The Witzard

Donovan Days (ialive) & Cody Cody Jones, otherwise known as Cool Code & Don Cool Code & Don are a rapper/producer-rapper consisting of Cody Cody Jones (Cool Code) hailing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and ialive AKA Donovan Days (Don) from Philly. These two sharp-tongued fellas both run in the same East Coast Indie Rap with shared connections to Darko The Super, Height Keech, andrew., Jumbled, C $ Burns, The Hell Hole Store, Cold Rhymes Records, and U DONT DESERVE THIS BEAUTIFUL ART. ialive & Cody Cody Jones have collaborated on a number of occasions on loose singles, one-offs, and things of that nature; however, their big coming out as duo was 2017's Four to The Floor . It was essentially a split EP boasting four Cody Cody Jones tracks (one, featuring ialive) and four ialive-led tracks (one, featuring Cody Cody Jones) on the flip side. Featuring The Muppet Men by ialive & Cody Cody Jones Cool Code & Don did it again a few months later in 2017 with...

Gary W. Bennett, II (GRAPHIC: Ernie Parada for Hellgate Industries) "Doing split records with other bands is commonplace within the Punk, Hardcore, Metal, Indie, and Underground scenes, but for KILL YOUR IDOLS, it's been part of our tradition since day one. We've done splits with Fisticuffs, Full Speed Ahead, The Nerve Agents, Voorhees, Good Riddance, Crime In Stereo, Modern Life Is War, Poison Idea, and 7Seconds. Just writing this and reading it back to myself still blows our minds after all these years... how did we measure up to be able to share a piece of vinyl with these great, legendary bands? That's the beauty of Hardcore music. There's no competition here and we all help each other. That brings us to our split with Rule Them All on Flatspot Records. Rule Them All is among a new crop of Long Island Hardcore [LIHC] & Punk bands that measure up; that will carry the torch for the scene and keep it alive, whether we stick around or not." "Band...

"Hey! Big news, everyone: my new solo record, Black Ice (Volume I,) comes out today, 2/22/22 at 2:22p.m. You can go listen to it over at my Bandcamp and you can buy the vinyl on my Big Cartel . The links are in my Bio, so check it out," Buddy Schaub (@LessThanBuddy) ecstatically exclaimed within a short video posted to his Twitter page yesterday afternoon. You may know Buddy "Goldfinger" Schaub as the long-time trombone/bass player for Less Than Jake, but he does, indeed, have a musical life outside of that band. These are all songs that he's been earnestly working on since 2004. Schaub finally decided on a format for recording them and converted them to 1's and 0's. He warns fans, "there are plenty more songs where these came from, so stay tuned and enjoy these ones for now." Schaub has been working on these songs, and others, on-and-off since 2004 and previosuly released a 5-track collection, Dissociation , jointly billed to Buddy Schaub /...

"We didn't have "Weird Al shredding accordion on our band's record" on the Nerf Herder Bingo card, yet here we are. Yes, the new @nerfherder_band single, "Born Weird" [Feat. "Weird Al" & Dr. Demento] is out TODAY on all streaming platforms and for sale on balogna-colored vinyl (click on Nerf Herder's Bio .) We, also, covered Al's "My Bologna" on the B-side. And if you can't get enough of our balogna, our vinyl includes a balogna-scented sticker! It's, also, Steve [Sherlock's] birthday, so if you don't buy the vinyl, you will ruin his whole day. No pressure," Linus of Hollywood (@linusdotson) shared on his Instagram page last night. Linus' band, Nerf Herder, had been teasing something across their own social media pages for quite some time: early last week, a NERF ALERT was posted that the band would be premiering new music that Saturday, February 12, 2022, on The Dr. Demento Show! Nerf Her...

