Hidden Gems: Meet Thomas Haywood of Redefining Darkness

Today we’d like to introduce you to Thomas Haywood.

Hi Thomas, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Music has always been my life’s obsession. My mom told me that when I was 2 or 3 she’d ask if I wanted to watch Sesame Street or MTV, and I chose MTV every time. My father played drums as I was growing up, so we always had drums set up in our house, and my uncle (on my mom’s side) played and taught guitar. I was playing drums as early as 2 and used to fall asleep next to the bass drum when my father would play.

Once I was old enough to start playing sports, football became my obsession until I was about 12-13, but the music was already coming back in with a vengeance at the age of 10 when my cousin introduced me to Anthrax and Metallica. Before that, I had only been listening to early 90’s NY hip-hop like LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, etc. Once I was introduced to metal music, I never turned back.

My guitar-playing uncle took me out to buy my first guitar at 12, which was the beginning of the end of sports for me. I played obsessively learning as much as I could by ear and teaching myself through guitar tablature in guitar magazines of the day. I feel like I started jamming with whoever I knew that said they played an instrument; it’s all I ever wanted to do. I was playing out in clubs by 14/15 and was working the merch table with my cousin for his mom’s Goth band at the time – crazy to think back on those days now.

I continued playing in bands throughout my teens into my early 20s until I finally bit the bullet and moved to Los Angeles to go to school for music at Musician’s Institute (PIT). That was one of the best times in my life. While in Los Angeles, I joined a band called Supervillain, made of Dan Clements from legendary Venice Beach Skate/Punk Thrasher’s Excel and former members of infamous Rap/ Hardcore innovators Downset.

After a short stint back in Cleveland after graduation, I moved to Cincinnati and began auditioning for established touring acts. While in Cincinnati I got married and we moved back home to Cleveland in 2006. By 2007, an audition opportunity paid off when I submitted a performance video for an up-in-coming band that would later be named Born of Fire. Born of Fire was launched from the ashes of Abigail Williams, a Candlelight Records (UK) recording artist that had recently broken up after touring in support of Black Metal giants Enslaved and Dark Funeral in late 2006.

While joining BOF as their drummer, I was forced to move to bass as I had severely injured my right foot a couple of days before a record executive from Roadrunner Records was going to come to see us perform. We had worked so hard writing songs and shopping for labels that I was willing to do anything to continue to be a member of this band and fortunately for me we did not have a bass player at the time. So I traded in one of my drumsets and got a bass rig.

Soon after, we signed a recording contract with Roadrunner Records, an absolute dream of mine since I was a child. Roadrunner in the 90’s released nearly all my favorite records growing up from bands like Sepultura, Obituary, Cynic, Deicide, Fear Factory, Machine Head, and Type O Negative to name a handful. Sadly, our story ended like many before us… we were dropped from the label about 6 months label as we did not fit in the label budget forecast in 2008 as bands like Nickelback and Slipknot took priority.

Fortunately for us, Abigail Williams, although defunct, was still receiving tour offers so we decided to re-launch the band and continue as technically they were still signed to Candlelight in the UK. We simply turned that Born of Fire line-up into a re-formed Abigail Williams and began touring in the Winter of 2007 supporting Vader, Malevolent Creation, and Cattle Decapitation.

I was a part of the writing and recording of Abigail Willams’s debut album, In the Shadow of a Thousand Suns, and toured with Abigail Williams for 2 years until 2009. I had to call it quits as I was married at the time, owned a home, and we just had our first child. So besides not earning enough money touring, I did not want to miss raising my child as we would be out touring 8-9 months out of the year.

I began teaching drums at a small music conservatory on the border of Cleveland Heights and Shaker on the Eastside of Cleveland which would last the next 8 years. While there, I created a rock school for kids during my aptly named, For Those About to Rock, which lasted about 4 years. While teaching, I also began working at a club in downtown Cleveland called Peabody’s, where I would eventually run sound for the next 2-3 years. During this time my wife at the time and I had another daughter and us shortly after getting divorced. I took a break from everything related to music in 2011 and began rebuilding a new life.

I started dating my current wife, Shannon, 2-3 years after divorcing my first, and by 2015 things were going well and I decided it was time to get back into music. In all the years past, I never stopped being an avid music fan, always on the hunt for new music, and new bands, and from my time as a professional in the industry, I made a lot of contacts and had many friends still active in bands. All of this influenced my decision to launch 2 record labels under one LLC, Redefining Darkness Records and Seeing Red Records.

So, I opened a 0% APR credit card and spent about $5K to start the business. I’m happy to report that I easily paid that back in the first year and have never stopped growing since. I have been fortunate to partner with bands that were able to make a career for themselves in music, not to mention all of the other cool opportunities that came from starting this business. Early on, in its formation, I was a DJ on Gimme Radio, an internet-based streaming radio station launched by ex-Apple and Beats employees, that has since expanded into Gimme Metal and Gimme Country.

