Chapter 1: The Very Beginning (August 2006 to September 2006)

Mortification Records was my first record label. Prior to its formation, I had self-released material by my other bands, The Slopin Fairy 7 and Throne of Mortality, without any record label affiliation. At the time, I was not aware of the freedom that one could have to form and self-release albums through a record label. It was in the summer of 2006, while I was still living in the United States at 92 Stephenville Parkway in Edison, New Jersey, that I started to desire releasing music that my friends were doing. One band in particular that I was interested in was Black Sand and Starless Nights. They were a really good post-rock band from Metuchen, New Jersey. But we did not end up working together for two reasons (we eventually did work together three years later, through Abridged Pause Recordings); First of all, my intention of forming a record label was still vague and more of an idea than a concrete plan; and second, Black Sand and Starless Nights didn’t have their heads together and preferred getting high instead of focusing on a serious release. However, even had they put something together, I would not have had the resources, nor the know-how to release it.

In late July 2006, I moved back to Canada and lived in my grand-mother’s basement at 6392 Rue Louis Dupire in Rosemont, Quebec. That same month, I laid the foundation for Triskalyon, a collective of people and bands with common nihilistic views and who appreciated Les Legions Noires, a black metal collective in France with similar ideas. The co-founder of the Triskalyon collective was Aurélien Esnault (alias Der.Walsch/Lansquenet), who lived in Pays-de-la-Loire in France. He was also the co-founder of the Les Legions Noires message board which he and I operated called the Street Metal Forum. Aurélien and I had found and documented rumors that Les Legions Noires had their own record label to release their demo tapes in the 1990’s. This was never proven and none of the cassette covers that we found had any indication of such a record label, but we were inspired enough by the idea and decided that Triskalyon would have its own record label.

Neither Aurélien nor I had anything ready from our bands, Throne of Mortality and Unkwiss, but some of the other members that we recruited for Triskalyon did. Eric Bryant (alias Iskyros), who was the third member to join the collective, was a guitarist from Culpeper, Virginia and he played in the black metal band Mortifier. When Eric and his band Mortifier were accepted into Triskalyon, the other members of Mortifier joined as well. Eric was then working on material for Mortifier as well as for his other project Terrorist, while Hunter O’Rourke (alias Thanatos, also in Mortifier) was finishing up the first demo from his black metal solo project Death Kvlt.

In September, Eric suggested the name “Mortification Records”, named after his band, Mortifier. I don’t think that I was a big fan of the name when it was first suggested but I could not come up with a better one and agreed that Mortification Records would be the name of Triskalyon’s own record label. Triskalyon already had a Wikipedia-styled website, which I had designed earlier in September, and a Mortification Records page was created and hosted on it at http://www.triskalyon.ifastnet.com/index.php/Mortification_Records. That was the first Mortification Records website.

Death Kvlt’s first demo, entitled “Vemotic Death“, was planned as not only the first release by a Triskalyon band but also the first release on Mortification Records. After finishing the recording of “Vemotic Death” with a hired drummer from Europe, Hunter recruited new band members to expand his solo project into a full band to play shows. He vouched for the new members of Death Kvlt who were automatically accepted into Triskalyon. But about a week or two before their demo was set to come out, in mid-September, I found out that their new bassist, Austin Bennett, had died his hair bright blue. That blue hair was such an infantile action on his part and I could not see myself supporting nor promoting a release, nor a band, that featured such a person. Triskalyon was promoting the dark side of music and art and it was highly frowned upon in the black metal community to look like a nu-metal/industrial metal fan, people we called “mall-core”; teenagers who hung out at the mall, shopped at Hot Topic and listened to whatever metal, alternative and hardcore music MTV was promoting at the time. Trisklayon, on the other hand, was more of an underground movement, staying away from the masses and making a niche for itself. I initiated a vote to kick Austin out of Triskalyon and naturally, Death Kvlt as a band went out with him. For years after that, there was a rumor that “Vemotic Death” had been released through Mortification Records. This was propagated and “validated” by Metal Archives (a digital metal encyclopedia), but the fact was that Death Kvlt had been kicked out of Triskalyon before their demo CD-R was released and they never used the name “Mortification Records” anywhere on the covers when they self-released it. Thankfully, the band later cleared up the confusion.

Before the end of September, Eric left Triskalyon as well, as too did his bands Mortifier and Terrorist. Even though he was no longer associated with Triskalyon, I kept and continued to use the name Mortification Records. Perhaps part of it was out of spite, since Eric left on bad terms, but I had by then grown accustomed to the name and had at least one of my own releases planned for October. I was convinced that my first demo would be released before the Death Kvlt demo, which had been delayed, and that I could therefore claim Mortification Records as my own record label. In the end, neither Eric nor Hunter ever used the name Mortification Records on any of their releases, likely because Mortifier broke up shortly after leaving Triskalyon and Death Kvlt never distributed their demo nationally.

Chapter 2: The Start of Mortification Records (October 2006 to December 2006)

On October 2nd of 2006, the first Mortification Records release came out. MT001 was Vision Sufferance’s self-titled demo. The reason for using “MT” as the catalog number is now a debated issue. It is likely that it stood for “Mor-Tification”, but it is also possible that it hinted to “Mortification-Triskalyon”. I remember thinking that there were too many record labels using “MR” (for “Mortification Records”) as catalog numbers and found that “MT” was more original. There is always the possibility that I sent the wrong information to Aurélien by email when he designed the layout for Vision Sufferance’s demo and we continued on with it.  But part of my memory recalls me correcting him and saying that it was not “MR” and insisted on using “MT”.

All of the early demos released through Mortification Records featured the Blackletter font which Aurélien picked out, as Triskalyon’s graphic designer. Aurélien never designed a dedicated logo for Mortification Records, likely because I didn’t think we needed one, but it is safe to assume that had one ever been needed during those early months, it also would have been designed using the Blackletter font.

