25% off Distro + next release is a surprise!

January 29, 2026 by David Norman

First off, our next release is a surprise release on February 2nd at 9am PST / 11am CST / 12pm EST. What is it? Who knows! While you wait and rack your brains, please head over to any distro vinyl/cassette/cd page (aka anything that isn’t ZBR, Tomb Tree, or Softseed), pick up some stuff, then for 25% off until Sunday at 11:59pm PST just write “FUCK ICE” in the notes upon checkout and within 24 hours you’ll get that sweet, sweet 25% refund (does not include shipping). Pages are linked below:

12” # - N

12” O - Z

5/6/8/9/10”

7”

Cassettes

CDs

Sungaze got a music video premiere for “Always Looking Behind” that you should check out. Their dreamy and beautiful shoegaze out of Ohio is already up for 12” pre-order with 5 tracks available (and 5 more coming). The song is awesome and the video is mesmerizing. Check it out by clicking on the pic above or this text, listen/buy the LP below.

CanaDave and Wollruss will be playing/distroing the Piss show in Victoria this Friday. This is the first Wollruss show in well over a year and our first with a full lineup, I’ve embedded a short 50-second video below giving you an idea of what we sound like now.

Elle from Fainting Dreams and Athousandangelsandseven came on the OMSB podcast and discussed a lotta cool stuff. Always a pleasure hanging with her. Tapes for Fainting Dreams and 7”s for Athousandangelsandseven are still available! Click on the pic above or text here to go to the full post.

I was interviewed for State Of Sound Magazine regarding starting a label. My interview portion is actually pretty big but was mostly cut so I’ll post that full interview next week in case you are interested. Click on the pic below or this text to check it out!

Mourn Recif recently played a stacked show at Influence Board Shop in Victoria. Let’s be real here, Something To Remember blew me the fuck away and hopefully ZBR/Tomb Tree will be involved in their extremely bright future. Check out a song from each band above and jam/buy the Mourn Recif EP below.

This Noise Is Ours gave the new Gravess a great review. We sold about 75% of our stock so if you’re on the fence about it, just read this review and snag one before you regret your life choices. Click on the pic above or this text for the review, jam/buy below.

Today’s Last Fucking Copy is the final of our 50 copies of Apostles Of Eris x Ennui split 7”. Very cool manilla envelope jacket with lyrical insert available on our Bandcamp. Snag now or forever hold your peace.

Johnny’s Reco-mmendations: SMUSH = My favourite shoegaze/indie rock band has a new EP coming but you can scope 3 of the covers now and they all rule.

2025 - 08 - 06 /// Usurp Synapse vinyl announcement + Distro discount till Fri.

August 06, 2025 by David Norman

Usurp Synapse 2x12” for ‘Disinformation Fix’ with die-cut gatefold covers are at the plant with tests already approved. Holy fucking shit that’s exciting! Releases in October.

In an attempt to help pay for the cost I’ve got this Canadian/International store (also ships to the U.S.) on 50% off everything in the distro 12” tab and 25% off all distro 7”s (discount automatically applied within 24 hours of checkout). This goes until Friday at 9am PST when the Heaven Through Violence + Rosemary Nods Upon The Grave 7”s release.

Just a heads up, there is no shipping in the US for the next 2 weeks as U.S. Dave is on the road seeing his family. So the U.S. store is open just no shipping until after Aug 20th. Thanks for your understanding and patience regarding this matter.

Heaven Through Violence and Rosemary Nods Upon The Grave 7” finally release this Friday! We’ve only got 50 copies spread across Bandcamp, the U.S.A. store, and the Canada/International store, so if this is your jam don’t sleep on it!

Serrate’s final song premiered over at Not Just A Phase last night. “Kill For the Ones You Love” is a phenomenal song and fans of screamo and Converge are going to lose their shit when this releases in full on September 8th via ourselves and Bitter Melody Records. Click on the pic above or this text to go to the premiere.

Bok Suna’s ‘Carnate’ releases Friday August 29th but there’s a new music video for “honest person” embedded above. Tapes for ‘Carnate’ available now. Single #2 and music video #2 release on Friday! Amazing bedroom pop meets shoegaze, featuring the drummer of Hillsboro!

We are literally on our last copies of Nuvolascura’s ‘How This All Ends’ so snag it now or forever hold your peace. Eklektik Rock picked up on its amazingness and gave it a great review with you can check out by clicking on the pic above or this text. Jam/buy below!

Avery Friedman got a wicked review from Real Gone, 12”s should be here this month! Oh happy day. Click on the pic above or this text to go to the review. Jam the debut and snag a copy below.

Dylan played in Excrucis and was the most recent guest on CanaDave’s OMSB Podcast. Access the podcast by clicking on this text or the embed above. Jam/buy the Excrucis cassette below, there will be only one run!!!

A friendly reminder that the ZBR Fest 2025 videos for the pre-show and main fest, the former is embedded below, with the latter linked to this text. ZBR Fest 2026 is happening in Vancouver on May 1st-3rd. May 1st will be a pre-show on Vancouver Island in Victoria, followed by the Sat/Sun main fest happening in Vancouver.

