The official Relapse Records SoundCloud page. Home of the finest current and alumni roster in extreme metal including artists such as OBITUARY, MASTODON, BARONESS, DYING FETUS, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, RED FANG, OBSCURA, NOTHING, SUFFOCATION, NILE, AMORPHIS, DEATH, THE ALBUM LEAF, NECROPHAGIST and many more!

Follow us today and receive automatic updates with the latest new music from our entire roster! 

With over 40 million units sold, over 20 years in business and multiple Grammy Awards, Razor & Tie is one of the most successful independent music labels and publishing companies in North America.  The roster includes a variety of both established and developing artists such as The Pretty Reckless, Starset, All That Remains, The Sword and Red Sun Rising. Razor & Tie’s alternative-leaning imprint Washington Square features Austin Plaine, Soren Bryce and Mothxr.

Some artists enter the studio determined to make a radical departure from who and what they are, or indulge some musical flavor of the month in a bid to expand the fan base. In either event, those strategies often backfire — though in staying true to his calling, GRAMMY® winner Chris Tomlin thinks not of popularity, but rather the populace his music can touch and encourage.

“I’m not trying to make a different kind of record,” says Tomlin of his latest effort, Love Ran Red “It’s still the same path I started down: writing songs for the church, songs people can sing, songs that connect with people in their heart and move them in a way only songs can. That’s not changed — and yet this collection I feel is the strongest I’ve ever done.”

That’s setting the bar quite high for his tenth studio recording, given that his last effort “Burning Lights” kicked off 2013 as a No. 1 album. It also led to sold-out tour dates, Billboard Music Awards, being named a BMI Songwriter of the Year and receiving the K-LOVE Fan Award for Male Vocalist of the Year and Dove Award for Songwriter of the Year.

Yet Love Ran Red picks up where its predecessor left off. True to its title, it expresses beating-heart faith and channels love’s ceaseless flow into a dozen songs to get the blood pumping and spirits soaring.

To that end, Love Ran Red shows Tomlin reaching and stretching forward, even as he leans back on what’s always worked best. Produced by longtime friend and collaborator Ed Cash (Kari Jobe, Vince Gill, David Crowder* Band, Dave Barnes, Steven Curtis Chapman), the album strikes stirring tones of hope, praise and the peace found only in God’s presence. 

I was born half Baptist (the East Texas, King James carrying, pipe organ, hymnal singing, Southern, type Baptist) and half Pentecostal (the Holy Ghost, jumpin' and shoutin', hand-waving, prophecying, Southern, type Pentecostal). Later, I was born again.

The son of an insurance salesman and a social worker, fructifying in the piney woods of Texarkana, I was as muddled as the name of my town. We drove a light blue Ford Thunderbird; not the old, classic kind, but a brand  new one that had a sticker on it. The one with the electric windows and mirrors and the headlamp covers that flipped open when you turned on the headlights and an in-dash eight-track player. My dad and mom both used Aqua Net hair spray. He parted it on the right side and always carried a comb. She got permanents and had curlers that heated up every Saturday night while we all watched The Lawrence Welk Show and Hee-Haw. The eight-tracks in rotation were Elvis, Willie Nelson, Olivia Newton John, and Bill Gaither. Everything I've ever done musically can be traced back to there -- that Ford Thunderbird, those sounds, the view out of those windows, and my brother punching me in the arm on the way to Sunday morning Church. That is all metaphor and all true.

I didn't mean to write and sing songs for a living. Doesn't seem like much of a thing to get paid for. I'd guess the odds are about the same as winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning. Given my nepotistic hookup, my assumption was that I would move back home after college to sell insurance for my dad and eventually take over the family practice. Who doesn't love a good actuary table? And yet, one late October night, on an apartment balcony in Waco, Texas, just off of the Baylor University campus where I was student, a friend spun yarns that fell on me like a blanket and the course of my life was altered. He was an itinerant pastor of a rural church just outside of town. "So, I get a call at two in the morning," he says. "It's Carl Reeves on the phone, 'Pastor. We need you. You gotta get out here, now.' And so I go. I get in my truck and I go," he says. "It turns out Carl has a cow that has taken sick and he wants me to pray for it. To get in the mud, put my hands on this cow and pray for divine intervention on behalf of this bovine beast. And so, there I am. In the mud, chasing this cow around, trying to get my hands on the thing long enough to spit out a prayer."

Right then, I was being rescued. I had left the church and this was the beginning of my way back. As it goes with hypocrisy, judgement, dogmatism, and all the rest of it that Jesus put to death, it's hard to see in yourself what you readily see in others. And into my cynicism and anger my friend began to dream aloud, "What if church really was like family. What if we pretended the, 'brother and sister, son and daughter,' stuff was real. What if relationships were thought to be rare and valuable things. What if it was just a bunch of people that loved each other and were simply trying their best to follow this Jesus we read of in scripture. What if we pretended, the 'love your neighbor as yourself,' thing was a better way to live. What if we got in the mud for each other at two in the morning? What if the cow dies and it's ok because we are there, in it together. What if we pretended we are all sinners. What if we pretended grace is real. What if the word 'pretend' felt less powerful than the word 'believe' because we did actually believe. What if…"

Randy Wise is following