Reign Supreme’s Jay Pepito on Leaving Deathwish Inc. for Mediaskare Records

Reign Supreme recently announced that they had split with Deathwish Inc., the heralded indie label the Pa. hardcore band had called home for the past few years, for Mediaskare Records. The switch took a lot of people in the hardcore community by surprise. "I'm actually comfortable talking about it since there are no hard feelings on our end," says Jay Pepito. The Reign Supreme vocalist is talking to Noisecreep about the band's new label home and what brought on the change. "Deathwish is a small, independently run record label and one of the advantages of that is you get to work closely with owners and there isn't that, "Here's the publicity department and there's the radio people," kind of thing. You can get right to the core of who is making the decisions and not get a runaround like you would at a huge company.

"But the disadvantage of being on a label like Deathwish is that they don't have as big a budget as a band like Reign Supreme needs from time to time. For example, if a guitar breaks while we're out on tour, they just can't wire us $1000 for a new one. Things like that come up from time to time. So Deathwish is great in a lot of ways and for a ton of bands out there, the label would be a nice fit. I can even see myself doing something with them again with one of the other bands I play in or another project down the line. I think it would be a harmonious thing since everything ended amicably between us," says Pepito.

After several releases on Deathwish and tons of touring under their belts, Reign Supreme needed to get in business with a label that could help financially support, as well as nurture, the next phase in their career. "For the kind of band Reign Supreme is, and the kind of audience that we attract, we needed a label that could financially support us. Now I don't mean getting us fancy watches or something [laughs]. We need to be able to have our label front us $5000 to go to a place like Australia to play shows. That's hard to do with most other indie labels these days."

Listen to 'Persevere and Overcome' from Reign Supreme

Noisecreep asked the singer how they landed their deal with their new label, Mediaskare Records. "In 2010 we went out on tour with The Ghost Inside and Betrayal, who are both Mediaskare artists, and we had a great time with them. Along the way we noticed that both bands were stoked to be on the label and had nothing but good things to say about it. Throughout the rest of the year we met and played with some more bands signed to the label and they said the same positive things.

"Once we found out that the guy who owns Mediaskare were big Reign Supreme fans, we thought it might be a good time to start trying something else. They were one of the first labels to reach out to us and they were also one of the first labels I cared to respond to. We hit it off right away. I remember one of the first conversations I had with them we just talked about touring and Poison Idea. It felt right."

Reign Supreme will issue an EP called 'Sky Burial' this coming winter. It will be their first release for Mediaskare Records.