“I’ve suffered losses in my old family business, leading to its shutdown, too. “I’ve been through countless tragedies, the loss of my entire family, to illnesses such as cancer and heart failure-my father, mother, and even my only sibling-to the extent of me living all alone and still depending on this music, from when it was a hobby to what’s become a living,” he explains. To counter this trend, Choksi recently even crowdfunded in-house merch printing, sharing that they’ve “invested a ton in getting the right machinery and support to make this all efficient, and it’s exciting and heartening at the same time.”Ĭhoksi has a deeply rooted personal stake in the process. “We’re experimenting every single day to improve upon our quality, be it the kind of printing to the kind of paper we use,” he explains, noting that opportunities in India are limited.
The befouled list only goes on from there: crusty death from Chicago outfit Bones, pummeling sludge from the U.K.’s Warcrab, and even raga-inflected black metal from Germany’s Temple Koludra-all housed on the same label.Ĭonsidering the operational challenges associated with this mostly one-man operation-not to mention its geographical distance from the world’s most established metal scenes-one could argue that Choksi’s running Transcending Obscurity, quite literally, from the front lines of global DIY. For the black metal fans, there are bands like Croatia’s Bednja, whose debut full-length worth of their hardcore-infused take on the style also comes out this fall. Transcending Obscurity features the Dutch death-doom band Officium Triste, who’ve been releasing music since the ‘90s the label’s French death metal band Nox Irae’s forthcoming debut features musicians from the ’90s French death metal group Catacomb. The label reaches into more and less established genre and geographical scenes alike, with fresh tracks from the global extreme metal underground for a diverse array of listeners. “We deliberately do not want to focus on a subgenre of metal because there’s so much good stuff out there that needs to be tapped and this is an extension of our intention to do so.” “We cover music of all styles, and I guess that’s where our approach stems from,” he says.
Like most independent labels operating today, it’s a social-media-driven ecosystem, a thriving one at that Choski’s Facebook inbox is always glutted with artist submissions, so he spends a lot of his time sifting for hidden gold. “There is a sense of fulfillment every now and then, and that keeps us going.”Ĭhoksi built Transcending Obscurity Records after working for more than a decade as a music writer, which he explains helped shape the label’s mission. “The process of discovering raw talent and working hard for them and seeing our efforts bearing fruit on a larger scale is gratifying,” he explains. Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track
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