Sometimes, you need to look to the past as much as the future. The Overview Effect by emcee-producer duo Jermiside & The Expert is a vast musical collage of Psychedelic soundscapes merged together with Hip-Hop's golden age. A socially conscious Psychedelic Hip-Hop album equally inspired by Marvin Gaye's narrative on What's Going On (1971) mixed with tripped out beats reminiscent of Edan's Beauty & The Beat (2005.) The production on The Overview Effect takes on late 60's Psychedelic Folk/Rock, viewed through a 90's B-boy mentality of heavy drums and dope breaks. Built with a keen ear for detail, Dublin-based beatsmith The Expert densely layered his productions with tons of samples, seamlessly weaved together; swirling strings, sitars, Moog synthesizers, and crunchy guitars are all inter-woven and present together here, accompanied and embellished by trippy sound effects. "In terms of song-writing, very few songs on this record have a "classi...

Anwar HighSign is a talented emcee and producer originally hailing from Philly. Anwar HighSign went by Has-Lo for the majority of his career up until very recently. Anwar HighSign/Has-Lo has appeared on songs alongside Al-Shid, Arckatron, Armand Hammer, Blueprint, Castle, Dr. Quandary, August Fanon, Willie Green, HU$ KINGPIN & SmooVth, Illogic, J-Zone, Open Mike Eagle, Preservation, Vic Spencer, and Stik Figa. Most recently, Anwar appeared on "Pressed" from Atmosphere's 2021 effort, WORD? going bar for bar with BlackLiq, Sa-Roc, Haphduzn & Lateef The Truthspeaker. Just about two weeks ago, Anwar HighSign self-released his second proper project since moving onward and upward from Has-Lo. Live N*gga Prophesy was released on February 4th (on Anwar's birthday) and boasts five original tracks fully written, produced, and arranged by Anwar HighSign himself. Kyle Tierce (Quandary) for Memetic Supply Co. made a hand-cut paper collage with some digital embellish...

"For millions of people, their single, lasting image of the Lake Placid Games will be the infectious joy displayed by The US hockey team following its 4-3 win over The Soviet Union last Friday night. It was an Olympian moment, the kind the creators of The Games must have had in mind, one that said: "here is something that is bigger than any of you." It was bizarre, it was beautiful. Upflung sticks slowly cartwheeled into the rafters. The American players—in pairs, rather than in one great glop—hugged and danced and rolled on one another..." "The first Russian I shook hands with had a smile on his face," said Mark Johnson, who had scored two of The US' goals. "I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. We beat The Russians,'" sports writer E.M. Swift shared within an iconic 1980 Sports Illustrated feature. Now, with the 2022 Winter Olympics underway, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Puck Rockers Light The Lamp are sharing their ...

zion antoni (AKA Ari Yusef) is a publisher and grassroots independent recording artist/record producer from The Bronx, New York. He is the founder/chair of The Urban Cry, LLC, a limited-liability company with two main branches: freelance journalism and an independent record company . zion advocates consciousness and bringing a reality to light. "Ari Yusef & Ab Soul Jah are from Exor. It is the home-world of The Exorian race. They are represented by a pair of Exorian metas named The Unimaginables; the two are hereditary protectors of their planet." '"The Ten Elements of The Universe" is the name given [to] their group. Each pair possesses elemental powers including fire, love, vapors, plants, sound, metal, [and] shadows. Ari Yusef, they say, is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years old, but ever-growing in power and strength, due to the fact he is a [deity] and is empowered by the faith and praise of The Nuwabu. Ab Soul Jah [is a] warrior born o...

dälek's MC dälek & Mike Mare (CREDIT: Michael Patras) New Jersey's own Noise Rap group dälek returned late last night with new music. dälek announced the impending release of their eighth album, Precipice, coming this April on Ipecac Recordings. News of the album arrives with the release of the song and accompanying video for the Brickyard Boom-Bap track "Decimation (Dis Nation.)" It was directed by founder Will Brooks AKA MC dälek himself. "Precipice was a completely different record pre-Pandemic," Brooks explains. "We had been working on the sketch of what the album was going to be at the end of 2019. I think, me and (Mike) Manteca had narrowed it down to 17 joints out of the 46 or so that we had started with. Me & Joshua Booth had taken the 17 and really fleshed out the joints. The idea was to bounce them back to Mike and, then, arrange [and] write lyrics. 2020, obviously, had different plans for everybody. We, basically, put everything on...

