Seoul punk label World Domination, Inc. prepares for busy 2025

By Jon Dunbar

Jeff Moses still hasn't given up his ambitions of world domination. As one of the two founders of Seoul-based punk label World Domination, Inc. (WDI), he's been at it for 16 years. He shared various machinations for the new year that he hopes will bring his diabolical goal to fruition.

WDI will kick off 2025 with a new year party featuring six WDI bands, plus one special guest. The show, this Saturday at Club Victim, is also the prelude to his own band, ...Whatever That Means (WTM), heading to Japan for an eight-day tour.

"There's a lot of exciting stuff going on with WDI bands right now," Moses told The Korea Times.

The show this Saturday features WTM, as well as Full Garage, Beacon, Long Time No Shit, Sweet Gasoline and Monkey Gang War, as well as The Sound as a special guest.

Moses revealed a drinking game they will play at the show to determine the order in which each band plays, as well as how sober they are when they take the stage.

"We're going to be continuing a tradition for the New Year show that we started back in 2019 at the 10-year anniversary show," he said. "The Sound will be the opening band, but beyond that, there's no set band order. Whenever a band has one song left in their set, they'll stop, one member from each remaining band will come up front, and we'll play a drinking game. Whoever loses is up next. So whoever wins the most gets to play later in the night when the crowd is usually bigger, but after a whole bunch of drinking games, it probably won't be the tightest set they've ever played."

Once that show's over, they'll be packing their bags for WTM's next Japan tour.

The band has toured Japan three times before, with their first time being two shows in Tokyo in 2019. In 2023, they did two tours, focusing on Kobe and Osaka.

"Those were especially fun because we got to go back to the same cities/clubs within six months, so there were people there who remembered us from before," Moses said. "That helped us build a better audience and play with even better bands the second time around. That was kind of the plan: Choose one spot and focus on it as a starting point."

But Moses said the upcoming stint will be their first proper tour of Japan, with eight shows taking place over eight days.

"The plan is to build out from the success of the 2023 tours, so we'll be starting in Kobe and Osaka again and playing shows with some of the friends we've made the last couple years," he said. "We're really excited to play with our friends in The Skippers, The Dahlia and All I Clacks again while we're there. After that, we're heading to Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama and Chiba, and rounding things out with two shows in Tokyo."

They'll be traveling over the Lunar New Year holiday, which is a big deal in Korea but not as much in Japan.

"We realized all the way back in February 2024 that Lunar New Year would be falling on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this year. That meant, even without the extra red day that's recently been added, that we could do a full one-week/two-weekend tour and only need to take two days off work," he said. "So we started arranging things almost a year ago. We were also lucky to notice the dates before a lot of other people did, so plane tickets were still reasonably priced, too."

He added that the band hoped to finish work on a new single before the tour, but ended up deciding not to rush things.

"We realized we were really rushing things to try to meet that deadline," he said. "Since we're playing in a lot of new spots, we decided it'd be better to just tour with the music we've already released over the last 16 years. That gives us time to make sure the new stuff is arranged and sounds as good as possible."

After the band returns to Korea, they'll finish work on the single at a leisurely pace. Moses said they also hope to release another EP before the end of the year. Such is life when you have your own recording studio, in this case, Binary Studios in Mangwon-dong.

But Moses — and Trash, his wife and bandmate — won't just focus on their own band. Moses said to expect new recordings soon from Long Time No Shit, as well as Monkey Gang War, a ska-punk band fronted by his wife. He added that Monkey Gang War is also planning its first overseas tour, although details have not yet been announced. And Moses said he expects Sweet Gasoline to return to the recording studio sometime this year, and added there are rumors that Beacon will be ready to record new material soon as well. Plus, he said that Full Garage, which ended its five-year hiatus last year, could possibly release more music this year.

Additionally, Moses said he will begin work this year on the next "Them and Us" compilation. The album's concept features 11 bands each contributing two songs, one an original and the other a well-known cover. The previous three compilations came out in 2011, 2016 and 2021, so Moses said going by that timing, the next one is due out next year. "If things go well, that may be the first WDI release very early in 2026," he said.

Another major undertaking WDI is known for is IT'S A FEST!, a punk festival that's supposed to be held at Hanagae Beach on Incheon's Muui Island. The festival ran smoothly in 2019 and 2023, but they lost the venue last year due to unrelated Incheon city politics. Everything had to move indoors at the last minute to Baby Doll, a music venue in Seoul's Sinchon area. Moses said announcements regarding this year's festival will come out in a few months.

Visit wdikorea.com for more information.