Record Store Profile: Blacksound Records VIC

What is your store called? 

Blacksound Records.

Where are you located? 

351 Sydney Rd, Brunswick and online here.

Do you cater for a specific niche or genre?

Blacksound Records started life out as an underground metal oriented store, but the scope and vision from the beginning has been broader than that. We specialise in ‘radical outsider music,’ so everything from underground metal and punk, shoegaze, electronic, folk, noise, experimental, jazz and classical but from the weirdest deepest reaches. 

Tell us about the people behind the scenes?

I’m a musician, performing in avant-garde death metal band Altars, sometimes solo and with others. I've been fortunate to tour the world and have been involved in music since I was a teenager. Other people who work in the shop also play in bands, go to gigs and are actively involved in our community in one way or another. 

When and why did the store open? 

Opening a record store was something I’d wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I started the store in March last year, initially operating online out of a spare bedroom, and the physical shop front opened in November 2024. The timing of this coincided with me coming into long service leave, so with a bit of forward planning I was able to quit my job and it all sort of coalesced into place.

What do your customers most know you for?

We probably have the largest selection of underground metal records in the country, and that’s steadily growing. We go a lot further into the weeds than what most stores would do with their metal section. It’s a nice cross section of what’s happening at the coalface of extreme music right now.

What is the most popular title you stock at the moment? 

At the moment it’s everything Pissgrave. They recently released a new album and their label, Profound Lore, has just reissued their debut and sophomore albums. We also teamed up with the band directly to print shirts for them in the country.

What is the most popular evergreen title? 

Probably Deathconsciousness by Have A Nice Life. This is a hard one as we’re a new store and our focus is very much on what’s happening right now. We have a few ‘forever’ titles that seem to always move and are gradually bringing in more older classic titles, but we typically steer away from stocking titles you’re likely to see everywhere. 

What is the best thing about running a record store in 2025?

Listening to new music, being engaged with what’s happening right now, and curating an experience for people. The shop is also steadily cementing itself as a community space: we host in-stores, and the back half of the shop is also an art gallery space where we host exhibitions (typically related to the music we stock in some way). People who’ve visited the store really love the space and what we’re doing. It’s all a lot of work, but the positive response from the community and the fact they love the space is really encouraging and satisfying. I’ve also been able to bring a lot of obscure labels into the country that have never had any kind of distribution here before.

What is the hardest thing about running a record store in 2025?

There are plenty of challenges! We do a lot of importing, almost all of our stock is imported by ourselves. Many of the labels we deal with are small operations run by maybe one or two people, so there’s no ‘Amazon warehouse’ for a lot of the more obscure titles and labels we bring in. Shipping internationally is very costly, so we need to do this in bulk to make sure we can keep our prices friendly and there are things like exchange rate fluctuations and now tariffs we have to consider. Labels from places like Canada are typically distributed through the USA, so there's potentially some big changes we will have to navigate this year. The actual impact of tariffs, if they have any impact at all, is still a bit unclear.