The Metal Crypt - Nuclear Winter Records Interview

Interviews

Interview with Anastasis Valtsanis
Interview conducted by Luxi Lahtinen

Date online: October 20, 2024

Nuclear Winter Records, owned by Anastasis Valtsanis, is a Greek label that's been concentrating on supporting the underground and releasing bands from Gates of Tyrant to Morbid Stench to Mortual to Rotten Tomb. It is a great label for those who are looking for quality underground death metal.

We contacted Anastasis to learn more about the label, about his driving force behind it and what motivates him to work his ass off for somewhat marginal death metal releases. We also asked about his relationship with a band called Dead Congregation from Greece and his plans for future releases on NWR.

Now it's your turn to educate yourself about this underground label, so keep on reading.

Hi there, Anastasis! How's life in Athens, Greece, these days? Busy with orders and stuff as always, eh?

Anastasis: Hello Luxi, indeed life in Athens is quite hectic for me since I have too many things to deal with between the label/mail order and my band. I try to take time off as much as possible and I'm writing now while returning from a trip to Slovenia. Taking days off is a double-edged sword since work piles up and when I return it's even more stressful for a couple of days but at least I love what I do and it doesn't feel like a chore.

Just to get things started, could you kindly tell us what things triggered you to form your label (plus mail order)?

Anastasis: Back in 1999 I handled the release of the band I was playing with at the time, Nuclear Winter, so I got acquainted with the basic steps of having to deal with factories, designers and eventually wholesale and trades. The actual thought of starting a label was triggered by my desire to release an old Greek death metal recording that remained unreleased until recently, Stigma's last recording called Epitaph. It is a proper death metal masterpiece even by today's standards, that was FINALLY released a few weeks ago on vinyl by another Greek label! The story is that the band broke up right after they recorded it, members remained dormant for a while and kind of reunited after a long time but only to continue as a punk band using Greek lyrics. They were always deeply rooted in DIY punk although their Sickness of No Survivors demo (initially self-released and soon reissued by Wild Rags) and the Epitaph recording are lessons in death metal and have no punk/HC vibes whatsoever. Anyway, I reached out to them back in 1998-1999 and asked if they'd be interested in having Epitaph finally released on a label but, unfortunately, they turned me down saying that the recording is outdated and that no-one would be interested in it!!! Fortunately, some 20+ years later, a friend of mine managed to convince them to release it on his small HC/grind label Extreme Earslaughter Records. Meanwhile I was already quite involved in the underground and had correspondence with many bands so one thing led to another, and I started releasing EPs at first, followed by proper albums after a while. It was all quite small scale in the beginning, of course.

How tough has it been to get to the point with your label/distro to where you are now? I mean, nothing comes for free, so running a label/distro on the scale that you've been doing for years has undoubtedly required a lot of work and I do mean A LOT of work...

Anastasis: I wouldn't say it's been tough. It never felt like it anyway, since progress had been quite gradual. In the beginning it was a hobby on the side to satisfy my passion for being involved with this music as much as possible and when it became bigger and started making money, I made it my full-time job. It's still not as large in scale as other independent record labels but indeed it requires A LOT of work. Often, I need to work 12-14 hours per day even on weekends just to keep up. It's kind of funny and frustrating that people to this day ask me what I do for a living, and they're surprised to hear that Nuclear Winter Records is my full-time job and not a hobby, not since 2010 anyway. The biggest hardship I've had was when Dead Congregation grew too much, and I had to invest a lot of time managing and playing in the band while running the label as well. So, in 2013 I actually shut down Nuclear Winter Records to focus on the band, formed a sub-label called Martyrdoom which handles Dead Congregation releases (as well as a handful of other releases like the Antideluvian/Witchrist EP, Infester To the Depths... LP/CD reissue) and run the mail order only domestically without a worldwide shop. The band was a priority for a long time, until COVID broke and we couldn't do shows anymore so I had to bring back the label/mail order as a means to earn a living. Now we're back to doing shows while the label is stronger than ever, so I must work 10-14 hours per day to keep up. On the plus side it still doesn't feel like a chore, no matter how exhausting it is. It is still a very fulfilling way to make a living for me.

