Viva la Muerte was founded in 2005. Known for their electrifying live performances, VLM was recently signed by Ex Umbra Records out of New York City. In 2012 VLM completed a successful $10.000 kickstarter campaign to fund this, their first album, "All the Birds." Blurbs: "Very nice variety of feels and flavors here. Hearkens back to the '60s in the best possible way. Armstrong's voice brings to mind Jim Morrison but without the false menace." -- David Gans - Host of The Grateful Dead Hour and Tales From The Golden Road "'All the Birds' is a great new album that certainly puts most of the boring folk music these days in its place. The album screams with creativity without an apology...'Obscuro' sounds like something out of a psychedelic-influenced spaghetti western directed by Quentin Tarantino...['Oneiromancy'] sounds like a feel good song that one would hear in The Dude's car while heading to the beach...Overall the album is commendable and fascinating. For those looking to get into new folk bands around the area, Viva la Muerte's 'All the Birds' is certainly not something to be looked past." — Joey Oldaugh, Amplifier ....Loosely translated, the name "Via la Muerte" means "Long Live Death," or "Long Live the Dead," suggesting a love of ghosts and a desire to keep them alive, a dangerous/obsessive nostalgia, or maybe just that Blakean/Samurai/Taoist wisdom that knows the key to one thing is in understanding its opposite. There's a great quote about the Samurai tradition: "The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day, when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day, without fail, one should consider himself as dead. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai.” This approaches the essence of Viva la Muerte. VLM draws from a wide variety of influences, including another band that took a fancy to the paradox of finding life in death: The Grateful Dead. A short list of other influences would include: Wilco, Radiohead, Ryan Adams, Gillian Welch, M. Ward, Bill Frisell, My Morning Jacket, and Jane's Addiction.