Not Just For Alcoholic Divorced Dads: An Interview With NYC’s Antiwise
By Staff | July 31, 2026
Just to get it out of the way, Antiwise is not a collaborative project between Antiflag and Pennywise. They are their own band. Totally separate.
We first became aware of the band upon seeing one of our own Instagram videos on their page with their own music dubbed over it. That being hilarious, they’ve been on our radar ever since, and they should be on yours. A project born of passion, coffee, dad jokes, and a shared love for massive, atmospheric sound, Antiwise is here to make noise, make friends, and just possibly burn everything else down.
Your band has been described as a passion project. Do you agree with this assessment, and why or why not?
Tommy Wise: We enjoy any description of AntiWise. Millions of pieces of content get uploaded every day, so if someone spends any part of their day paying attention to our content we are pretty amazed by it even if they say it sucked after listening or watching. But yes, passion project is accurate.
In a band where everyone writes and sings, how do you decide who takes lead?
It is organic. I sang most of the leads on the recordings and Sara, Tegan and Jimmy sang backgrounds. On the records we stack a lot of layers of vocals on the same part, clean and soft takes over the heavy takes. Live we divide it to make that work. I take most heavier parts, Sara takes the softer parts, and Tegan connects it all and fills in the gaps. I am still trying to talk Sara into taking a lead on a recording.
With Tommy and Jimmy being long time veterans of the scene, and Sara and Tegan having recently finished college, how do you keep the vibe consistent in the band?
The whole idea of AntiWise is that it is supposed to be a form of therapy. Once the pressure and drama of being in a band was removed, the vibe took care of itself. Honestly the only hard part is finding time for all four of us to be in the same room with our different adult lives. Once we are in there, it is a whole lot of coffee and Dad Jokes that keeps the vibe consistent.
If you could collaborate with any artist for one track, living or dead, who would it be and why?
Josh Silver, keyboardist and producer for Type O Negative. Type O Negative is from Brooklyn and was a huge influence on AntiWise. Josh had this incredible ability to build a massive wall of sound without ever burying the performance. Everything feels huge and atmospheric, but you can still hear every nuance of what the players are doing. He's stepped away from the music industry, so getting to work with him would be a real long shot.
In a strange way we're already one degree away, though. Our latest EP was engineered and co-produced by Joey Z from Life of Agony, and their debut album River Runs Red was co-produced by Josh Silver himself.
What's the most ridiculous piece of merch you've ever seen or considered making?
Jimmy wanted custom toilet paper with our logo on it, which I didn't even know was possible. Apparently it's a gag gift thing. But just making it wasn't enough for Jimmy. He didn't want to sell it or give it away to fans. He wanted to spend thousands of dollars on it and drive through dozens of states stocking the bathrooms at Applebee's. And only Applebee's. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I'm also not saying it's a good idea.
If each of you had to describe your fanbase in three words, what would they be?
I speak for everyone in the band when I say this: alcoholic divorced Dads. Because it’s what divorced Dads listen to after dropping the kids off back at their mother’s house after weekend visitation.
What's your band's unofficial motto, or maybe an inside joke that defines your personality (other than dubbing your own music over other people's social media posts)?
It's funny you bring up our social media, we were just debating last night where to take it. Especially now that the EP is out and Sara and Tegan have limited time to commit to a more intense rehearsal schedule moving forward. In the early stages while we were recording, we were posting reels just for each other. It was a silly way to stay in touch. Jimmy started putting early demos behind random videos he found, mostly just to make the rest of the band laugh.
We started posting the same stuff to the AntiWise page with zero expectations. Then the algorithm got weird. Some get 100 views, some get 100,000. We realized it was a backdoor way to get people to actually hear the music. We've been intentionally staying behind the scenes. We rarely put ourselves out there, you have to dig pretty deep on social media to even see what we look like. That was by design. It was never supposed to be about any one member. We've always envied bands that can make music from behind masks.
But to actually answer your question our official motto is: make noise, make friends, burn everything else. Our tagline is: The official soundtrack to somebody else's existential crisis.
Linktree
Antiwise Official: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads | Linktree