Hardcore punk music fan Dave Mandel wasn’t really planning to start a record label three decades ago.
But the photographer and fanzine editor truly found his calling back in 1992, when he thought he was simply helping out a friend’s band release new music.
“I was just someone who loved music and I wanted to put my fingerprint on the music I loved,” Mandel said during a recent phone interview. He’s definitely made his mark, especially in the Southern California hardcore and punk rock music scenes, when he launched his independent record label Indecision Records.
The Garden Grove-based label is throwing its 30th anniversary bash with a two-day concert at Garden Amp in Garden Grove on July 28-29. The pair of gigs sold out quickly inside the intimate outdoor amphitheater, but will feature more than two dozen bands that are currently on the label or a part of its legacy.
It’s a who’s who of influential hardcore royalty that will include reunions from acts like Seattle-based straight edge hardcore punk band Undertow, San Diego straight edge metalcore group Unbroken and Lancaster hardcore band Coolside.
Boston’s The Suicide File will play its first west coast show in more than a decade; Beyond Repair will perform a special set featuring original Throwdown singer Keith Barney; Orange County hardcore band Death By Stereo will play its debut full length, Indecision Records’ “If Looks Could Kill, I’d Watch You Die,” from front to back; and Orange County band Adamantium will play its classic album, “The Depths of Depression,” with the original lineup from that record.
Other performers include Mean Season, Over My Dead Body, Bleeding Through and the first band ever to have a release on Indecision Records, Thousand Oaks hardcore punk outfit Strife.
“It’s just going to be such a great reunion,” Mandel said. “I’m excited to see all the bands playing, of course, but I am way more excited (just) to see all these people.”
Prior to starting the label, Mandel was out almost nightly photographing punk rock shows at local clubs and then editing his Indecision Magazine in the early ’90s. It was through this work that he met the band Strife and befriended the members. In 1992, they reached out to him about helping to put out some of their music.
“It was just a pretty humble start,” Mandel recalled, describing himself as an “organizational nerd” who likes things done neatly and cleanly. Mandel took the reins on the release of the band’s four-song, 7″ vinyl record.
“It was just a matter of function that the label even started,” he said.
Through his connections in the punk scene, Mandel began working with other bands to release vinyl records, tapes and CDs.
“It started out as a little, one-off thing to help my friends get a release out to a full-fledged like, we’re in it, we’re doing all the industry stuff label,” he said of the rapid turn of events. “I’m really here to find people that I like and put out music that I like and do whatever I can to support them.”
Indecision Records now has about a dozen bands on the label and over the past 30 years, it has put out more than 175 records from more than 100 bands. Many of the prominent bands that have released music on the label are a part of the 30th anniversary shows.
“I think Indecision is important because it’s always been about friends and it’s always been about just loving music,” said Death By Stereo frontman Efrem Schulz. The band released its first record on the label in 1999 before going on to sign with Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz’s Los Angeles-based Epitaph Records.
Death By Stereo has come full circle with Indecision Records, since the band returned to the label in 2020 to release its latest album, “We’re all Dying Just in Time.”
“Dave always just puts out things he likes,” Schulz said. “I think it’s a true art label. He’s basically putting out your record because he likes what you do. There’s never any sort of telling anyone what to do or how to write a song or how to sound. It’s just expression and art, the way it should be.”
Ahead of the anniversary shows, Death By Stereo is dusting off several songs from that first record that haven’t been played in years, as it readies to give it a go from start to finish during the first evening of the event on Friday, July 28.
“We wanted to do something old school and we want it to feel like the old days and just have fun,” said Schulz, who will also perform with Death By Stereo at the Punk in the Park Festival, which takes place on Nov. 4-5 at Oak Canyon Park in Silverado.
Since the shows are sold out, Mandel said they will be recorded and available for everyone to enjoy — either by streaming or physical release — at a later date.
After the big anniversary bash, Mandel’s getting back to work and continuing to put out the music he loves.
“We’re going to do what we keep doing,” he said. “We never let industry trends or money ever influence what we do.”
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