The first Mortification Records release was only distributed digitally. We were too poor to afford any kind of professional pressing and I was unequipped to make any physical merchandise myself at my grand-mother’s house. I was also release-happy (an excitement caused by the desire to release new material as soon as possible) and wanted Vision Sufferance’s material out there in any way, shape or form. Part of Triskalyon’s philosophy encompassed anti-capitalism, so we did not believe in selling our music. But more importantly, I felt that my music was not polished enough to warrant a price charge. Part of that was done on purpose, to mimic Les Legions Noires. We believed in putting our releases up for free download (a huge section of the Street Metal Forum was dedicated to pirated black metal and death metal releases), which at the time was a rather frowned upon ideal. Bands who released music digitally in the metal underground were at the time considered inferior and weren’t even allowed on Metal Archives because digital releases were not considered “official”.

We decided to design the layout of the first demo as a tape insert and suggested that people download the music, print the covers and dub their own cassettes. This idea did not go over well and perhaps it was ahead of it’s time since cassettes were ridiculed in the music community and thought of as something from the better-forgotten past. As far as I know, not a single person ever dubbed a Mortification Records tape. Not even myself, since I did not have the equipment to do so at my grand-mother’s house.

Earlier that summer, I had heard of Creative Commons, an organization that allowed artists to protect their creations without needing to pay for copyrighting. Creative Commons offered a free alternative and allowed one to chose the restriction and protection that a work had, which was perfect for us as it allowed fans to download and dub their own copies, so long as they were not trying to sell them without our permission afterwards. They were also free to re-share the downloaded version, which increased the awareness of the bands. We were really proud to be affiliated with Creative Commons and I used their logo everywhere that I could on the website, protecting everything from Mortification Records, Triskalyon and also my own bands. Years later, in January of 2012, I formed my own publishing company, Abridged Pause Publishing, and retroactively protected the Mortification Records releases through it.

Two days after Vision Sufferance’s demo was out, I released Vision Solitude’s self-titled demo. Another two days later came Vision Lunar’s self-titled demo. MT002 (released on October 4th) and MT003 (released on October 6th) followed the exact same method applied for MT001; Aurélien design the artwork with a tape layout and they were released digitally with download links on the Triskalyon/Mortification Records website. These first three releases were not promoted at all and were only distributed within the Triskalyon collective. We had the somewhat-successful Street Metal Forum at our disposal to distribute our music on, but I purposely withheld from promoting these early releases because I enjoyed the idea of having mysterious and rare albums that people would later seek out and inquire about. Once again, I was trying to recreate the mystique that Les Legions Noires had accomplished in the 1990’s. This mystery was later cancelled out when I became obsessed with documenting and archiving my music’s history everywhere that I could.

On November 5th, Vision Lunar’s second demo, “Lunar Sky“, was released as MT004 and on December 6th, Vision Lunar’s third demo, “Black Moon“, was released as MT005. These demos were also solely intended as digital releases with layouts again designed for people to print and dub their own tapes. But I was already planning for Throne of Mortality’s two upcoming EPs to be released on CD through Mortification Records. “Monumental Dedication” had been composed between May and August of 2006 and “Morbid Depression” was in the writing stage since September. I did not know how I was going manage to pay for CDs to be professionally pressed, but I knew that had the Throne of Mortality EPs been recorded professionally, and with a full band, CDs definitely needed to be made.

Chapter 3: The Slight Notability of Mortification Records (December 2006 to March 5, 2007)

In mid-December of 2006 I returned to Edison, New Jersey. Even though I was only planning to stay in the United States for a brief time, I had no intention to slow down the activities of Triskalyon and Mortification Records while there.

Vision Lunar’s fourth demo, “Luna Borea” (MT006), was recorded and released on the same day, January 3rd of 2007. This established a major change in direction for Vision Lunar and for Mortification Records. The song “L’esprit Dans Le Ciel” marked the first time that I used reverb on my songs and the quality in production was drastically different from the material that I had recorded and released between 2003 and 2006. This was due to the fact that I had access to all my music gear again, and combined with the new equipment that I had purchased in Canada, I was able to rig one of my bass amplifiers as an external sound card through my computer. This setup, as well as my discovery of new effects in my digital audio workstation, was so successful that it lead me to name my new “studio” “Mortified Studio” (later re-titled “Mortified Studios”, in plural, after moving to different locations).

I began to have a more professional outlook on Triskalyon and Mortification Records and I created a Myspace account for Triskalyon on January 5th of 2007 to heavily promote “Luna Borea“. It is likely that I created the first Mortification Records email address, mortificationrecords@hotmail.com, at the same time. The release was fairly successful, in the scheme of what we had done in the past, and a lot of people were listening to us. I then worked on a Vision Lunar compilation which was to be titled “Phase One: Marche Forêstiale (2006)“. This compilation was planned to be released through Mortification Records on CD-Rs and sold through the new Triskalyon website that I was working on. This compilation was to regroup all of Vision Lunar’s recordings from 2006, noting an obvious change in sound for the band’s 2007 material.

Vision Lunar’s fifth demo, “Luna Maria“, was released on February 2nd of 2007 as MT007. Like “Luna Borea“, it was released digitally with a tape cover. But this release was not well received, in comparison to “Luna Borea“. Furthermore, reviewers and followers started to categorized Mortification Records as a “net label”; a record label that exclusively released material digitally and usually for free. Digital music has changed quite a bit since the mid-2000’s, and to put it into context of what it was like then, being categorized as a “net label” was usually meant as an insult and hinted that there was little to no artistic vision/value and that the content was poor and unworthy of physical merchandise. Net labels were also known for releasing quantity, rather than quality, in such a way that the owners of the net labels did little to no promotion for their releases and relied solely on word of mouth from the multitude of outputs they had to spread the word. Early net labels served more as a web-hosting for a band’s release, rather than as a promoter and distributor.

