The Bad Penny (beta)

It doesn’t take an economic genius to know that Donald Trump’s deranged obsession with tariffs – a fixed charge on an imported good that citizens of the country importing the good ultimately bear the cost of paying – is wreaking havoc on America’s economy. Not to mention the economies of many other countries across the world.

The policy is so plainly dumb and illegal – it’s the U.S. Congress that authorizes tariffs, not the executive branch – that it appears likely even the U.S. Supreme Court, which has failed to rein in Trump to the severe, perhaps irreversible detriment to our country – is going to strike down Trump’s unilateral move, which appears to be the only be the only kind he can make due to, you know, that whole separation of powers thing. (Hence the reason why this post is part of our On Tyranny series.)

Anyway, one of The Bad Penny‘s favorite record labels – Mumbai, India-based underground extreme metal specialists Transcending Obscurity – declared Monday that they’re executing a workaround to Trump’s moronic policy.

Here is a statement that label founder, friend of The Bad Penny and dog-rescue hero Kunal Choksi released this morning:

“Starting with our 2026 releases, with the fascinating MORS VERUM release itself, all orders placed on our stores will be shipped out from within the US / within the EU depending on your location. This effectively means that our customers won’t have to worry about tariffs or customs/taxes when ordering from us.

“We’re making that possible by shifting our entire production of physical formats to Europe and by finding a U.S. partner to help make this possible in that part of the world.

“Because of the lack of pressing plants here in India, we had been forced to import discs, vinyl, and even cassettes, then make the digipaks/sleeves/inserts by local vendors here and assemble them manually, only to have them sent out again to the European countries, US, etc. This process took a considerable amount of time because it involved international shipping first to us, customs clearance at our end, assembling time here, and then international shipping once again to send it for example to our Europe store, customs clearance at their end, and then from there to our EU store customers.

“We’re well aware of the delays taking place and this is why most of that is happening. Going forward, we hope to cut down on some of the processes and save time and hook you all up with stuff faster.

“Where merch (apparel) goes, they will still be made in-house at our end and it’s best to order physical formats and merch separately as delivery times for both kinds of products are different now and have been updated everywhere.

“We face more challenges running a metal label from India than others but we’re doing our best putting you all first. Let’s hope for better times going ahead!”

Three cheers to Kunal for making this wise move. Thank him and his roster of rad artists if you can by snagging some records or merch from Transcending Obscurity’s Bandcamp page.

This entry was posted on 11/24/2025 at 6:36 am and is filed under Features, News, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags tariffs, Transcending Obscurity, trump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.