The Witzard

It's been widely reported this past Friday's 24-hour Bandcamp Friday festivities garnered $7.1 million, all of which went directly to the artists waiving the company's own revenue shares. Yesterday, we ran a feature on a collection of our favorite beat tapes released on or around Bandcamp Friday and today, we're going to do something similar, but with mixtapes. Now, these aren't exactly your typical rapper, producer, or DJ-orchestrated mixtapes... these are uniquely non-Hip-Hop "mixtapes" orchestrated and released by a few of our favorite Punk/Hardcore bands, DOPE BODY, F*CKED UP, and Titus Andronicus. For Bandcamp Friday, a newly-reunited DOPE BODY released an album/mixtape called Home Body, F*CKED UP issued their MIXTAPE 6, and Titus Andronicus uploaded Sorry About The Delay: Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape, Volume 2A, A Reductive Scoff: Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape, Volume III, and Broken Down In Morgantown: Titus Andronicus LLC Mixtape, Volume 4 (An Aste...

Alright, full disclosure: I've been in top secret email transmission with Baltimore -based Noise-Rock band Dope Body since around mid-April and I've been fully aware that they were planning to drop an album's-worth of new material around September/October, too; that album, now titled LIFER , is currently slated for an October 23rd release on Drag City Records . While I'm not entirely sure if I discovered Dope Body 's last album, Natural History (2012) or drummer David Jacober 's solo cassette, Water Karaoke first, I guess my initial interaction with the band was a fateful 14-question interview conducted with Jacober a few years ago. LIFER was recorded back in January 2014 after roughly 19 months of non-stop touring behind Natural History , following a brief hiatus to work on the members' outer-band outlets: Nerftoss , Player Press, Holy Ghost Party! and frontman Andrew Laumann 's gallery-displayed visual art exhibits. Drag City further describ...

As cliche as it sounds, Punk Rock is NOT just a mere fad; Angst-filled youth rebellion is something that will never go out of style! But let's face it, even today's finest Hardcore bands are way less "threatening" and society-damning than they used to be. Then again, it seems as though we're currently experiencing a "Hardcore Punk Revival," of sorts... with fresh, new bands like Fucked Up, Diarrhea Planet, WEIRD WIVES (Surfer Blood) , Pissed Jeans , Death Grips, PARTY ANIMAL , and Odd Future popping up every so often. But on the other hand, the sum of all these musical parts don't even begin to stack up against the single greatest Hardcore band of all time: Black Flag ! Dope Body are an aggressive young bunch of D.I.Y. musicians, hailing from Baltimore , MD. Andrew Laumann, Zach Utz , and David Jacober have been creating mashed-up Noise Rock together as part of the city's "Wham City" scene since roughly 2008. John Jones was ...