A prolific American cassette label of the late 2010s and 2020s, and one of the clearest working examples of how the noise underground still runs on physical tape, small batches and personal networks.
Deathbed Tapes is an American extreme-experimental cassette label, founded in 2018 by an operator known as Alex, working out of Piqua, Ohio. It deals in harsh noise, power electronics, harsh noise wall and death industrial. I keep it at Tier III: a notable and well-regarded label of the current underground, documented here for its place in the living scene rather than for any foundational role, and recent enough that its longer standing is still being written.
The origin is characteristic of how these labels start. Alex had been helping out with Bizarre Audio Arts, doing artwork, dubbing tapes and packing orders, and started Deathbed after being turned down by the labels he wanted to work with. The first releases were his own noise and a set of themed compilations; the early comp Project Disconnect reportedly took six months to assemble, after which the operation sped up considerably. What followed was volume: past three hundred releases in roughly seven years, a rate that places the label among the more prolific noise operations of its moment.
Format is the point, as the name announces. Deathbed is cassette-first, custom-loaded and pro-dubbed in small batches, with the physical object and its packaging treated as central rather than incidental. This is the same instinct that runs through the whole tradition the archive documents: the noise underground has always understood the tape and its artwork as part of the work, not merely its container, and Deathbed is a contemporary instance of exactly that logic operating at scale.
The roster is large and international, and it intersects the archive at many points. Names already documented here that have appeared on the label include Vomir, The Rita, Masonna, Bastard Noise, K2, Black Leather Jesus and The Vomit Arsonist, alongside a wide field of newer projects. The label's large themed compilations, such as 7 Deadly Sins and Death Signal, are a useful map of who is working in the current scene and how Deathbed positions itself within it.
One boundary should be stated plainly. Alongside the noise and power-electronics catalogue, the label has issued serial-killer spoken-word cassettes and some black-metal-adjacent material. That side of the catalogue sits outside this archive's remit and is not documented here; the entry covers the noise, power-electronics and death-industrial work only. Noting the boundary is itself part of keeping the entry honest about what it does and does not cover.
Citation. Where Deathbed Tapes sits in the archive: a Tier III contemporary American cassette label; a working node in the current power-electronics and harsh-noise underground; connected to the archive through a roster that overlaps with Vomir, The Rita, Bastard Noise, K2 and others; grown from the Bizarre Audio Arts circle; and documented for its noise catalogue, with its out-of-scope material set aside.
VAGO · c. the Anthropocene