What's your driving force to keep releasing stuff almost constantly? Can you explain the motivational elements for running the label/distro, from your point of view?

Anastasis: I wouldn't say I release stuff constantly; I mean there may be reprints of sold-out versions, or a new format of something I previously released on another format (like a tape edition of something I did on CD for example, etc.) but overall, I don't think I have more than 10 NEW releases in a year. 2022 was a bit more than that, 2023 less than that. The driving force is always the passion for this music! The distro side can be a bit more overwhelming, trying to keep up with all these new releases and listening to a lot of albums to distinguish if they have a chance at selling, but it's an income and also trading my releases with other label's releases gets my products a long way, so the bands benefit by getting distributed to all corners of the world. By underground standards, of course, I'll never claim than Nuclear Winter's reach is as wide as some of the bigger labels.

Is there some sort of criteria for how you choose your releases?

Anastasis: Mainly, I must like the material, but I also need to consider if a release will sell well. Most people have associated NWR with old school death metal, so usually when I try something different it gets overlooked, like some of the black metal releases I've done for example aren't moving much although they're really good, according to my taste anyway. Like a vinyl LP I did for Gates of Tyrant from Chile, or Sort of Sind's debut album on CD/LP, members from Denmark's Hyperdontia, Taphos, Sulphurous, Ascendency, doing melodic yet bleak black metal sort of like a cruder Dissection with Mortuary Drape vibes. Fantastic stuff yet if moves very slowly. So, I have to consider the little things as well, for the best of the label and the bands. I have turned down releases that I loved simply because it felt like I wouldn't give them justice.

What's normally your regular run of a cassette/CD/LP edition, or does it strictly depend on a release? Do you ever do reprints of any of your releases, or do you prefer having them all as limited runs only? In other words, when some release is sold out, it's sold out forever.

Anastasis: There's no rule really, sales are dropping globally, so nowadays I tend to start with 100-300 runs on tapes and 300-500 runs on CD/LP (more on bands that are deemed to sell well), but if a release sells out relatively fast there will definitely be consecutive re-presses. Sometimes I might let a release rest for a bit before I do the next re-press, just to give priority to something new since I'm currently super low on storage space; this also allows distros who have stocked the mentioned release sell their copies before I flood the market again with it. I don't see the reason in keeping a release limited if there's still demand for it.

What's your favorite format to digest your daily dose of music when you want to relax a little bit yourself?

Anastasis: Honestly, CDs. The sound is way better, they're more durable and I can play them in the car, too. Yes, I'm so old that I still don't play MP3s in the car, and I don't have a Spotify account. Not having to flip sides and break the flow of an album is an added bonus. Vinyl and tapes definitely have their charm, but I'll always buy the CD first, and if it's an album I love I'll own it in other formats as well just to satisfy the collector's OCD.

Do you only sell your releases through the online store, or do you go to gigs and try to sell your stuff at concerts and festivals?

Anastasis: I used to sell at local concerts but it's a lot of work (having to pick out what to bring, pack it, carry it, etc.) and the sale numbers aren't worth the time and energy anymore. When we first started doing shows out of the country with Dead Congregation, back in 2008 and for a few years that followed, I'd carry some distro stuff with me to sell at our shows, but this was before the time when labels/distros were more than bands, so it was hard to get some "boutique" underground releases, stuff like Repugnant, Kaamos, early Grave Miasma and the likes. You could only find that stuff online so when people could find them at shows they'd buy them on the spot. Often, I'd blow out my voice before the show by talking to people at the merch table and my vocal performance would suffer from that, heh!

How do you normally create your first contacts with your clients (i.e., bands)? Do bands normally try to reach out to you first, inquiring whether you might be interested in cooperating with them at some level?

