Harvesting death (and black, doom, sludge, etc)… Garden Of Exile Records Interview!

They grow a lot of enjoyable things in Holland, but recently they started “growing metal”. Responsible for the harvest is Garden of Exile records, a mail order (or grow shop?) that imports metal, hardcore and grindcore vinyl from all over the world and sells it at reasonable prices. They’ve also released albums from Cobalt, Burst, Botch, Misery Index, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Cave in, Anaal Nathrakh, … on vinyl. We happen to like those bands and we happen to like small, underground labels and distros, so it’s time to get to know some of them! The Garden is up first!

Hey Tjeerd, could you tell us how Garden of Exile came to life?

That’s quite a long story actually. It started out when we were kids visiting hardcore and metal shows every weekend. First only inHolland, but later on throughoutEurope. We bought a lot of records ourselves at those shows. We started listening to music that was hard to get over here inEurope. So we started ordering directly from theUS. To make this affordable, we ordered some more copies for friends to save on postage and get wholesale rates. One thing led to the other and before we knew it, we had a couple of cases with CDs and some vinyl. We started attending shows to sell our stuff and that’s the moment it became a bit more serious. We both started writing reviews, doing interviews for several zines and got to know more and more people. We decided to spend the money we made with our distro on releasing music by bands we liked personally and music wise. At first we released 3 or 4 CDs but soon after we focused more and more on vinyl, since we both prefer vinyl and are collecting this since we were like 16 or so. It all started as a hobby, but it grew out of hand pretty fast! 🙂 It’s not always easy, since we do this besides our normal daytime jobs. Besides some problems with shipping and all, things went pretty smooth and we are still trying the best we can.

You recently started focusing more on vinyl, why this change in direction?

Well actually we already did our first vinyl release in the second year of our existence. For us this was a natural development, since we are both huge vinyl collectors and prefer this to CDs. We aren’t in this for the money, but for the love of the music and vinyl gives us so much more pleasure. Besides that, doing vinyl releases was an opportunity to work with some of the bands we really love. A lot of bands already had contracts for CDs, so a vinyl license was the opportunity to work with certain bands. Botch for instance is one of our favorite bands from our youth. The guys from Burst, the Ocean and Textures are good friends playing awesome music. It was great to cooperate on nice vinyl releases with them. Besides that, sometimes labels or bands got in contact with us, since they really like what we do. Not only releasing some great music, but with really nice artwork as well. On other occasions we wrote bands or labels to ask if we could do a certain release, because we thought it was great and needed a proper vinyl release.

The Obolus Demo 7″ was just released by Garden Of Exile. Time for some promo talk! Go!

Due to our daytime jobs, new studies, and travels we hadn‘t released anything since 2009. We just wanted to do something again and Obolus instantly came to mind.  This demo they released late 2011 really embraces what we both love in black metal. Harsh and raw, yet atmospheric and full of despair. After the big wave of more Cascadian BM from the US, this really hit the spot again and for me this band together with Ash Borer and Boss de Nage are one of the best new bands coming out the US BM scene lately. We have some copies left of the limited red vinyl in case you guys are interested, and the release can be downloaded for free at: obolusband.bandcamp.com. Flenser records just released their new 10” Lament as well, which is really good and cannot be missed.

Vinyl tends to come in different colors and versions, the more limited the better. Does it influence people to buy you think? And are you a fan of the limited editions as well?

We know for a fact that it influences people to buy. We have a lot of customers ordering every color available from the records we release. For our mail order we get a lot of questions about available colors as well. Releasing different colors works. For us as a label this is interesting of course. Besides that, colors can be a nice addition to the total package / artwork. In that aspect we like colored vinyl. Some people take this too far and too serious though. Limited is not a goal for us. Actually we prefer good quality vinyl, so we always have a black version (on a long term black vinyl stays better than colored) available, and press everything on heavy weight 180g vinyl. That’s the most important thing for us.

How do you see the future for small, underground labels and mail orders?

As long as they sell vinyl I think there’s a future for labels. We never made the step of living from music, but there are some who did have the courage and I think those guys will remain. I have respect for those guys, but I think we both are very happy that this remains our hobby and not our livelihood.

What’s next for Garden Of Exile? Any new upcoming releases? Do you plan on expanding?

You never know man, you never know. As written earlier this is just something we do for fun and the love of vinyl (and supporting our vinyl addiction). Chris is a full time teacher and I’m a business manager for an international IT company for which we both travel as well. Next to this there’s our private (family)live and the fact that we like to spend our free time travelling the world. Chris being the active mountaineer, and myself being the lazy beach bum. So we just wait for that wave to come and decide to ride it or let it pass and wait for a new one.

Any recommendations for our readers?

Make sure to visit our store for some nice vinyl (and CD and Merch sale): www.gardenofexile.com/catalog or check out our Facebook page on which we share a lot of new music we come across: www.facebook.com/gardenofexile . I’m still sucking in all new releases I can get my paws on, so too much bands on my mind now to namedrop…

Ok thanks Tjeerd! Keep it growing!