The term “net label” has since fallen out of fashion for a few reasons; To begin with, in the late 2000’s a great many digital record labels started using the term proudly and promoted themselves as “net labels”. Some of these record labels even used the term as part of their company names (ie. instead of naming their company “Mortification Records”, they would have named it “Mortification Net Label”). Bands also started selling their music digitally because it was more accessible to them. Nowadays, the majority of records labels distribute their releases digitally so the term “net label” has become somewhat obsolete.

I was very displeased with Mortification Records getting labeled as a “net label”. I was only releasing material digitally because I could not afford to release my music physically, and although I did support music downloading, Mortification Records was in no way a “net label”. Part of the reason why I was so upset to be categorized as a “net label” was because of the amount of work that I was putting in behind the scenes. I was running Triskalyon and Mortification Records practically by myself, which at that time included designing a new website, designing the artwork and layout for my own releases (since I had grown displeased with the style that Aurélien was going for), doing all of the promotion and seeking new bands to work with on Mortification Records and to join Triskalyon. I was also filming a music video for Vision Éternel and handling photo shoots for my bands and other members of Triskalyon, all while planning out how I would afford to get CDs made for Throne of Mortality, Vision Lunar and Vision Éternel. Triskalyon and Mortification Records was founded and intended as a collective but by early February, I was the only member putting effort into it and pulling my resources. I was also the only one actively recording new music, though Aurélien was working on-and-off on Gallia Fornax. None of the other bands or members were working on anything else. Many of them had ideas and plans but none of them were doing anything to accomplish them.

In mid-February of 2007, a second “major event” occurred for Mortification Records and Triskalyon; the release of Vision Éternel’s first EP, “Seul Dans L’obsession” (MT008). “Seul Dans L’obsession” was Mortification Records’ (and also Triskalyon’s) first non-demo release, this was an extended play, and I wanted to promote it massively, to the best of my capabilities. I designed the artwork and layout of this release myself and intended to have some CDs made. The pictures that I took for the artwork gave me the idea to film a music video for the strongest song on the release, “Love Within Narcosis“. Luckily, a relatively new platform, YouTube, allowed me to share the video freely with the world. I created a Triskalyon/Mortification Records account on YouTube (I believe that it was originally under http://www.youtube.com/triskalyon but was later changed to http://www.youtube.com/mortificationrecords after Triskalyon folded) and released the music video on February 9th of 2007, five days before “Seul Dans L’obsession” came out. I later regretted not coming up with a different company name (such as “Mortification Productions“) to release the music video.

When “Seul Dans L’obsession” was released on February 14th of 2007, purposely on Valentines Day, it was strictly a digital release. But between February and August of 2007 I printed some covers and burned a few CD-R copies for friends. I have tried hard to remember who I made these copies for and I believe that at least six were made.

I promoted “Seul Dans L’obsession” on Myspace as best as I could. The people who discovered it were also listening to “Luna Borea” at the same time and didn’t understand that Triskalyon was a collective of many different bands; they all thought that “Triskalyon” was the name of the band. Obviously, Myspace was not the best platform to explain the concept. “Seul Dans L’obsession” went on to be downloaded a great many times over the years (easily over a thousand times) and it still remains Mortification Records’ most popular release.

Part of the heavy promotion for “Seul Dans L’obsession” included the launching of Triskalyon’s second website (http://www.freewebtown.com/triskalyon), which went live at the same time as the EP was released. FreeWebTown gave me more freedom than iFastNet, which limited the amount of visitors per week and even as the owner of the website, I was often faced with “limit reached”. But FreeWebTown was still a free server with limited space and because of this, I had to create several accounts to host the various releases that were available on the website: http://www.freewebtown.com/triskalyonvision, http://www.freewebtown.com/visionlunar, etc. Within weeks of launching the second website, the first Triskalyon and Mortification Records website on iFastNet was deleted due to inactivity.

The new website on FreeWebTown was strictly for Triskalyon and did not include a Mortification Records page. As all the Mortification Records releases had been by Triskalyon bands, I didn’t see an immediate need to repeat the same information. But I was likely already planning to design a separate website for the record label.

Through my promotion for “Seul Dans L’obsession“, Triskalyon was approached by the Greek promotion agency Dark Angel Promotion, which had an American representative named Jussi Gough over in California. She wanted to manage Triskalyon and give Mortification Records “major exposure”. She used to call me on the phone every night and we would talk about the plans for each band and for the record label. On February 20th she conducted an interview with me covering the various aspects of the collective but her questions proved that even she did not understand that we were more than a single band. For reasons beyond my knowledge she never posted the interview and became increasingly shady with more false promises before she eventually disappeared. During the couple of weeks in contact with her, Dark Angel Promotion never promoted a single Mortification Records release nor any Triskalyon band.

Throughout January and February I reached out to new and established bands to collaborate with in Triskalyon, and in turn to work with through Mortification Records. My first priority was to get new bands and members to join Triskalyon, but every band in the collective would have benefited from Mortification Records’ support.

One of the new members to join Triskalyon was one of my best friends in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Philip Altobelli (alias Darklink), who was to release some solo material under the name Darklink. Another new member was James Shepard (alias Surhim) from Warrenton, Virginia, whom I met while contacting fake Les Legions Noires Myspace account owners, several of which were operated by James. Most people reacted bitterly when I pointed out to them that claiming to be the Les Legions Noires on Myspace was wrong, James saw my point of view and we became friends. Ironically, James personally knew some of Triskalyon’s past members, Eric and Hunter. James had two bands that were scheduled to release material through Mortification Records: Azag-Thoth (which he had formed before joining) and Vision Pariah (which he created exclusively for Triskalyon). But both Phil and James fell into the same uselessness as Aurélien; they were feeding me their pipe dreams and were not making any effort to compose, record or contribute to the collective, nor help out with the promotion of Mortification Records’ releases. So while Mortification Records was founded by several people, as a collective, the responsibility and work was left entirely on me.

