Stuff You Might've Missed – Label Profile – Load Records

“Load Records might possibly be in possession of the world’s most challenging record roster” – Mark Hensch, Thrash Pit

Official Site

MySpace Page

Provide, Rhode Island based Load Records was started by Ben McOsker in 1993 in order to put out records by his own band Boss Fuel. Eventually, Load Records started to follow a model of labels like Sub Pop (only dealing primarily with noise/experimental/avant-garde/punk/hard-to-classify bands) – while many of their early signings were from Rhode Island area, they also dealt with many non-local bands which suited the label aesthetics (Norway’s Noxagt, Sweden’s Brainbombs etc.), which helped them to receive popularity outside of Rhode Island.
Along with popularity of Load Records, a couple of labels with similar aesthetics also arose in US – 5 Rue Christine (Olympia, WA),  Skin Graft Records (Chicago, IL) and Gold Standard Laboratories (San Diego, CA), to name just a few.
Some of the bands that recorded for the label include Air Conditioning, Arab On Radar, Burmese, Coughs, Excepter, Fat Day, Forcefield, Khanate, Lightning Bolt, Men’s Recovery Project,Metalux,Mindflayer,Neon Hunk, Noxagt, Pink And Brown,Prurient, Scissor Girls, Sightings, Six Finger Satellite, Ultralyd,Vaz.
Their full catalogue up to 2007 can be found here.
Notable releases:
Lightning Bolt – Ride The Skies (2001) / Wonderful Rainbow (2003) / Hypermagic Mountain (2005)
Vaz – Demonstrations In Micronesia (2001)
Ultralyd – Chromosome Gun (2005)