DÖLTZ have built a whole band out of one stupid idea and somehow kept that idea running for two EPs. The Greensboro, North Carolina four-piece play obscure-80s-style hardcore with a beautiful kind of ugliness, and Big Bastard’s reverb-heavy voice comes at you like somebody barking through a cheap megaphone right next to your ear, forcing another chunk of lyric in before the last one has cleared. On “Total Recharge“, all of that sits inside a world of propeller hats, smooth brains, collective thought and one giant metallic moron called DÖLTRON.
The joke has been there from the first song.
Bad Brad and Mad Matt started putting DÖLTZ together in the summer of 2023 after knowing each other for around a decade and watching several previous bands either break up or move elsewhere. Some of the planning happened beside the 3.5-foot above-ground pool behind Brad’s house. Some happened stumbling home from local shows late at night.
They already had the name, the hats and the basic idea before the lineup was complete.
“The truth of the matter is there really is no DÖLTZ without the propeller or the mythology behind it. The first song we wrote was ‘Propeller’ which became the opening track on ‘So-Called Free Thinkers’ The grand concept and mythos behind the thinking caps came along with the name and the band was born out of it as a whole. We always intended on creating hardcore for dummies.”
That first EP arrived in 2024. Its title, “So-Called Free Thinkers“, already had the whole thing running underneath it: “Hardcore for dummies. Songs for stupid people. Punk for the puny minded.”
Brad and Matt had plenty of history before any of this.
Matt played drums in Philadelphia bands Damn Frank and Big Attack!. Brad came into punk after playing in dream-pop and shoegaze bands, then joined Raleigh’s Essex Muro, who had history with Sorry State Records.
The first band Brad and Matt played in together was The Red Hand, a futuristic surf-punk band that remains active in Philadelphia. They also shared ZAAT, an experimental North Carolina punk band that started as a bass-and-drums duo before Brad joined on guitar and Matt on synth. ZAAT are currently inactive.
Brad also played guitar in Raleigh hardcore band Huffer. Matt was supposed to join after their original drummer left, but Huffer split before that happened.
Mean Dean came in through another old connection. He and Matt played together in black metal band Paezor from 2018 to 2022, until their guitarist and friend Rob Paquette died unexpectedly.
The three already knew Zack Taylor through years around the North Carolina punk and metal scene. Zack had sung in Chapel Hill punk band Life Alert around 2015, which also included a member connected to ZAAT.
He joined DÖLTZ on vocals, put on the thinking cap and became Big Bastard.
“Now there is no Zack, there is only the Big Bastard.”
The completed lineup played their first show on October 8, 2023. Early DÖLTZ gigs had the thinking caps and little else in terms of uniform. The white short-sleeve shirts, red bow ties and little black shorts came later.
By then the fictional version of the story was already doing most of the talking.
According to DÖLTZ mythology, all four members received the same vision from a distant entity that became known as the hivemind. The thinking caps would clean out the bad thoughts and leave their brains smooth enough to follow the propeller.
“The thinking is no longer from our brains. It is the will of the propeller. The sounds you hear are that of the propeller. And the voice of Big Bastard is the voice of the one. It is the voice of the all. It is the guiding light to achieving the one DÖLTRON.”
DÖLTZ even answered our first long set of questions collectively, introducing themselves as “all four members of DÖLTZ responding as one, as always”.
The change from “So-Called Free Thinkers” to “Total Recharge” is part of the same story. Early on, the human brain was still fighting the hat. Two years later, resistance is going badly.
“When the propellers first came it took some time to adjust. Our bodies wanted to fight back. Our brains wanted to have their own free thoughts and not comply with the will of the hat. Deeming us ‘Free Thinkers’ or so we thought. And now we do not think therefore we are not.”
They take the school joke one step further too.
“From free thinkers to no thoughts. From fresh men to soft morons.”
Hence their description of “Total Recharge” as the “sophmoronic” release.
Underneath all of that nonsense is a pretty clear hardcore vocabulary. DÖLTZ point towards BATO, D.R.I., Jerry’s Kids, JFA, Negative Approach, Poison Idea, Pollute, T.S.O.L., Pyrex and Zorn. The appeal here is that scuffed old-record quality, the reverb around the vocals and the way Big Bastard keeps hammering the words until they stay there. It is ugly in a good way, with enough space around the voice that every dumb little phrase gets extra room to bounce around.
The band had already been making jokes about the world, hardcore people taking themselves too seriously and various self-righteous “cool guys” before DÖLTZ existed. The band gave them somewhere to put all of it.
“Now there are no jokes, Karol. Now there are only dummies. This is what we strive for and the purpose of the thinking cap.”
“Monkey Business” drags BonziBuddy into that world. The purple software assistant becomes DÖLTZ’s version of Big Brother, sitting inside the family computer while everybody willingly clicks through agreements and hands over their information.
“I agree to the terms and agreements
I sign my life away
My life is yours, purple man
Now won’t you please come stay”
A few lines later, there is very little left of the friendly desktop helper.