Johnny’s Reco-mmendations: BAAN = This South Korean band released an absolute banger and it features our boy Jared Stimpfl from Orphan Donor on drums!

2023 - 09 - 13 /// Sleem today, surprise drop tomorrow

September 13, 2023 by David Norman

Tomorrow we’ve got a surprise, two-song, lathe 7” limited to 100 copies (we’ll only have 50 though, and the band will have the remainder) dropping at 9am PST / 11am CST / 12pm EST. It’s an absolute banger and the band played ZBR Fest 2022, blowing us all away. End of hints.

Riversleem got a premiere of their opening track from the forthcoming ‘A Second Release by Riversleem’ that drops September 25th on red 7” vinyl /100 Zegema Beach and the band. Big thanks to Borderline Fuckup for the premiere. That site has been poppin’ off lately. Love the anniversary posts they’ve been up to. Click on any of this text or the pic above to jam that premiere!

CanaDave has been posting ZBR Fest videos on the label’s Youtube account the past few days. These are essentially the second of two videos that will be posted in the CanaDave wrapup of ZBR Fest 2023 on the (((((OPENmind/SATURATEDbrain))))) blogspot in the next few days.

There was also this Massa Nera full set filmed by [hate5six] that is definitely worth the 28 minutes of your time. All variants of every format are either sold out or almost sold out, everything can be bought/is linked through this text via our bandcamp.

CanaDave did a very full circle Out Past the Rings for Carrion Spring’s 2019 self title cassette. There’s one copy left on bandcamp! (linked here)

There were a bunch of restock updates last week that included some ZBR releases and distro items. I’ve embedded the ones below that didn’t sell immediately. These generally are down to the last copies!

DESCUBRIENDO A MR. MIME - silkscreened EP (12

Sold out

DESCUBRIENDO A MR. MIME - silkscreened EP (12")

CA$40.00

Sold out

Улыбайся Ветру - Illusions (12")

CA$23.50

Sold out

GHOST SPIRIT - Hourglass (12"LP)

CA$16.00

Fianl reminder!!!

Hey! If you have ever wanted to be a part of one of the grave, neighbors Halloween cover compilations that I do, this may be your last chance. To be honest each year it’s getting more and more difficult to get people to submit. Last year, some friends came through at the last minute and help me wrangle up some more songs, but this year it’s starting to look like i’ll have to do a bunch myself if I want to make a decent size compilation out of it. Anyway, if you have an unreleased recording of a cover song or would like to do one and can submit it by October 1, Let me know. I would love to continue doing this but if there’s no interest maybe I should just let it go.
~Edie: Coma Regalia/Middle Man Records/etc.

Hit them up here: middlemanrecords@gmail.com

Johnny’s Reco-mmendations: NÉBOAS = This Spanish screamo/crust band released a fire new album the other day. It’s free/donation-based so everyone wins!

2023 - 09 - 08 /// Premiere City

September 08, 2023 by David Norman

Oooo baby after a few days of silence all three of our labels had a premiere go down! First is Euclid C Finder via No Clean Singing for Zegema Beach (releases October 27th), then there was Tomb Tree’s My Hair Is A Rat’s Nest which got picked up by Stereogum (releases September 21st), and finally CanaDave’s newest label Softseed Music saw a song/music video release from Social Caterpillar via Idioteq.com (releases October 7th). Click on each picture to go to the corresponding premiere!

CanaDave and (((((OPENmind/SATURATEDbrain))))) did a podcast with Rob, founder of Not Just A Phase podcast. Click on this text for the very entertaining introduction and additional links.

Operation X-Ray did a double-episode this week with tons of ZBR and Tomb Tree stuff including: Crowning, New Forms, Widowdusk, Joliette, Piet Onthel, and Vibora!

Restocks going down in the Canada/International store tomorrow morning at 10am PST so check back for some hard-to-find awesomeness!!!

Hit them up here: middlemanrecords@gmail.com

Johnny’s Reco-mmendations: LIMBS = The band’s new album is fucking awesome. Hard recommend!!!

2022 - 04 - 23 /// Massive distro update tomorrow!

April 23, 2022 by David Norman

On Sunday April 24th we’ll have a freakin’ massive distro update at 9am PST / 11am CST / 12pm EST with a ton of stuff from Moment Of Collapse Records, Dingleberry Records and some random stuff. Seriously, there’s a ton of amazing shit here that you don’t need to worry about insane Euro shipping. This pic is just a taste.

Not only was the Pig Donovan music video premiered yesterday on Brooklyn Vegan (linked here) but Apostles Of Eris’ split partner on the 12” Gossip just had a song premiere on the Canadian radio! Nuts, I tell you. Get detonated here:

A friendly reminder that the very sick Reverie album was released digitally yesterday. We’ll have news for you when we get the 12”s.

Johnny’s Reco-mmendations: THE FIFTH ALLIANCE = I picked up some of these for the distro update and fell in love. Massive, posty, epic, rock/hardcore/metal from the Netherlands.