Some of the more-or-less established bands that I contacted at the time went on to do pretty well in the black metal scene. I reached out to the Canadian band Dark Forest, shortly after they had released their debut album “Aurora Borealis“, but David Parks was not interested. I think that he already had interest from bigger record labels. I contacted A Forest of Stars from England, who were at the time still writing their debut album, which eventually came out as “The Corpse of Rebirth” in 2008. At the time, they only had one or two songs on their Myspace page and very few followers. I loved what they were doing and thought they would be a perfect fit in Triskalyon and on Mortification Records. I cannot recall why we didn’t work together, but I seem to remember that they told me that they would reach out to me again once their album was done, which by then was obsolete because they had received several more offers.

Another project that I contacted, and still regret doing so, was Monarque from Quebec, Canada, which only had the demo “Ad Nauseam” released. Monarque’s sole member Patrick was more interested in Mortification Records reissuing that demo, while I wanted to put out new and unreleased material first. I had a really bad feeling about him after talking via Myspace with him and as it turned out, he mocked Triskalyon and was only interested in using the collective for access to Mortification Records. He was a real asshole.

I also approached my friend Howard Change’s new band. Howard had been the vocalist in Throne of Mortality but was forced to quit when he went off to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His new band was first called Funeral Junkie and was co-founded by Saquib Malik, a Pakistani immigrant. Shortly after Howard joined, the two of them renamed the band Black Albatross. I wasn’t able to convince neither Howard nor Saquib to join Triskalyon, but Saquib later went on to form his own record label and collective, Esto Perpetua Records. It is highly possible that I also reached out to Black Sand and Starless Nights once again but the band was slowly dissolving by then, and I’m not sure they would have fit in the genre that the collective was going for.

The last member to join Triskalyon was Louis-Claude Roux, a resident of the Paris region in France. Louis-Claude was the first member of the collective willing to help out with all aspects of things, from the record label to promoting the other projects and contributing to recordings. His band, Havarax, already had a new album ready to go. I really loved the album “No Access to the Divine” and very much wanted to release it through Mortification Records, but Louis-Claude already had a deal to release it on tape with the French record label Inquisitoris Ex Mundus Novus. This, I hoped, would help form a bond between Mortification Records and Inquisitoris Ex Mundus Novus and I attempted to plan out a co-release of some kind (either for Havarax or other Triskalyon bands) but the owner, Luc Armati, was not interested. Coincidentally, Inquisitoris Ex Mundus Novus went on to release A Forest of Stars’ full-length “The Corpse of Rebirth” on cassette a year later in March of 2008.

March

By late February the plans:

-next Havarax recording
-continue the monthly Lunar demos (march and april were composed)
-“Travels to Several Remote Nations of the Mind” (either Sufferance or Solitude)
-Gallia fornax full-length
-triskalyon promo pack comp

Triskalyon Promo Pack (2007, CD)
the promotional compilation that I was working on, “Triskalyon Promo Pack”, which was started in March 2007. The compilation featured almost all the artists on the roster at the time (minus Throne of Mortality) plus Havarax, which was the last addition to Triskalyon, and I was hoping to release whatever work was going to come out after “No Access to the Divine” (which was not released at the time yet). it would eventually come out in July of 2007

promo pack was going to have 2 songs from No Access to the Divine, which was still unreleased.
we were also distributing a 3-song sampler for Havarax’s last full-length, 2005’s “Guilty Pleasures”

Luna Nebula, people didn’t like the joke but liked the song

MT009: Vision Lunar – Luna Nebula (March 3, 2007)
MT010: Gallia Fornax – Gallia Fornax (March 5, 2007)
MT011: Gallia Fornax – Gloria Regnum (March 5, 2007)

Triskalyon ended on March 5th 2007
followed by the two Gallia Fornax demo, before going under a hiatus.
promo pack was abandoned
as was Phase One and the upcoming Vision Lunar monthly demos
Vision Sufferance’s Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the Mind was also put on hold

from: http://www.thefullwiki.org/Mortification_Records

Chapter 4: Mortification Records Post-Triskalyon (March 6, 2007 to Late July 2007)

Immediately after Triskalyon ended on March 5th, I planned to take a break from the music industry. But it didn’t take long for me to get back into it.

A month later I was already working on a Mortification Records website.
start using the name Mike Lachaire for MR to make it seem like I was someone else than the person behind all the bands I was releasing.

can’t remember if I was already working on the Mortification Records website while Triskalyon was still active or if I only started designing the website afterwards.

March 28 2007 created the Mortification Records page on Wikipedia, which was deleted, with the one for Abridged Pause Recordings and Vision Éternel, in early April of 2010
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortification_Records
previously had a Throne of Mortality page on Wikipedia in September of 2006.

February/March/early April created http://www.freewebtown.com/mortificationrex
maybe originally to host the extra files

on April 4th of 2007, I registered a free website domain name for Mortification Records at http://www.mortificationrecords.co.nr

the second Mortification Records website design featured a plain black background with orange boxes and text.
Free Web Town had a limit on the number of characters a website could have and I was forced to shorten “Mortification Records” to “Mortification Rex” in the link. This was influenced by Tragic Empire Records, which had an the email tragic_empire_rex@yahoo.com. Tragic Empire Records was at the time a big influence on me and the whole Les Legions Noires community.

in turn on April 18th I created triskalyon.co.nr

Need to get access to:
http://www.freedomain.co.nr
https://web.archive.org/save/http://www.freedomain.pro/news.php
Since 2012 Hotmail no longer works (use this in your favor, forgot password and cannot get the email on account)
Member login disabled since June 2016

http://archive.is/uVL6Y

-May 12th 2007 lunched http://www.mortificationrecords.co.nr website
website goes live

 

most of the bands slowly resumed. (havarax continued, Aurélien had material for a third Gallia Fornax demo which he never finished)

May 16th Aurélien releases “Obscure Synergy Chapter I” with no label affiliation on the Street Metal Forum
I did not like most of those bands, although most of them were doing the same thing that I was, all LLN bands. I vaguely remember us chatting about the possibility of putting it out through Mortification Records but I seem to recall objecting to it because I did not like the bands on there. I felt that Mortification Records should be limited to our own releases.

