The Witzard

LEKTRON, L-R: Matt Skiba, Atom Willard, Hunter Burgan, and Randy Moore (SOURCE: Facebook, photographer unknown) LEKTRON was born in a torrential rainstorm in San Jose, California on a fateful winter night. What started out as an excuse for Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio, blink-182) to make some noise in a friend's studio quickly evolved into a Garage-esque Punk Rock band thanks to the recording prowess of Ryan Perras and the Black Belt guitar musings and structural sensibilities of Randy Moore (GET MARRIED, DOKI DOKI, Dan Andriano & The Bygones.) Moore actually works at Asian Man Records with owner and founder Mike Park. The three built the foundation for the songs "Dirty Jacks" & "She's A War" to be taken up by rhythm section juggernauts Atom Willard (Social Distortion, Against Me!) on drums and Hunter Burgan (AFI, Matt Skiba & The Sekrets) on bass. What started in the vibey confines of District Recording Studios in San Jose would be taken down to...

The Fiendz's 1987-96 line-up, L-R: Joey Darone, Jerry Jones & Jimmy Joyce (ART CREDIT: Joe Darone) Now, let's just be completely honest here: in an ideal world, who (on The East and/or West Coast) wouldn't wanna be down at the shore over Memorial Day Weekend!!? I mean, I could personally do without all the related traffic, mobs of people, noisy neighbors setting of random fireworks, and hullabaloo, but being down at The Shore—well, the REAL Jersey Shore, Ocean City, NJ—is the best place to be during the summer! So, it makes complete and total sense that New Jersey-based Punk/Pop-punk band The Fiendz just recently unleashed a new song, fittingly titled "Down The Shore." It's the second single from their forthcoming album titled Dummy. Dummy will be the first proper Fiendz's full-length since 2011's Commit to Memory . "Down The Shore" was delivered to radio and released ahead of Memorial Day Weekend just in time for the unofficial "s...

Rhys Langston x Pioneer 11 (CREDIT: Emily Berkey) Cutting-edge Los Angeles-based trio dubbed Rhys Langston x Pioneer 11 have announced a new collaborative effort, To Operate This System, set to drop in a couple months on Passion of The Weiss & The LAnd Magazine founder Jeff Weiss' own P.O.W. Recordings. The self=proclaimed "Poet Laureate of Your Living Room," Rhys Langston joins forces with the psychedelic cosmonauts Pioneer 11 (Bryan Gomez & Alex Hastings) to chart new terrain grounded in extraterrestrial R&B, Hip-Hop, Acid House, deep space Dance music, and cosmic Soul. Pioneer 11 & Rhys Langston are, indeed, not here to bury the computer, they're here to save it. Their sprawling eight-track debut, To Operate This System, is an attempt to become one with the wires and bytes—to fuse the most cherished qualities of humanity with the power of the matrix. Crunch the data and you might receive only computative errors. After all, it is difficult to fin...

Fiona Snapple posing backstage on her last tour (SOURCE: Fiona Snapple) Fiona Snapple, the Norwegian Black Metal singer turned Nerdcore & Hyperpop collaborator, emerged from Kristianstad, Norway's dreary depths during The Pandemic. With eight years of music under her belt, Fiona Snapple's clever name is a nod to both the Snapple drink and her black cat, Fiona. She signed with Audentes Records, collaborating with Cowboy Coder & MC Lars to blend spooky and high-tech sounds. Fiona fearlessly covers Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Kate Bush, and more, fusing Black Metal with Pop music. Fiona's chaotic process involves tearing tracks apart and adding screaming guitars, synths, and Black Metal elements. She draws inspiration from Mayhem, SOPHIE, MC Lars , and Cowboy Coder. We recently got in contact with Fiona Snapple's label representatives and press agents online, who facilitated an interview with Fiona via email. Along with Fiona's interview question responses,...

KOYO L-R: Harold Griffin, T.J. Rotolico, Sal Argento, Joey Chiaramonte, and Steve Spanos (CREDIT: Rebecca "Becca" Lader) Long Island Hardcore newcomers KOYO have announced their debut full-length, Would You Miss It?, due out this fall from Pure Noise Records. In just a few short years, the band has been turning heads with their unabashedly heart-on-sleeve blend of Punk, Hardcore, and Emo, and now Would You Miss It? makes good on that early promise with their most satisfying release to date. To mark the announcement, KOYO have shared the album's first single, "You're On The List (Minus One)." Driven by huge guitars and a heavyweight chorus, the track is a perfect introduction to KOYO's hyper-anthemic sound. The song's accompanying music video is a tongue-in-cheek testament to the KOYO's ability to tie together different generations of East Coast Punk & Hardcore, featuring fun-loving appearances from Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance, modern...

Old Grey Horror's Jason Adams pictured with his guitars (CREDIT: David Pitcher, @pitcherpictures) We would venture to guess a musical artist has effectively "made it," achieved "mainstream" success, and/or reached "legendary" status once they've been quoted, referenced, or name-checked within a piece of digital or print media. It happened to LUSTRA (formerly known as Seventeen) when Marvel Comics issued Deadpool #41 in 2012, which, for whatever reasons, took place primarily in The Middle East. Deadpool #41 was penned by Gerry Duggan and actor/Metal musician Brian Posehn with cover art executed by Mark Brooks and artist Salvador Espin. One particularly striking panel showcases Deadpool listening to, of course, "Scotty Doesn't Know" on an MP3 player with a bubble nearby inscribed "SCOTTY DOESNT KNOW SCOTTY DOESN'T KNOW-OOh-OH!" LUSTRA's "Scotty Doesn't Know" was notoriously featured as a quasi-primary ...

PURE HEEL - Freedom from You back cover (CREDIT: MArk Miller, @hmniphoto) Jay Galvin is the guitarist of Buffalo Wrestle-core pioneers PURE HEEL , one of our absolute favorite Punk/Hardcore-adjacent bands in recent years. Galvin is affectionately known within the band as The Captain and somewhat less affectionately known as Captain Annoying. He's been with PURE HEEL since their formation and appears on their earliest recordings starting with their four-track 2016 Demo. Galvin has been recording, making, playing, and releasing msuic since about 1995 and either is currently or was once a member of Bleed for Me, The Bonesaw Romance, Disengage, Face The Panic, P*ssing Match, Serpents of Shiva, Slugfest, thegalvinwilhelmmillerquartet; these including stints playing and making music alongside Scott Reynolds (ALL, The Pavers,) Aaron Ratajczak (Every Time I Die, HOURGLASS,) and Scott Vogel (TERROR, WORLD BE FREE.) In addition to his various musical albilities—Jay has been a singer, guita...

Say Anything's SA/2023 line-up (SOURCE: Dine Alone Records) Say Anything have returned to release their first new music together as a band since 2019's would-be swansong, Oliver Appropriate. "Psyche!" reunites Say Anything's mouthpiece and mastermind, Max Bemis, with the band's original drummer, Coby Linder, former bandmates, Alexander "Alex" Kent on bass [and] Parker Case on synths and programming, and adding into the fold Brian Warren (Weatherbox) and Fred Mascherino (The Color Fred, Taking Back Sunday,) who, actually, briefly toured with Say Anything through 2014, offered additional production on the track, alongside Case. With his signature snarl, Bemis proclaims in the opening lines of the song, "we are born again. We've died and sprung to life, so wet and fresh." "Psyche!," replete with lyrical nods to the band's contemporaries in the Pop-punk scene—"I will sing the requiem" (Saves The Day,) "blink a...