Fuss L-R: Chase Knobbe, Bob Vielma & Nick Aguilar (CREDIT: Jeff Rosenstock) After living most of his life in The Bay Area, in the mid-2010's, Bob "BOBOSO" Vielma (Shinobu, Yulia, Tadaima) relocated to LA to seek out a different pace of life, away from the tech CEO's and VC sociopaths that had re-created The Bay in their own image. At a party shortly after moving, he bumped into Chase Knobbe (Joyce Manor,) a long-time friend who had been wanting to start a new project and had already found a drummer in Nick Aguilar ( SLAUGHTERHOUSE , Mike Watt + The Missingmen, NEIGHBORHOOD BRATS.) Like a spark, Fuss was born on-the-spot. We're Not Alone, Fuss' debut, is packed with Poppy Indie Rock nuggets inspired by J-pop, Disco music, and Arizona D.I.Y. Punk. Led by Vielma's earnest and direct melodicism, Fuss drop tiny anthems of life after your 20's: trying to keep cool when you feel terrible, working, and continuing to seek out community. Honest and vuln...

Scottish Punks Cold Years (CREDIT: Pirate Photography) Aberdeen, Scotland-bred Punk trio Cold Years have released their brand new single, "Kicking & Screaming," a ragged and rousing anthem about leaving toxicity behind in one's life in the pursuit of better living. "There's so many times in my life I've been in bad situations and just couldn't see a way out," frontman Ross Gordon said. "But, now, I'm in a much more positive place. It's fight or flight—you have to take chances and do what's best for you." "Kicking & Screaming," "Headstone," and "Home" are the first new songs from the band since the release of their acclaimed debut album, Paradise , released in September of 2020. It's a sarcastic snarl aimed at the band's remote hometown that bursts from the speakers with a "clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" spirit. Echoing the infamous, despairing "it's...

Wild In The Streets, the scorching 1982 sophomore album by the path-finding Southern California Hardcore Punk band, The Circle Jerks, will receive a re-mastered, augmented LP re-issue on February 18, 2022 by Trust Records. Succeeding Trust's 2020 re-release of the band's 1980 debut, Group Sex, the package will include re-mastered audio by Pete Lyman and rare April 1982 live performances of material from the band's first two albums, captured at The Elite Club in San Francisco. A lavish 20-page, full-color 12x12-inch booklet created for this release assembles historic photographs, club flyers, and an 8,200-word essay by veteran Los Angeles journalist Chris Morris, including new interviews with founding band members Keith Morris, Greg Heston, and Lucky Lehrer. Today, you can preview the re-mastered version of the album's title track, "Wild In The Streets," with a new music video directed by storied photographer and skateboarder Atiba Jefferson. The video ...

The Sad Tomorrows, L-R: Mike "Hunchback" Catalano, J. Nixon, Brian Gorsegner & Jeff Schroeck (CREDIT: Stan Rawrysz) The Sad Tomorrows is a new band featuring a bunch of New Jersey Punk-adjacent veterans (some might say royalty!) from groups like Black Wine, The Ergs!, Hunchback, NIGHT BIRDS, and Screeching Weasel. While relying on the elegant melodies and top-notch songcraft that characterizes the members' other projects, The Sad Tomorrows recall an earlier era of Alternative music, before Melodic Punk branched out and calcified into Indie Rock and Pop-punk. Their snappy, energetic, and open-hearted songs bring to mind 80's bands like The Lemonheads, Big Drill Car, Sebadoh, Indie-era Goo Goo Dolls, and Soul Asylum... artists that bridged the gap between Hüsker Dü's angsty Post-hardcore Pop and the more polished and anthemic music of the 90's Alternative Rock boom. If that boom were still happening, the suits would be lined up outside The Sad Tomorrow...