Country of origin United States Founder The Red Chord | Location Revere, Massachusetts Founded 2003 | |
Genre Extreme metal, hardcore punk, avant-garde metal Official website www.blackmarketactivities.com Distributors Metal Blade Records, RED Distribution Artists The Red Chord, The Tony Danza Tapdanc, Behold The Arctopus, Today Is the Day, Lamb Of God Albums No Absolutes in Human, Horrorscension, Danza II: Electric Boogaloo, Danza III: The Series of Unfortu, He Is Never Coming B | ||
Black Market Activities (sometimes abbreviated BMA) is an American independent record label that was founded in 2003 by Guy Kozowyk, the frontman of the Boston, Massachusetts-based extreme metal band the Red Chord.
Contents
History
Black Market Activities was started with the stated goal of releasing records by bands that are pushing the boundaries of extreme music while keeping a friendly artist-centered attitude that steers clear of a lot of the "major label" business-like dealings that tend to hurt and exploit bands. The founder of the label being an extreme musician himself, he can more easily relate to the issues that are important to the bands on the label, and attempts to balance the business and art aspects of the music world. BMA is a tight-knit group of bands and friends who share similar ideas and musical tastes.
In the years since its creation, BMA has grown quickly and gained much recognition. Black Market Activities teamed up with long-running metal record label Metal Blade Records on a production and distribution deal which allows all BMA releases to reach the same major stores as Metal Blade releases. This has propelled BMA and all its bands forward quite a bit. It has also, however, lead to some confusion as to which bands are on BMA and which bands are on Metal Blade, as both record labels' logos now appear on the backs of all BMA recordings.