that just yet (those will be cool, barn door fold with obi strip!). Backslider‘s new EP is at the plant as well as the Rape Revenge EP. Suffering Mind/Protestant 6″ should be out relatively soon. Osk CD is at the plant. ACxDC EP… who knows right now, wish I had more information for you. Brian Walsby’s Manchild 6 is in the works, I’ve started layout and design of the book and we have started to scan the pages. Capitalist Casualties/NoComply repress I’m waiting on the plant, black vinyl… white vinyl… and black/white split vinyl copies! Everything else isn’t quite in motion yet.

Slowly putting together the 2012 sampler…

These are also available streaming….

For more media go on the Facebook page. TLAL also has a Google+ profile and page, both are rarely updated but that may change in the future. One other note, we do not support the PIPA/SOPA bill. Lastly, be glad, as the rumors of XBRAINIAX breaking up are untrue. Zach has left the and is now touring in a band with Dan from Lotus Fucker called Merciless Game.

One other thing to remember, small distros and mom/pop shops can get mostly all of the To Live A Lie Records catalog in from Ebullition Records. They require a $100 order but it is all wholesale prices and completely DIY run by two people. No corporations involved, just supporting DIY and small businesses.

That is about it! Things have been hectic as always. Happy 2012 a little bit late and happy late Valentines Day.

2/24 – Barcelona, Spain @ Estraperlo Club
2/26 – Almeria, Spain @ Sala Jala Jala
2/27 – Lisbon, Portugal @ Revolver Bar
2/28 – Porto, Portugal @ Hard Club
2/29 – Santander, Spain @ Sala Heaven
3/01 – Toulouse, France @ Salle Des Fêtes De Labège
3/02 – Rosshausern, Switzerland @ Kulturwerk 118
3/03 – Martigny, Switzerland @ Les Caves du Manoir
3/04 – Milan, Italy @ Lo Fi Club
3/05 – Zagreb, Croatia @ Mochvara
3/06 – Budapest, Hungary @ Durer Kert
3/07 – Cluj Napoca, Romania @ Euphoria Music Hall
3/08 – Nitra, Slovakia @ Nova Pekaren
3/09 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Black Pes
3/10 – Ostrava, Czech Republic @ Barrak Music Club

Sergio Amalfitano, of ACxDC fame, recently had the joy of having twin girls. Unfortunately Savina needs to have open heart surgery. ACxDC has put together a slew of excellent benefit shirts as well as anything bought on ACxDC.bandcamp.com or any direct money Paypaled to sergioamalfitano@yahoo.com would help their family out immensely. I have had the pleasure of meeting Sergio and talking to him a lot then and from across the US, and he is a genuine and giving guy and wouldn’t ask for anything from anyone else if he didn’t need it. DIY is about community, and Sergio puts a lot into it… between being in ACxDC, ¡Liberate!, having been in AAS, doing a photo zine, taking amazing show photos, being dedicated to XVX, and even spinning some records as a DJ. In addition to that he is now a proud dad! So get some killer shirts and tunes if you want, send cash if you can, or just keep your fingers crossed for this hard working man!

Mind As Prison “Maryland Grindcore” EP
Mind As Prison previously (and famously) shared a vinyl release with the mighty Disciples Of Christ. Followers of grind know that’s some pretty elite company, and unfortunately, many focused their attention on D.O.C. instead of the accompanying band. If you slept on Mind As Prison then, “Maryland Grindcore” affords you the opportunity to experience some savage, refreshingly no-frills grind. Nolan of D.O.C. provides intriguing artwork that is starkly presented on a black backdrop, and it suits the bulldozing assault of the music. It’s a strain of dark-hued grindcore that embodies a heaviness of tone without the use of technical riffing, a stale old-school formula, or recording tricks. The sound that Mind As Prison summon is powerful in its very essence, not unlike In Disgust. Side A lays waste just like the band is doing in the photo on the insert, and while it’s nothing that you’ll be humming on your way to work, it’s absolutely devastating. Flip the record over, and “Rescue (Interrogation)” demonstrates that Mind As Prison can do something beside topple walls. The band relent in their brutal attack; the breathing room that results is welcome, but the lyrics offer no relief: “A cog a drone a nobody … Would it change the way you feel?” The final song, a gleeful “desecration” of a classic Sick Of It All cut, shows these guys have a twisted sense of humor. Mind As Prison needed to make a strong impression here to prove that they were worthy of sharing wax with Disciples Of Christ, and with “Maryland Grindcore”, they should silence any doubters. (JIM WALKLEY)