-May 20th announce upcoming Lunar full-length, which will re-record the 6 demo songs plus a few more. album would also feature bass and drums and be “highly produced”

-may 22nd announce Travels to Several Remote Nations of the Mind for MR as Vision Sufferance release

-May 23, 2007 add the .co.nr link to the new website to Mortification Records’ Wikipedia page.

-May28th promoted Triskalyon: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/threads/triskalyon-music-for-those-who-like-music.308362/

-late May start writing and recording Un Automne En Solitude (as of June 1st 3 songs written with 1 recorded)
Everything came naturally when I started working on Vision Éternel’s second EP, “Un Automne En Solitude” in May of 2007.

May 2007 Eliminator Will Kill You demo is released. Can’t make it to Vintage Vinyl to pickup a copy

-June 9 2007, possibly started submitting releases to Discogs on this day.

-June 26th 2007 http://www.myspace.com/mortificationrecords Mortification Records Myspace page is created with profile ID “206689693”

-June 28, 2007 add Mortification Records’ Myspace URL to the Wikipedia page.

-June 29 add information about Matthias to Wikipedia page. Matthias was the guy who had another record label and either already had or wanted to start doing cassette net-releases, and we planned to collaborate together.
“Co-operation with Europe
In late June [[2007 in music|2007]], Mike found an ambitious colleague by the name of Matthias in France. He was the owner of the new label [[Frozen Wing Records]], which had yet to release anything. A proposition to cooperate on new artists and to start releasing physical copies of future works was discussed.”
I completely forgot about Frozen Wing Records, rather rapidly I suppose, because when looking up the label, it seems that he released Smohalla in 2009, with whom I was very familiar.

-logo made between April-September 29 2007
a friend from Alberta (or Pickering, Ontario?) named Kelly Spinks also did the logo. She tried two or three different ones, all looked too black metal, until she finally just sent me one of her own hand writing which I photoshoped to get a cool look. It became the MR logo.
http://www.myspace.com/_xchaos
https://www.facebook.com/kelly.spinks.31

the first thing to use the logo was a Vision Éternel poster for Seul Dans L’obsession, in the second half of 2007. I never used the logo on the releases because I didn’t feel that it matched the design.

while still in NJ, there was discussion of teaming up with the New Jersey based promotion agency Anchors Set Sail Promotions, which was run by a girl named Faith Markunas

July 22nd 2007, edit Mortification Records’ information on Discogs. Meaning that some of the releases had already been submitted to the website prior to this. (Seul Dans L’obsession was already getting corrections by June 10th 2007)
https://www.discogs.com/label/88539-Mortification-Records/history#latest

over the summer and fall, design t-shirt and poster for Seul Dans L’obsession, try to get a feel for it on Myspace

Late July, Eiman asks me to design the Eliminator website, which I did similar to the Mortification Records website, but with green boxes instead of orange ones.
Green was chosen to match the new logo

http://archive.is/uVL6Y

Chapter 5: Relocating Back to Canada, Mortified Productions and Abridged Pause Recordings (Late July 2007 to March 2008)

between July 28th and July 31st 2007 I moved back to Montreal. moved to Bleury, couldn’t record but planned Lunar material. when equipment setup again started working on Soufferance material which got the ball rolling to release stuff again.

August 2007 Eliminator second demo comes out, by this time, Eiman is already asking me to release the upcoming album which he started recording and he sends me unmixed versions.

planned for 3 Vision Lunar demos for September, October and November of 2007
shortly after that started working on Vision Sufferance stuff on top of the second Vision Éternel EP which was only delayed by artwork

September 24th, I add the link to Mortification Records’ Discogs page on Wikipedia

Mortified Productions already existed as of (or was started on) October 13th 2007. Lasted until January/February/March of 2008.
Added Mortified Productions to Wikipedia on October 15th.

physical releases by other people’s music, while MR was mostly demos from my own bands

October 13th biography from freedomains.co.nr website:
Mortification Records started out in the summer of 2006 by Mike Lachaire, with plans to release local and underground bands material through online download. A collaboration with the bands of Triskalyon led to the labels’ stability and recognition.
A year later, Mortification Records has expanded to Europe with the joining of Matthias. Plans to work in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean with the upcoming bands are in strong progress.

October 13 bio from Last.fm:
Plans to work in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean with the upcoming bands are in strong progress.

October 13 posted bands wanted on Metal Archives forum:
http://www.metal-archives.com/~metalarc/board/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=45605&view=next

Hello to all musicians. I will make this short so none of you get bored.
I am looking for new bands to work with on my label, Mortification Records. I have released some material last year and this year, and am now looking to expand. I am looking to do a couple of split releases, as well as pressing some real material. If you have a band or side project that would be interested then let us know!
Please email me with a link to some material, and I will get back to you if I am interested: mortificationrecords(at)hotmail(dot)com
http://www.mortification.eu.pn/
www.myspace.com/abridgedpause
www.last.fm/label/Mortification+Records
www.discogs.com/label/Mortification+Records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortification_Records

October 13
Submit Mortification Records to RateYourMusic
https://rateyourmusic.com/labels/profile_details?id=12630

October 14th biography from RYM:
Mortification Records was founded in September of 2006 in order to release material from bands around the New Jersey area. Delays occurred and it resulted in releasing material from Canadian and French bands instead.
The label has so far only released material for free download, but has been working to find new artists in which material will be pressed.

October 16 adding Mortification Records’ RYM link to Wikipedia

on October 29th started using my real name for MR instead of Mike Lachaire
Same day submitted Mortified Productions to RYM (possibly this day I settled on the idea to make this new label and while submitting it decided that Mike Lachaire was no longer needed

“Productions” was chosen probably to reflect Drakkar Productions and Embassy Productions

October 30 change from Mike Lachaire to Alex Julien on Mortification Records’ Wikipedia page.