Anastasis: Both. Usually with new releases/bands, it's the band that reaches out and sends me a promo. For old underground releases that I feel like re-releasing on NWR, it's me who makes contact. Or there might be a new album that I heard and loved but it's only available on CD, so I'll write and offer an LP/Tape deal, like the pre-mentioned Gates of Tyrant album, or (another bad seller) the Half Visible Presence 12" EP. Sometimes bands write me after they've already got a deal with a local (to them) label, because they weren't confident enough to approach me first, as if Nuclear Winter is Nuclear Blast, haha! So, in that case I'll do a re-issue for the European market, like the new album for Chile's Rotten Tomb The Relief of Death, which I'll release soon on CD/LP/tape.

Have some of these attempts to release something with certain bands ever failed due to unprofessional, unfriendly, or just bad behavior from a band's side?

Anastasis: Once, more than ten years ago, I had a re-release booked with an old band, no need to mention names here. After waiting a year for them to provide "new artwork" and other materials needed to move forward with the release, I asked politely what's going on and suggested we should perhaps ask another artist to handle the new illustration they wanted done. They replied with something along these lines, "we see that this is going to turn sour so let's just cancel the release before things get uncivilized" and after a few days they announced the re-release with a sort of higher-profile American label, so my guess is that they were fishing for a bigger deal to get more money for a freaking 7" EP reissue. I shrugged it off and moved on.

Have you ever lost your nerve with some band perhaps due to some of the points I listed in my previous question?

Anastasis: I wouldn't say I've lost my nerve, but I was definitely disappointed by how Crucifixion (my contact was only with one member, Danny Martinez) reacted towards the release of their debut Desert of Shattered Hopes on vinyl LP. I've had the album on CD since it was originally released back in 1993, always loved it because it is so diverse: raw and brutal but filled with ethereal melodic solos, slow suppressing parts followed by bursts of speed, killer vocals, it's got it all. If I could compare it with another album, it would be Brutality's Screams of Anguish. They don't sound similar, but they've sort of got the same vibe going on. Anyway, it's always been a dream to release it on vinyl and I even tried to contact them via some Facebook page yet never got an answer. Then years later a Colombian label re-released the album on CD, adding their demo as bonus, so I approached them and asked if they could get me in touch with the band, which they kindly did! My communication with the band was slow and short and I always received one sentence replies after having waited days/weeks for one and no real feedback towards ideas or design previews. I had my designer restore the original artwork which was provided in very low quality. The file I received for their logo had pixels bigger than Atari's Space Invaders, I am not kidding you, so we were forced to use a later version of their logo which we found in better quality. I had Dan Lowndes (Resonance Sound Studio) remaster the audio for vinyl and overall.

The release was handled with great attention and stayed as true to the original design as possible. Sadly, it was ready to go to press just when COVID broke and things at the factories were chaotic and production times had gone from two months (pre-COVID) to 10-12 months! Normally I press vinyl at one factory and CDs at a couple of others. One of the CD factories had recently started taking up vinyl orders too and they promised they could offer a 6-month turnaround time which was half the time of what I could expect from my usual brokers. So, I took them up on their promise and ordered two releases from them (the Crucifixion LP and the Infester demo Darkness Unveiled LP). At six months I had answers like "They'll be ready soon...", then silence for a few months until when we were at 10 months from the day I ordered (and paid the invoices in full!) the LPs, I received an email from the factory telling me the due to inflation, recession, war in Ukraine and a ton of other bullshit I'd have to pay an additional 95% on top of the agreed (and paid) price to get the releases moving, or I had the option to cancel them, which would mean I'd have to order them again from another factory and wait for another 10-12 months!!! I didn't succumb to their blackmail, eventually settled for a small surcharge over the initial invoice and finally got the releases in my hands 12 months after I'd paid for them. ALL of this correspondence with the factory was shared with Danny and although at first, he didn't even react to it, suddenly he wrote the only long message I ever received from him, telling me basically that I suck at my job, I made poor choices of who I work with and that normally LP production takes 2-3 weeks (!!!). The guy has never been active since Crucifixion, so I reckon he's been living under a rock since the nineties and had no idea of how factories worked 30 years later, let alone during COVID. Mind you, even if I had initially gone with my usual factory the LP would still have taken so long to get produced since production lines were bottlenecked globally and there was a massive shortage in raw materials. As icing on the cake, I never received a thank you when Danny got his copies, or just some feedback of whether he liked the result or not (fortunately both this and the Infester LP turned out great), so there was a sense of disappointment in the end due to his ingratitude towards all my efforts and cost in time, energy and money. I still love the album and I'm glad I did it!