I launched a podcast called Into the Darkness that officially launched during the pandemic and catered to long-form interviews with key members of the extreme metal universe. And just this past year, I organized my first ever music festival, Into the Darkness, that took place over two days in late July in Youngstown, Ohio, at the Westside Bowl. Now here I am, 7 years and nearly 250 releases later, 22 episodes of a podcast in, 1 music festival under my belt, and we are stronger than ever and are making an impact in heavy music.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Overall, it’s been a surprisingly smooth journey. That’s probably due to the adage, “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”. The part that may seem crazy to some reading this is I had a career in the alcohol industry, working for 2 different distilleries in about an 8-year span, which took up all my daytime hours, while running both labels, mostly between the hours of 10 pm- 2 am, and making time for a family of 5 (including myself).

For whatever reason, I seem to thrive under pressure and prefer to work non-stop 24/7. I want to be clear, this has only been possible with the love, help, and support of my amazing wife – that’s for sure! Until 2022, the label has grown nearly 100% year over year, and since I had the day gig paying the bills, I was able to re-invest all earnings from the record label(s) into the business.

2022 presented some struggles for sure, as we are still feeling the effects of a post-COVID world, and add to that the war in Ukraine, and all the economic issues that come from all of that including supply chain issues and inflation, 2022 has by far been the most challenging year.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Redefining Darkness LLC is made up of 2 label imprints, Redefining Darkness Records and Seeing Red Records, both of which can be best summarized in our mission statement/ethos.

Redefining Darkness Records
There was a time when heavy, unfiltered, and dangerous music was harvested and supported by those unafraid to venture to those parts of the mind and soul unknown to the masses; the very left-hand path of the psyche that when tapped flows through one’s veins for eternity.

Seeing Red Records
Extreme music is about creating a world beyond limitations, restrictions, and conventions. Our mission is to bring the masses an eclectic array of artists from various genres and styles and to celebrate the perpetual survival of underground music in the face of trends, business hawks, and naysayers who have all made a conscious effort to distort and destroy what we hold dear. What was most important to me when launching these labels was to ensure that the power remained in the artist’s hands and that we were simply the conduit.

In most traditional band/label relationships, the label owns all the music and set terms in such a way that it is very difficult for a band to get into a situation where they are owed money. I wanted to make sure that wasn’t the case with my business. I want to empower artists, not debilitate them. We want to be a true partner to the bands we work with, and not play into this standard hierarchy that has plagued the industry for all these years

All artists we work with own their music (and publishing), we simply license the rights to manufacture, promote, and distribute their music for a certain number of years. After that term is over, they are free to do whatever they want with their music. I look at it like we are an investor; No different than a small pizza shop taking on an investor that believes in them to help them grow and hopefully help take them to the next level, we want to invest in those that invest in themselves and work equally as hard as we do to help realize all their goals.

While all facets of the business are still all run by myself – curating talent, nurturing talent, all facets of manufacturing, promotion, art direction, distribution management, and social media, I do have a long-standing artist I must mention, Nestor Carrera (Brasil), who handles 99% of all of our layout design when it comes to physical media and apparel design. I started this very DIY in 2015, learning every aspect of the business, from teaching myself how to use photoshop out of necessity, to anything and everything having to do with shipping and logistics.

After a year or so handling all my packing and shipping, going to the post office multiple days a week with more and more packages, I found an ideal partner just 10 miles down the road in Columbia Station, Hell’s Headbanger’s Records, who are probably the largest independent underground distro in the world.  With their massive shipping volume, we were able to secure insanely cheap rates to anywhere in the world which enabled my business to grow exponentially over the last 6 years.

With my direct-to-consumer fulfillment secure through HH, I was able to start reaching out to B2B distributors in the UK, like Plastichead, and MVD here in the States.  At the beginning of this year, I moved my direct-to-consumer business in Europe from HH, which had been handling DTC business worldwide, to a manufacturing partner I had in Poland, 8MERCH, which also had a fulfillment solution operation. This enabled me to have feet on the ground in the EU, which was essential after all the EU import laws changed during the pandemic.

Very recently, I decided to move everything into one house; with 8MERCH’s expansion into the US market with a facility in NJ, I moved everything out of HH and took on 8MERCH as a strategic partner for all my direct to-consumer fulfillment worldwide as well as my sole manufacturing partner and broker moving forward. I am also now an 8MERCH employee, tasked to grow their operation here in the US.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I learned how almost anything major that happens in the world causes a ripple effect that affects us all in some way or another. Whether it be a catastrophic natural disaster, war, plague, or scarcity of resources, they have far-reaching effects and consequences, so it’s important to band together and try to solve the issues to all of these problems that are created.

It’s been sad to see how divided we all seem to be, especially when it comes to politics. It only seems to be getting worse and worse. Nothing good with come of this division, so until we all figure out a middle ground and learn how to truly work together to best benefit all, I fear things may only get worse.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://redefiningdarkness.com + https://seeingredrecords.com/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL3_lxbN2FmKckvC0d7qU5C-evoGb0YEI
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/4xssnOtHIppofn86VjUk4C?si=45be372c6c9146d6

Image Credits
Ed Battles