In October 2007, Mortification Records started working on a side label named “Mortified Productions”. The label would release a new line of catalog numbers, and would be professionally pressed. The search for new artists as well as compilations of already signed artists began to take shape.

During this time, longtime friend Eiman Nejad had finished the first full length of Eliminator entitled “Breaking the Wheel”. He asked me before anyone else if I wanted to release it. I really wanted to and in order to separate the digital releases from the physical material, I created the sub-label “Mortified Productions”. This would have eventually released the Eliminator album, the two Throne of Mortality EPs (which I still planned to record even if the band had disbanded) and the already-announced Vision Sufferance album. To promote the new label, I decided to put together a compilation and got in touch with many underground artists. Among them were Vision Éternel, Matt Dell, Dukes of the Archipelago, maybe The Douglas Fir and possibly Slow Learner. The compilation fell apart, but was the basis for what was eventually released as “Diluvian Temperals”

In the last week of November of 2007, I left for New York City to sell Christmas trees with my cousin Frank. He rented a stand on the corner of Broadway and 102nd. Before leaving, he made statements that lead me to believe that I would be coming home with $3000 USD cash in my pocket, as he claimed to have made $10,000 USD cash by himself the year prior. I planned to use that money to finance Mortified Productions: release Eliminator’s album on a big budget and Vision Sufferance’s EP on a smaller budget. I cannot remember exactly how much money I came home with in my pocket when I returned on December 25th of 2007, but it was nowhere near what he had promised. He really ripped me off. I’m tempted to say it was more between $800-$1000 USD, which went mostly to pay off December’s late rent and January’s upcoming rent (I think that I paid $350-$375 CAD a month, so times two). I only had a couple hundred dollars left to buy food and live off of until I could find a job. I came home to find that my roommates had eaten all of my food and used all my laundry soap (it was a brand new box, not opened yet when I left). I also remember having to go to the TD Bank down the street on Bleury Street to exchange my USD to CAD; on top of a horrendous exchange rate, they also charged me fees for not being a TD client and I remember receiving less in CAD than I had in USD (instead of more, since the USD was stronger than the CAD). But I was too young and naive to realize that they were ripping me off and I could have gone elsewhere. I was already with RBC but they were further to get to. I was so broke that I started working as a bus-boy at a bar across the street, the Vinyl Lounge, on December 31st of 2007 for their New Year’s Eve party (less than a week after coming back from NYC).

Eliminator was late 2007, while still recording the album. wanted me to pay for the artwork by Ed Repka.

Financial troubles kept me from releasing the Eliminator album on Mortified Productions and the name was dropped altogether

However in February 2008, the idea was aborted when Mortification Records was merged under the ownership of Abridged Pause Recordings, a new label which would feature a totally different catalog. This would allow to keep Mortification Records as an online based digital label and build Abridged Pause into a store based label.

MT012: Vision Lunar – Luna Pluvia (November 24, 2007)
MT013: Vision Sufferance – Forthcoming Travels (November 30, 2007)

was also thinking of putting together Triskalyon Promo Pack again, different options of making it commemorative, with more songs than originally planned, but didn’t end up releasing it.

Vision Sufferance – Forthcoming Travels (2007, CD)
was going to be a CD on Mortified Productions

• Throne of Mortality – Monumental Dedication (2006, CD)
• Throne of Mortality – Morbid Depression (2007, CD)
• Eliminator – Breaking the Wheel (2007, CD)
• Various Artists Compilation (2008, Digital)

October 2007 got release-happy again. posted on metal forums looking for new bands to sign but received very little interest.

November 5th 2007 uploaded the whole Mortification Records back catalog to Mediafire, as opposed to using the FreeWebTown links.

November 20th 2007 created Mortification Records PayPal account. likely to order CDs online.

It was in November of 2007, now living in Montreal again, that I would get the label active again. The release of the first Vision Lunar demo in eight months, “Luna Pluvia”, and the promo ep for Vision Sufferance, “Forthcoming Travels” would bring hope to the fans of the bands and label again. The new Lunar demo was completely different from the previous demos, as it was a different tuning and a different production, and I was now looking to get a full line-up for the band again. The Soufferance promo however was something that I was hoping to be big. It was ideally supposed to be released by Dungeons Deep Records, but after he bailed out, I wanted to press this EP on CDr, which would have been a big thing for the label. I bought 100 empty black jewel cases in hopes of carrying this through. I also had announced that the full-length album by Soufferance, “Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the Mind” (then titled “Travels to Several Remote Nations of the Mind”) would be released as the first CD on the label, and it’s first full-length album.

On December 31st of 2007 I submitted the bands to MusicBrainz and on January 14th of 2008 I submitted the albums on MusicBrainz

In January of 2008 I also redesigned the Mortification Records website, but I don’t remember what differences were made. Vision Éternel also had a second EP practically complete, and was only waiting for the right output module, but was mostly delayed by the artwork. It later on saw the light of day in March of 2008.

before coming up with Abridged Pause, considered using Transatlantic Records (or Recordings), reff to Hitchcock when I was brainstorming names in January of 2008. already taken.

I started up Abridged Pause Recordings in January/February of 2008, intended as a post-metal vinyl record label, and originally intended on sub-labeling Mortification Records as the digital distributor of some sorts. But I decided against that idea because the material was so different, and APR was really a professional idea.

Indie label motivated by the coming trend which wasn’t really a trend at the time at least for me since I came from a metal background. I was discovering a completely new genre

Band of horses
Monsters of folk
Built to Spill
Maybe more bands from Rox?

MT014: Vision Éternel – Un Automne En Solitude (March 14, 2008)
possible that it was released in April? date for pictures is late March 2008
possibility that Automne was released on April? Dates for pictures are later too

Mortified Productions folded officially on March 22nd 2008

Chapter 6: The End of Mortification Records (April 2008 to December 2008)

for some time I wasn’t sure if Abridged Pause Recordings and Mortification Records would be completely separate companies or if one would be labeled as an imprint of the other.
APR was going to be indie rock so very different from MR

at the time being labeled a “net label” was still frowned upon and took away a lot of glory from the company. I wanted APR to be different than that, because I wanted to do physical releases so badly and I didn’t want people thinking that APR was going to be another digital-only record label.

