Altered Zones

Baltimore's Dope Body call Baltimore's creative DIY hub the Copycat Building their home, even championing the  landlord on the cover of their debut album, Nupping. With artists in residence since 1983 and starting a trend of converting commercial spaces to live/work studios around MICA, you might also know it as the former home of Dan Deacon-led arts collective Wham City. But Dope Body aren't cut from the same cloth as the absurdist glitch culture. No way. Not Never.

Though that doesn't mean that the band doesn't slip comfortably within Baltimore's radically different art scene. In this case, the bizarre hook is Dope Body's embrace of funk-metal. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that their most recent track to hit the internet, "Bangers and Yos" sports Tom Morello's distorted wah and Zack De La Rocha's gutteral grunt proudly.

It's something that's admittedly difficult to stomach, but when those influences are attenuated, Dope Body makes it work by appreciating the genre through a wildly loud post-punk lens. Thrusting popular '90s and '00s mainstream metal onto a scene that considers it in shamefully poor taste is brave as it is bizarre to say the least; props are deserved as Dope Body manages to pull it off. Luckily, Nupping isn't a exercise in low brow, because if it were, the album would fall painfully hard on its face. But tracks like "The Shape of Grunge to Come" bring the sound down to Earth, carving niche in an abrasive, bludgeoning brand of noise rock that's spastic, engaging, and full of surprises. --Ric Leichtung, Altered Zones

MP3: Dope Body: "The Shape of Grunge to Come"

Watch the video for "100 Mile", Get the Nupping 12" and check tour dates at Hoss Records