{"id":1044,"date":"2010-06-03T09:40:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T15:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2010-06-03T09:40:58","modified_gmt":"2010-06-03T15:40:58","slug":"label-profile-war-on-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2010\/06\/03\/label-profile-war-on-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Label Profile: War on Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kent Davies
\n<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a>War on Music isn\u2019t just a label or a store. War on Music is a political movement. Much like Organic Planet Worker Co-Op<\/a> or Mondrag\u00f3n Bookstore and Coffeehouse<\/a>, the principles guiding the War on Music organization are that of participatory economics. Through a committee structure there are no bosses, no managerial hierarchy and no purveyors of lame-ass corporate music. All members of War on Music maintain an equal share of equity in the business. The worker co-operative is located, as member Charley Justice says, \u201chalfway to hell\u201d\u2014or the basement of 93 Albert St. here in Winnipeg. As a local metal store, WoM also serves local bands, offering high-quality in-house merch for cheap and sometimes even acts as a venue for shows. Aside from row after row of quality, reasonably priced metal and punk albums, top-notch metal merchandise and vintage arcade machines, the most alluring feature of War on Music is their in-house label. War on Music the label is leading the way in Canadian metal releases on vinyl. With over a dozen releases, including re-issues of classic metal and punk albums, 7\u201d singles of Canadian metal and hard-rock acts and the number-one-sellling metal album in the country, WoM is a force to reckoned with. Stylus<\/em> talked with label rep and co-op member Charley Justice about the label, the store and the future of vinyl-driven metal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Stylus: Talk about all these new War on Music releases.
\nCharley Justice: <\/strong>Sacrifice\u2014the first album in 20 years with their original lineup. It\u2019s an amazing album called The Ones I Condemn<\/em>. War on music did the only vinyl version in the world and it\u2019s now number one on the Earshot<\/em> Loud charts in Canada for 15 weeks. It\u2019s number one on a bunch of charts in Europe too. It\u2019s phenomenal album in every respect.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Can you explain how WoM the store and label operate?
\nCJ: <\/strong>It works as co-op participatory collective. The store is run by seven people. We all own an equal share and make consensus decisions. We don\u2019t hire employees\u2014we accept owners. As for the record label, it\u2019s an independent committee that I took on within War on Music with the consensus of the collective. So the label is sort of an independent operation that I run, but as it expands and necessitates more time and effort than I can give it, it will expand into a co-operative of its own. Right now I\u2019m running the label by myself and it\u2019s become a full-time job, so it\u2019s right on the cusp of expanding.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Was it always the plan to create a label though the WOM store?
\nCJ: <\/strong>It\u2019s really the natural step of any retail vinyl show to start manufacturing and distributing vinyl of its own. As a store we\u2019ve developed a good relationship with other distributors because we\u2019re purchasing their albums so they know us pretty well. We make albums that we know they\u2019ll want.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Are you surprised at the level of success you\u2019ve had with the WoM label?
\nCJ: <\/strong>I\u2019m not really surprised. I like to think I know what I\u2019m getting into when I start a label. The reissues of Razor and Sacrifice that we\u2019ve done are in really high demand. They are hard to find. All you have to do is go on EBay to know a lot of people would want those records and they do.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What are some of the bands featured on WoM label?
\nCJ:<\/strong> WoM has 14 releases now. As far as our catalogue right now, Evil Survives\u2014Powerkiller<\/em> being 014 and Sacrifice\u2014The Ones I Condemn<\/em> being 013. We have the three classic Sacrifice reissues, three Razor reissues and an Untimely Demise 7\u201d, which is a super hardworking thrash metal band we toured with. The 7\u201d is produced by Ex-Megadeth lead guitarist Glen Drover. We also re-released local \u201980s punk band Personality Crisis\u2019 classic album Creatures for Awhile. <\/em><\/p>\n

Stylus: What are the projects WoM is currently working on?
\nCJ:<\/strong> There are several things in the works. We\u2019re going reissue a few more Razor albums and there are several crazy LP projects on the horizon. I can\u2019t talk too much about them because nothing set in stone yet. But they\u2019re big.<\/p>\n

www.waronmusic.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kent Davies War on Music isn\u2019t just a label or a store. War on Music is a political movement. Much like Organic Planet Worker Co-Op or Mondrag\u00f3n Bookstore and Coffeehouse, the principles guiding the War on Music organization are that of participatory economics. Through a committee structure there are no bosses, no managerial hierarchy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[536,563,607],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-label-profile","tag-local","tag-metal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}