The T.S.O.L. frontman and Berlin-based musician Lars Triesch recorded their debut album across two continents, with Paul Roessler at Kitten Robot Studios in Los Angeles

Featured image: John Gilhooley

Title: The Life Undone
Artist: Jack Grisham and the Life Undone
Release Date: 2026-07-10
Genres: Hardcore, Punk Rock
Label: Berlin Records
Description: Jack Grisham (T.S.O.L.) and Lars Triesch release debut single "Pieces of the Sun." Album out July 10, 2026 via Lost in Berlin Records.

Jack Grisham was barely out of his teens when T.S.O.L. released their self-titled EP in 1981, one of the harder edges to come out of the Los Angeles hardcore scene that also produced Black Flag, X and several others. Born in 1961, he left the band in 1983 and spent the following years moving between projects: Cathedral of Tears, Tender Fury, and then The Joykiller, which he co-founded with T.S.O.L. guitarist Ron Emory in 1995. The Joykiller put out three albums on Epitaph Records before splitting in 1998. The original T.S.O.L. lineup reformed in 1999 and has continued recording and touring since.

The new project, Jack Grisham and the Life Undone, started with a chance meeting at Las Vegas’ Punk Rock Museum between Grisham and Lars Triesch, a musician originally from Koblenz who had spent the previous decade running a vintage furniture and design firm in Berlin rather than making records. The two started writing together remotely via Zoom, Grisham on piano and voice, Triesch on guitar, a setup that worked conceptually but created a three-second delay that made any attempt at playing simultaneously unworkable in practice.

Once the songs had enough definition, Grisham flew to Berlin to record at Triesch’s studio in Kleinmachnow, Germany. They were joined by Kurt Ebelhäuser (Scumbucket, Blackmail) on guitar, bass, vocals, and keys; Trevor Lucca (D.I., Lovecrimes) on guitar; and Michel Wern (producer for Donots) on backing vocals, with Wern also serving as engineer and co-producer. Ebelhäuser, who produced the album, goes back with Triesch to 1997, when the two recorded a punk 7″ together under the name The Blast Offs in Koblenz.

Additional sessions took place at Kitten Robot Studios in Los Angeles, the facility run by Paul Roessler, brother of Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler– read our interview with Kira. Paul Roessler has been a fixture of the LA punk scene since the late 1970s and 1980s, playing keyboards in The Screamers, 45 Grave, Nervous Gender, Twisted Roots, Geza X and the Mommymen, and Nina Hagen and The Deadbeats, among others. Roessler contributed piano tracks, organ, and backing vocals, alongside engineer John Miller.

The first single, “Pieces of the Sun,” is out now. The song’s lyrical direction originated in a conversation between Grisham and Roessler about aging and whether it had influenced Grisham’s writing. The track draws on the melodic guitar-driven pop of the 1990s, a period Grisham points to directly in discussing its references; he spent much of that decade touring internationally with The Joykiller. The album itself spans 13 tracks that move between alt-rock, midtempo balladry, Americana-tinged acoustic material, and guitar-driven rock.

The album’s cover artwork is an original oil painting by Craig Barker (Skibs), presented across three distinct stages of completion. Each stage has been used as the cover for the first three singles on streaming platforms, with the finished painting appearing as the final album artwork. The title “The Life Undone” is described by Grisham as functioning in two directions: as a therapeutic process of dissection and examination, and as a forward-facing sense of incompleteness, of life still in motion.

Jack Grisham and the Life Undone is released on July 10, 2026 via Lost in Berlin Records.

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