(By the way, the factory that blackmailed me and also fucked a lot of other labels by asking them for a ton of extra money and delaying their releases for up to 22 months is 8merch from Poland. Avoid those scumbag leeches like the plague. I hope they go bankrupt ASAP).

I'd like to ask you for your take on some of these labels that focus on releasing cassettes only? I mean, there are a lot of people out there who collect cassettes very enthusiastically, even if it's certainly not the most practical format to get your daily dose of music...

Anastasis: Being focused on one format has its charm, and I can see the appeal of it. Tapes do have a wonderful sound if you press them at good factories. The so-called "comeback" of tapes (or vinyl) is not accurate, though, I always did tapes with Nuclear Winter Records, and actually my third ever release in 2000 was a split tape for two Finnish bands Devilry/Flauros and I never stopped doing them. Even when people made fun of me for releasing tapes and actually wrote to me saying, "Who even buys tapes anymore...?", I could sell a 300-400 copy pressing no problem. Nowadays you see a lot of people hyping this or that tape which is pressed on 100-150 copies and can still be found online if you look for it. So, the hype is sort of plasmatic in most cases. I like bands who care about releasing demos on tape in the current digital age we're living. It shows a bit of extra effort and dedication that just uploading some files to a platform.

Are there some extreme underground labels out there nowadays that you admire and look up to?

Anastasis: I appreciate labels who seem to be run with passion and dedication to the underground and don't act like they're messiahs that the scene should bow to for enlightening us with their fine taste in music. Like Noevdia (France), Extremely Rotten (Dk), Memento Mori (Spain), Rotted Life (USA) to name a few (I'm sure I forgot a lot). I admire Osmose Productions who had the opportunity to become huge and decided to remain focused to bands they love even if they don't make them a ton of money.

As you have released a good bunch of different items on your label over the years, can you tell us which release on your label makes you most proud of thus far, and is there also some kind of a special story involved?

Anastasis: Aside from Dead Congregation releases that I stubbornly refuse to sign to another label, it would have to be the Kaamos Curse of Aeons 10" MLP. Why? Because Kaamos along with a mere handful of other bands played TRUE DEATH METAL when the genre was going through a dark phase (not in the good sense!) and because frankly I believe it's one of the best death metal recordings of all time. I've been lucky to become friends with them and they honored me with releasing the demo on vinyl, I gave it the most appropriate catalogue number: NWR666. Both their full-length albums and their swansong EP Scales of Leviathan will be reissued on CD/LP soon, by Nuclear Winter Records!

How do you see the future of Nuclear Winter Records? Do you believe that you might expand your activities both with the label and the distro in the coming months?

Anastasis: It expands year by year already, that's how I feel anyway. There's always a new project in the works, new arrivals at the online store, work never ends yet I try to keep it under control and not indulge into doing too many releases per year. I want to remain excited about each and every release and not treat the label as a money-making machine, even if it is my full-time job that pays my bills.

Do you have your own record store located somewhere in Athens? If not, is that possibly on your future bucket list?

Anastasis: I've flirted with the idea, but I enjoy the freedom of working on my own time. Mostly it's 12-14 hours of work per day but I can easily leave whenever I want for shows/tours with Dead Congregation or for personal vacation. I'm too much of a control freak to hire someone to run it during my absence, this is probably my biggest handicap.

Hey, that was it on my part, so I sincerely want to thank you, Anastasis, for the time to make this interview happen, and - of course, all the best to you with all of your future endeavors with Nuclear Winter Records. Any closing words to wrap up this conversation properly enough perhaps?

Anastasis: Thank you for this thought-out and in-depth interview - and extra special thanks to everyone who was interested enough to read it! Follow the label on social media for updates, we're dinosaurs who only post a few times per month. For shop updates, just visit the online shop regularly.