Swiz

In the late 1980s, as many D.C. punk bands left hardcore behind, Swiz brought the intensity and immediacy of the early waves of the scene back through their cutting sound. Consisting of vocalist Shawn Brown, previously of Dag Nasty, drummer Alex Daniels, guitarist Jason Farrell, and bassist Nathan Larson, Swiz were something of an outlier in late-1980s D.C. punk with Brown later remarking “we were the hardcore band that thought its mission at the time was to ‘keep it real,’” while Larson maintained that the band “considered [them]selves standard-bearers of tradition.” As evidenced by their two full-length releases on Amanda MacKaye’s Sammich Records, Swiz preserved elements of the classic hardcore sound while also making it newly relevant.

Drawn from the Sharon Cheslow Punk Flyers collection, the D.C. Punk collection, and the Jason Farrell collection at Special Collections in Performing Arts at the University of Maryland.

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