Dead Ends[3] had several line-up changes but Al (on vocals and guitar) and Jay (on bass) remained as the band's core.
When Dead Ends disbanded following Jay's death in 1996, Al went into a four-year musical hiatus and focused on his marketing communications work and his stint at the academe in the University of Santo Tomas.
In 2000, Al Dimalanta reformed Throw[4] as the band's vocalist and chief songwriter, with Dennis Maniego on bass, Ojie Arcega on drums and Bimboi San Pedro on guitar.
For a time, the late Luis Guiang of Put3Ska fame played the drums for Throw while the band looked for permanent replacements.
[citation needed] With Al handling both the vocal and guitar chores, Throw then played as a power trio for a few gigs.
[8] Four years after the band's last release, Al and Throw came out with their fourth album titled Stand, a 23-song opus with over an hour's worth of hardcore punk music.
Dimalanta left Metrobank in 2002 to put up a small PR firm with some colleagues, called Vivid Communication.
His recommendation stemmed from the belief that a thorough knowledge of PR would help journalism graduates in their work as media practitioners, particularly when interacting with corporate communicators.
While teaching in AB, Dimalanta concurrently served as the PR and Marketing Officer of the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies (CCWS), from 2003 to 2007.
He worked under the helm of his mother, then CCWS director (and later UST writer-in-residence) and renowned poet Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta.
In his career as a semi-professional photographer, Al has come to be known for his figure studies and still life, as well as for his street photography work.
He has written short stories, flash fiction pieces, and poems which were published in leading publications (such as the Philippines Graphic) and UST journals.
[13] Al plans to come up with a non-fiction book about his experience as a youngster during the Philippine punk scene of the '80s and the history of his two bands Dead Ends and Throw.