On April 21st of 2008 I finally made the decision that Mortification Records would become a sub-label of Abridged Pause Recordings, with Mortification Records acting as a digital record label which focused on raw-recorded demos on my own bands, while Abridged Pause Recordings would act as the head company with physical releases and higher-end products by other people’s music. There was a big dilemma in my mind to keep the two labels separate not to give the impression that Abridged Pause Recordings was a black metal record label

Jeremy thought that all the MR releases should be added on the APR website to make it look like I had more content.

after VE ep release, what did I do? release was delayed because of artwork, finally came out March 14th, but then what?
maybe some promo in April
move to De Lanaudiere in May and have issues with recording stuff on my computer. remember having issues for like a year (finished Travels in June of 2009)
june-september 2008 work on Human Infect and made plans for split with Ethereal Beauty (planned for APR already) and find Dreams of the Drowned and Black Autumn
porbably started working on Diluvian in October of 2008.
focused on APR but when did I start working on Diluvian? only came out in August of 2009. but it was originally supposed to come out in April of 2009.

De Lanaudiere May 2008

At some point between April and October of 2008 I changed the Mortification Records Myspace page into the Abridged Pause Recordings Myspace pages

Jeremy worked on the APR website very slowly for nearly a year and a half. October/November the APR website went live and I really felt that it was a new beginning for me and wanted nothing to do with MR anymore because it evoked struggle and a constant lack of quality in music.

at the same time, I made up my mind that APR and MR were separate companies, not related imprints.

freewebtown was always getting blocked and labeled as spam websites by Firefox and Chrome
at the same time my email accounts were hacked, both mortificationrecords@hotmail.com and hackingd7@hotmail.com
possible that I couldn’t even regain access to freewebtown.com/mortificationrex and it’s labeled as no longer existing

Between August and October of 2008 the mortificationrecords@hotmail.com email got hacked through Myspace promotion malware.

Around the same time, September/October of 2008 I decided to stop Mortification Records and focus on Abridged Pause Recordings exclusively.

October 15th I remove hotmail email address from Last.fm bio and replace it with www.abridgedpause.com website
also same day re-write whole bio to:
Mortification Records was a label active from 2006 to 2008 founded by Alex Julien. The plans were to release all Triskalyon releases, however it continued to release albums after the fall of the group. The label has since folded, and Alex has gone on to found Abridged Pause Recordings
Feel free to message the new label about demo submissions:
www.abridgedpause.com
www.myspace.com/abridgedpause

possibly in October of 2008 I published Triskalyon Promo Pack for archival purposes, dating it back to March 7th 2007.

On December 9th 2008 I added this to the Last.fm bio
You can download the free compilation here: http://www.mediafire.com/?3atwtnymtnz
so I must have gotten nostalgic and finished up the Triskalyon Promo Pack and posted it up for download.

MR was no longer active since March.April of 2008. Started hinting to the label not existing anymore in October of 2008 and finally made it official on December 28th of 2008 with the last website.

highly possible that co.nr website no longer worked because freewebtown had closed down, and since my hotmail email was hacked, I didn’t have access to changing it.
multiple reasons: freewebtown was always blocked and labeled as spam, couldn’t promote it on forums or myspace or by email, it was always getting tagged as spam and the link was removed.

I thought this was really the end so I created the third website for the label (http://www.mortification.eu.pn).

On December 28th I updated the Last.fm bio with this:
All releases can be downloaded on the new website: http://www.mortification.eu.pn

mortification.eu.pn, unfortunately limited me to the amount of characters i could chose but as opposed to co.nr, they offered a small file space to have a landing/index page
since this was going to be a commemorative website, only to list the releases, made everything on one page and hosted the label logo on ImageShack and the download links
on Mediafire.

eu.pn bio:
Mortification Records was a record label based out of Montréal, Québec, which focused on atmospheric genres of music ranging from black metal to ambient.
The label was run by Alex Julien who now operates Abridged Pause Recordings.
You may contact Mortification Records at mortificationrecords@gmail.com

-Created eu.pn website on December 28th 2008.
-probably created the mortificationrecords@gmail.com email on same date (oldest email is dated same day)

as a way to keep everything tidy and documented.

“Atmospheric music for aspiring minds”

distributed the Ethereal Beauty and Dreams of the Drowned demos, which were also up for free download on the APR website on the band pages.

Chapter 7: A Year and a Half of Down Time (January 2009 to July 2010)

Little happened with Mortification Records while I focused on Abridged Pause Recordings. But I did maintain and upkeep the websites and databases.

even though the label had folded, I still maintained the website and made sure that the albums were documented on Rate Your Music, Discogs, Music Brainz, Last.fm and so on.

January 1st 2010 created the Mortification Records Archive.org page

On February 14th and 15th of 2010 I submitted the catalog of releases on Archive.org

April 7th 2010 Mortification Records Wikipedia page gets deleted, along with the Vision Éternel and Abridged Pause Recordings ones, following the updates that I made regarding the third Vision Éternel EP release “Abondance De Périls“, Beyond the Dune Sea album and the creation of the Abridged Pause Recordings Bandcamp page. All these edits lead to a moderator looking into several of my contributions and deciding that Mortification Records, Abridged Pause Recordings and Vision Éternel were not worthy of being on Wikipedia. Though I agree with the ruling, it still upset me.

Chapter 8: The Revival (August 2010 to October 2010)

Henry bourassa 2010

MT015: Lanterns Awake – The Times & Betrayals of Charles A. Lemieure (August 22, 2010)
MT016: Lanterns Awake – The Unforgivable Truth of a Broken Family (September 4, 2010)
MT017: Vision Lunar – Phase One (2006-2009) (October 6, 2010)

August 22nd 2010 created the Mortification Records Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mortificationrecords
wrote a new version of the Mortification Records biography, which updated what had been documented on the Wikipedia article.