“I’m your purple BonziBuddy
Behind my back is a knife”
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“XDOLTRONX” goes straight for the band’s endgame. The thinking caps are there to bring everybody together, with human brains eventually powering DÖLTRON. DÖLTZ pull some of the imagery from 80s cartoons and Japanese robots.
“Freaks and Germs
All of you, one in all, come be a big DOLTRON”
And then the mission statement:
“We are achieving the DOLTRON
One big metallic MORON”
By the end, everybody gets the same invitation.
“So, take these hats and put em on
Your brains power the might DOLTRON!
HA HA HA!”
“Sterling” came from something far less ridiculous. DÖLTZ saw an older man sitting alone outside a church and assumed he might need some kind of enlightenment. They were ready to give him a propeller.
He needed a lighter.
“Right now, I only need one thing
Right now, it’s just one thing
Right now, it’s only one thing
Sterling
Haha I just need a light”z
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That sort of transformation happens naturally inside DÖLTZ. A man asking for a cigarette lighter ends up inside the same universe as giant robots and brain-controlling hats.
“Cool Guy” takes its joke from air conditioning and stretches it across bad temper, self-righteousness and somebody convinced of his own coolness.
“In my well tempered house
I feel no stress
No sweat on my face
Coolin in my chair”
The wordplay keeps going from there.
“I’m never in the kitchen
Cause I can’t stand the heat”
Eventually the AC unit and the personality problem have completely merged.
“A frosty Mr. Softy
The anger is a quirk
I’d get a window unit
But that would never work
DONT BE A JERK!”
The title track closes the EP with somebody trying to fix what is happening inside his head. Doctors, pills, hypnosis and E.C.T. appear first. Then the whole thing goes off the rails.
“Hands me a fork
And points to the nearest outlet
I stick it in
I achieved a whole new mindset”
Later, the doctor hands over a toaster.
DÖLTZ put the whole song firmly inside the thinking-cap fiction. For them, “Total Recharge” is the point where the character finally gives up fighting and lets the propeller take over.
“The relief one feels when they let the propeller wash over them and become fully and totally recharged.”
By their own fictional logic, that is the eventual plan for everybody. Freaks, geeks, worms, germs, all under one propeller. DÖLTZ push the idea all the way to a world with no war, famine, death, fear or bad thoughts because nobody is thinking for themselves anymore.
“The state of the world at this moment is one of bad. The message of DÖLTZ is one of good. We make the hardcore music for the dummies. We create the songs for the stupid people. We are punks for the puny minded.”
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Outside the hats, Greensboro has given the band one particularly useful base.
Flat Iron is a small room of around 100 people run by Josh King and Abbey Spoon. DÖLTZ have played there repeatedly and call it the best-sounding room in town.
“We couldn’t ask for anything more from them. They’re two amazing people who are in this to give musicians a place to call home.”
Josh and Abbey also let DÖLTZ record their second EP inside Flat Iron during off-hours.
The venue came through again when a show with New Orleans band M.A.T.B., Miranda and the Beat, ran into unforeseen problems. With around 24 hours’ notice, Flat Iron gave them a room and the show went ahead.
“Go to the Flat Iron almost any night and there will be music worth seeing. We hold our propellers high for Josh, Abbey, and the Flat Iron.”
Greensboro itself changes quickly. It is a college town, and DIY rooms, organisers, bands and different pockets of music keep appearing and disappearing. Several groups we initially brought up with DÖLTZ had already stopped playing by the time they answered.
Their current Greensboro picks are Instant Regrets, BloodRitual and Harvester.
Elsewhere in North Carolina they pointed us towards Snide from Chapel Hill, Plastique Pigs and Cyprian from Raleigh, Pollute from Durham, Designer from Asheville and Zulitas from the Outer Banks. My Wife’s An Angel from Philadelphia also came up among the bands in their wider circle.
DÖLTZ consciously avoid playing Greensboro too often. They want each hometown show to have a little more weight, and they want room on those bills for touring bands and friends coming in from elsewhere.
They have already appeared at Hopscotch, MACROCK, Phuzz Phest and Greenville Punk Fest, and they want to travel further over the next few years.
There is already another record somewhere in the propeller.
“The third release is being whispered into existence as you and I and us correspond at this very moment. The only clear direction is the word. Our regular human brains are still too puny to comprehend what the end result will be. And we depend upon our thinking caps to soon open our eyes and ears to reveal our next move.”
For now, “Total Recharge” is the second DÖLTZ EP, following 2024’s “So-Called Free Thinkers”. Big Bastard handles vocals, Bad Brad guitar, Mad Matt bass and Mean Dean drums.
Brandon Tenney recorded the EP at Flat Iron in Greensboro. Matt Goshow and Penny Lambo mixed it, with Goshow also handling mastering. Rook.Lit did the cover art and lettering, and Benjamin Lin shot the Polaroid at Phuzz Phest 2026.
“Thanks To All Who Don The Blade.”
