Life Sentence bassist and vocalist Joe Losurdo says his 80s hardcore band is probably better known for its T-shirt than for its music. It’s not as iconic as the Black Flag bars, but Life Sentence’s logo is one of the best of the era: the word “life” is stamped in huge white capital letters on a red background (an obvious nick from Life magazine), while “sentence” appears in black lowercase directly beneath. You can still buy a Life Sentence shirt from their Bandcamp page, which also lists better-known bands whose members have worn one, including Metallica, Anthrax, Exodus, Napalm Death, and D.R.I. “Some fuckin’ Chinese apparel company, like, bootlegged it—it’s like a fashion item not even remotely connected to punk rock,” Losurdo says. “Someone sent me a link to it—I couldn’t believe it. They made it look a little more Frankie Goes to Hollywood-ish. Still the same fuckin’ logo, and it says ‘Life Sentence.’”
Joe Losurdo: We finally got the tapes back—the original master tapes. It was mired in some weird legal shit. We had to make sure we could actually do it, that we had the rights to do all that, and we do. You know, everyone went on with their lives, and it wasn’t really a priority in anybody’s life, but the opportunity came up. I was starting to put it together and Eric died.
He kind of did a weird re-formation of the band, I think around 2009. I have a personal thing about it that I wouldn’t get into, because I just didn’t think it was really a good idea. The condition he was in—he didn’t look like the same guy at all. You can watch videos on YouTube. I should just leave it at that.
We had just got done playing in Canada, so our road manager took the fall ’cause he knew our whole tour would be fucked if Eric got thrown in jail. Luckily, because it was in Vermont, we got him out of jail, but we lost all the money we made in Canada. We were not used to making any money at all. So that was the beginning of the last tour; we were really fucking pissed at him about that. I don’t know—he just changed. He wasn’t the same guy as when I joined the band. At the very end, it just was not a pretty sight. I personally fuckin’ lost it. It was not a good scene.
Like I said, we finally got the fuckin’ tapes back. We finally figured out what the legalities were. It was like, “Wow, everyone else’s fuckin’ record is out.” I played in bands for over 30 years, but sadly, still Life Sentence is the band that most people know of. But people couldn’t buy a fuckin’ record, they couldn’t buy a CD, they couldn’t buy a download. We just wanted our music out there. If someone wants to hear it, they can hear it.
I don’t know, man, it’s weird. I always harbored a hope that Eric would’ve cleaned up or whatever and gotten his shit together. Nobody thought about mental health issues back then. Everyone in fuckin’ hardcore was fucked up, you know what I mean? If you were drawn to that music, you had some kind of issue—it doesn’t mean you weren’t smart and you weren’t gonna have a decent life. But that kind of music, it wasn’t music you were casually into, so it drew a certain kind of person—someone that had a little bit of an edge.