But in August 2010, I wanted to release the Lanterns Awake material, who knows what I was thinking when I did that. But I decided to release those two EPs under Mortification Records, without officially saying the label was active again. It was sort of a release by an inactive record label. I should have done that when I released the Vision Éternel Rehearsal promo in February of 2010, but I released that with no label. The Lanterns Awake release gave me a desire to release things again on Mortification Records, so I created a facebook page for the label, http://www.facebook.com/mortificationrecords

The Bandcamp page was created on October 1st of 2010. http://www.mortificationrecords.bandcamp.com at the time I considered it the last website.

this was probably, though impossible to find exact date, around the fall of 2010. at some point i wanted to bring back MR as a digital label and co-run it with another label that released digital albums with cassette tape covers. must find that info and add to story.

Oddly enough some new Vision Lunar fans contacted me in September. I had never thought of releasing anything for Lunar again, but this gave me an idea. What if Mortification could release a discography of Lunar on CD! I made them right away, still in September, but officially declared the release date as October 6th 2010, to commemorate with the first Lunar demo.

Vision Lunar CD made and given out roughly a month before “official” release date, which ended up being the digital release date

Beautiful:Emptiness – Discography (2010, Digital)

Last.fm Scrobbles

2010 September 13th
Beautiful:Emptiness — Nubes del Desánimo
Beautiful:Emptiness — Introspection I: Involuntary Disaffection

I was still hungry for more, so I contacted a small band that I always felt could be compared to my own music, Beautiful:Emptiness, in order to release a discography of all his material. He sent me all three releases and also some pictures. I never had the motivation to come up with something decent for the artwork, so the idea was dropped. It was also a combination of releasing something on Mortification, in which I had no musical implication, I couldn’t see it fit. So Mortification has been dormant, under what seems to be its third hiatus yet.

Was going to include the unreleased album “Tragic Dreams Transcending Towards Reality” that was scheduled to be released on Frozen Veins Records but never came out.
“Finding Happiness in Suicide” another album never released.
a third thing too.

Seeing the release schedule of Mortification Records, Lanterns Awake in August, Lanterns Awake in September, Vision Lunar in October, I probably was scheduling to have Beautiful:Emptiness released in November 2010.

Possibility: This guy who had another record label and either already had or wanted to start doing cassette net-releases, and we planned to collaborate together. No way of knowing if this was in late 2010 or if it was the guy Matthias is October of 2007.

Chapter 9: The Legacy (November 2010 to Present)

Over the years I have continued to maintain the databases and the websites and social pages as best as I could.

Back in March of 2010 I had release a promotional single for Vision Éternel, Rehearsal in promotion for the upcoming EP “Abondance De Périls” on Abridged Pause Recordings.
That single was self-released by the band with no record label affiliation. I didn’t want to give it an Abridged Pause Recordings catalog number because it wasn’t a professional release and I had also only intended it to be available for a limited time. But because of my obsession with organized released, I later could not stand that “Rehearsal” had been released without a record label. So I retroactively labeled it as an uncatalogged Mortification Records release.

Rehearsal November 30th, 2009
released on Feb 20th 2010 by Vision Éternel alone but Rehearsal was changed from no label to MR on October 30th 2011

Starting on December 5th of 2016 I began re-writing the biography of Mortification Records. In the early morning of December 18th 2016 I cleaned up the record label’s logo and finally made a vector backup of it. That same morning, I updated the short biographies, fixed the accurate founding and folding dates, reinserted mortificationrecords@gmail.com as the contact email and submitted the cleaned up logo on Discogs, RateYourMusic, Metal Archives, MusicBrainz, All Record Labels, Bandcamp and Facebook.

also recreated the mortificatio.eu.pn website with cleaned up logo and links to Bandcamp instead of MediaFire

The Complete Discography of Mortification Records

1. MT001: Vision Sufferance – Vision Sufferance (Digital Demo, October 2 2006)
2. MT002: Vision Solitude – Vision Solitude (Digital Demo, October 4 2006)
3. MT003: Vision Lunar – Vision Lunar (Digital Demo, October 6 2006)
4. MT004: Vision Lunar – Lunar Sky (Digital Demo, November 5 2006)
5. MT005: Vision Lunar – Black Moon (Digital Demo, December 6 2006)
6. MT006: Vision Lunar – Luna Borea (Digital Demo, January 3 2007)
7. MT007: Vision Lunar – Luna Maria (Digital Demo, February 2 2007)
8. none : Vision Éternel – Love Within Narcosis (Music Video, February 9, 2007)
9. MT008: Vision Éternel – Seul Dans L’obsession (Digital EP, February 14 2007)
10. MT008: Vision Éternel – Seul Dans L’obsession (CD-R EP, February 14 2007)
11. MT009: Vision Lunar – Luna Nebula (Digital Demo, March 3 2007)
12. MT010: Gallia Fornax – Gallia Fornax (Digital Demo, March 5 2007)
13. MT011: Gallia Fornax – Gloria Regnum (Digital Demo, March 5 2007)
14. none : Triskalyon Promo Pack (Digital Compilation, March 2007)
15. MT012: Vision Lunar – Luna Pluvia (Digital Demo, November 24 2007)
16. MT013: Vision Sufferance – Forthcoming Travels (Digital EP, November 30 2007)
17. MT014: Vision Éternel – Un Automne En Solitude (Digital EP, March 14 2008)
18. none : Vision Éternel – Rehearsal November 30th, 2009 (Digital Single, February 20 2010)
19. MT015: Lanterns Awake – The Times & Betrayals of Charles A. Lemieure (Digital Demo, August 22 2010)
20. MT016: Lanterns Awake – The Unforgivable Truth of a Broken Family (Digital Demo, September 4 2010)
21. MT017: Vision Lunar – Phase One (2006-2009) (CD-R Compilation, October 6 2010)