Latest Release
- FEB 27, 2024
- 12 Songs
- Dance With Me · 1981
- Change Today? · 1984
- Dance With Me · 1981
- Dance With Me · 1981
- T.S.O.L. / Weathered Statues · 1997
- Change Today? · 1984
- Change Today? · 1984
- T.S.O.L. / Weathered Statues · 1997
- Beneath the Shadows · 1982
- Dance With Me · 1981
- 1990
Artist Playlists
- The intersection of hardcore, horror punk and gothic rock.
Live Albums
Compilations
Appears On
More To Hear
- Strombo talks with T.S.O.L.'s vocalist and plays '80s punk.
About T.S.O.L.
T.S.O.L. were major players in the West Coast punk scene of the ’80s, due in large part to Jack Grisham—a complicated, polarizing figure both infamous for his misdeeds and revered as a SoCal punk pioneer. The Long Beach band started out as Vicious Circle in 1978 before becoming T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty) in 1980. Their self-titled 1981 debut EP displays a raging hardcore sound with Grisham’s equally fiery, anarcho-political lyrics. By the time of their first full-length album, Dance With Me, they had already begun evolving into a less frenetic, more musically sophisticated style replete with gothic and death-rock overtones and sometimes morbid lyrics. After a 1983 gig turned into a riot, Grisham, keyboardist Greg Kuehn, and drummer Todd Barnes quit the band, but T.S.O.L. continued on, drafting Joe Wood as frontman and developing a harder rock sound that would eventually border on metal. Grisham rejoined in 1999 to lead the band through several records in the 2000s and 2010s that marked a return to their early-’80s sound.
- ORIGIN
- Huntington Beach, CA, United States
- FORMED
- 1979
- GENRE
- Rock