Capitalist Casualties/No Comply “A Painful Split” EP
A tiny thumbprint picture on your iPod doesn’t do this justice. In order to appreciate this incredible split, you need to hold it in your hands. Matt Gauck created artwork that’s in the spirit of past Capitalist Casualties 7-inches, as well as classic records released on Deep Six and Slap-A-Ham. And I’m happy to report that the music here holds up to these mythical standards. What were you listening to in 1994? You may not want to answer that, but on March 12th of that year, Capitalist Casualties recorded these five tracks at a fabled live show at Gilman St. It’s amazing how current their songs sound; great hardcore is great hardcore, no matter the year. A bit simpler and more “punk rock” than what you may consider powerviolence to be, but worry not – you’ll be blown away by their four original songs and one Antischism cover. If you’re an Internet warrior, you may have already downloaded the (free!) No Comply demo on the To Live A Lie Bandcamp. Personally, I like the No Comply material here a bit more, as it features Travis Ginn of Assholeparade and seems a bit more volatile and unhinged than the somewhat laid-back meander of the demo tracks. Both are good, but this 7-inch remains essential. You may not even need the download card that this split EP comes with, because it’s just too tempting to spin the actual wax. Just one more time, again, to hear how true powerviolence is done … (JIM WALKLEY)

Got quite a few good reviews in MRR this month but here is the amazing glowing one:

DEATHRATS – “Give Up” EP. Woooo! Somebody is pissed… and it’s DEATHRATS. Expanding and, dare I say, improving upon the legacy that is DC hardcore, this four piece rips through six angry, fast, dark, feedback laden noisy tracks with some breakdowns here and there. I have to say that this is some creative writing. It’s very recognizable HC in the DEATHREAT with a more classic USHC leaning and some hints of Scandi HC, yet there are cohesive changes that sound neither too busy or choppy, at least not in an unintended way. The songs meld together (which will be a pain in my ass when I play this on the radio), leading into one another quite well bringing attention to the fact that even though each track is unique, every song on here belongs on this record. I can see this band playing with RAW NERVE and other awesome creative, non “mysterious” HC that has been springing up. I have to say that I have been into this band since the first song I head by them and I really loath the comparisons they get because they have a female singer. Or that bullshit like, “DEATHRATS are like SICKFIX and PUNCH cuz they are the only good HC bands with women in them.” One, SICKFIX does rule, two, this band is better than PUNCH and three, you fuckers are missing the point… This is what good hardcore sounds like, female vox and all. The lyrics are personal, angry and a big “fuck you.” The style is mostly throaty, frantic and tough sounding shit, but then there are spoken, almost talking in pitch, parts here that add to the music. If this were a dude screamin’, Youth Attack would have eaten this shit up. These are good vocals, lady or not, because they are another instrument that belongs with the music – no dude can match ’em. Get it. (MB) (To Live A Lie)

Just letting you guys know whats up over here, still busy pumping out the records on our end. I have a new job where I won’t be updating online as much but overall this job is a huge thing to me so be happy for me!

First off, the Lapse / Eddie Brock – split 7″ will be going out to the plant this weekend! Hear audio: Lapse – Trend and Eddie Brock – Pointer Thumb Pinky. The Capitalist Casualties / NoComply – split 7″ has been pressed already, just waiting on my slackass to finish artwork. We are almost there. Mind As Prison – Maryland Grindcore 7″ is still in the works, headed by Bad People right now so hopefully soon. ACxDC – Second Coming 7″ masters should be at the plant.

New to announce are the Sidetracked – Wrench tape, which is a raw recording from the band. This will be 100 tapes, pro-pressed, with a digital download. One time pressing. Finally, we are excited about the The Kill / White Eyes – split 5″. We have some other exciting stuff, including a book and a totally weird shaped record, on the horizon. Get stoked.

Releases:

XBRAINIAX – Deprogrammed CD+ (TLAL40)

 Modern fastcore’s blackest cult ascends once more from its knighted abyss to deliver thirty-one hymns of infernal savagery. Only for true devotees to the Esoteric Order of Sonic Blasphemy. Twenty-seven minutes of music and forty minutes of enhanced material included on the CD when inserted into a PC or a Mac. Full color digipack. FFO NEOS, LARM, and fastcore.

Assholeparade – Live in Rostock 10″ (TLAL45)

Twenty-one tracks of raw seething hardcore of one of the greatest sets from one of the greatest fast hardcore bands. Pro-recorded live from the soundboard in Germany and professionally mastered. Gold foil printed cover, this is quite a deluxe release. Record is on its second pressing. Band has many releases of NO IDEA RECORDS.

Magnum Force – Self-Loathing 7″ (TLAL46)

This record rages as hard if not harder than any Clint Eastwood vigilante film you’ve ever seen. Hell, it rages harder than any of Charles Bronson’s Deathwish movies. This has more breakdowns than any Mad Max movie. It may even be the Taxi Driver of grindcore. Eight songs of ear crumping grindviolence from Arizona. For fans of the new era of grindcore/powerviolence, anything from MAGRUDERGRIND, INSECT WARFARE, to IN DISGUST. Each copy comes with a DIY digital download code so you can listen to a 320mhz MP3 of the record. (more…)

Milo Hates Grindcore

Out Of Noise