Artist Profile: DARTZ
Massey Confessions called the band coming to campus the “biggest Massey news since David Seymour was unbanned from campus”. Massive called their EP a fucking masterpiece. DARTZ is a Wellington punk-rock band that serves up student realness, from songs about bath salts to shitty flats and Captain Cook being a “wig-wearing cuck”.
After the fuckfest of 2020 cancelled their first planned visit last year, DARTZ finally got to play at Massey; their first few gigs in Palmerston North. So, between their two performances, Massive sat them down in Radio Control’s recording room for a chat, a cold one, and to learn where DARTZ came from and how their first show could have been their last.
The band formed in 2019 as an opener for the smoko-loving, mullet-toting Australian Punk band, The Chats. Singer Danz had grown up with their guitarist Crispy in Auckland and described the lead up to the band’s inception. “We messed around with music a little bit in Auckland and then we decided to move (to Wellington) and we got an opportunity from an old friend to open for The Chats and were like, let’s just make the most Australian Punk band possible.”
From there, the question of “who would we want to see opening for The Chats” prompted the name DARTZ, and it stuck. Missing a drummer and bassist, they started looking around. Rollyz joined the band after having worked alongside Crispy at a Cafe for some time.
“We knew Rollyz was a drummer, we didn’t realise how good so the poor guy got dragged into the worst idea possible even though he was very talented,” Danz remarks.
Clark was the last to join the band with a reputation that preceded him. “He was apparently just one of the tightest rhythmic people in Wellington, and he was actually playing shaker at the time, he doesn’t get much shaker action anymore in DARTZ,” Crispy laughs.
With Danz on vocals and Crispy on guitar, DARTZ as we know it was formed.
Taking it right back to their formative show, it becomes clear the band was very close to being a one-off gig. “The story for the first one is such a great one because we had essentially made DARTZ two weeks beforehand,” Danz says. “We had our first practice and wrote the first song two and a half weeks before the gig,” Crispy interrupts. “The soundcheck was fucking awful,” Danz deadpans.
“Me and [Crispy] had just moved to Wellington and were like, we are about to embarrass ourselves in front of a sold-out audience.” So naturally, the band did what any student would do: get outrageously drunk. God bless. “I think because we thought we were gonna fuck up, there was like nothing to lose,” Danz says. “But we did it, and we all went NUTS... the whole crowd was in on the first song... our levels just went up.” To cap off the fairytale performance, “People were buying us drinks, giving us weed,” Dan laughs.
The band admits that DARTZ was meant to be a “a one-off for that gig and definitely would have been based off our reception to the soundcheck so we wouldn’t be here if that gig had not gone [well]”. But thank God they’re still around and kicking. In the time since that first show, DARTZ have been playing and touring New Zealand fairly regularly with plans to potentially redo their ‘Crate Day Gigathon’ this year “bigger and better”.
DARTZ are really the ultimate student mood. With lyrics like “Caught you struggling to cut line of MD/ So I help with my expired student ID/ We're chewing out our faces and looking super faded/ Let's go out for a smoke and try to get hydrated.” What’s not to love? They’re a love letter to getting fucked up with your mates, through good times and bad. So go forth, get fucked up with your mates, and listen to some DARTZ. Amen.