reprinted from an interview with She Zine Magazine
https://shezinemag.com/he-said-interview-with-raph-copeland-of-knifetwister-records/
He Said: Interview with Raph Copeland of knifetwister records
December 15, 2025
knifetwister records was born out of frustration with an industry that asks artists to pay for everything and gives almost nothing back. In this wide-ranging interview, founder Raph Copeland talks feminism, ethics, burnout, platform refusal, and why community will always matter more than profit.
knifetwister records doesn’t look like a traditional label — and that’s the point. Built at the intersection of punk ethics, feminist values, and a deep distrust of extractive systems, it’s part label, part interview magazine, and part ongoing experiment in how culture could work if profit wasn’t the only metric that mattered.
Founder Raph Copeland comes to music with an unusual background: decades in tech and cybersecurity, a lifelong devotion to punk and metal, coin collector, pool player, and a political clarity that refuses to stay polite. In this conversation, we talk about why bands are expected to bleed financially just to exist, how feminism shapes leadership, and what it actually means to build ethical infrastructure, not just ethical aesthetics, in 2025.
This is a long one. It’s opinionated, funny, occasionally furious, and deeply human. Exactly how we like it.
SZ: What kicked off knifetwister records — frustration, love, or just a need to make noise?
RC: Raph Copeland, knifetwister records (he/him): It’s funny, I kind of have a stock answer, but never really thought about those options. So, I’d say parts of each, but not equal parts. I think I can tie them all together though.
I see great bands in the NYC area having to go out of pocket for everything. Studio time, gear, gas, tolls, maybe paying a producer, streaming service distribution fees, and so on. For what – a check from Spotify for three cents? I know nobody is doing this to get rich – small local hardcore bands aren’t going to be playing the Super Bowl Halftime Show for a million dollars – but it has to be somewhat frustrating, and I feel that on their behalf. Love – I love music. Plain and simple. It’s kept me going, it’s added so much to my life.
As for the need to make noise – I’ll leave that to the bands you’re probably going to ask me about, they’re a little better at it.
SZ: Did you always imagine it as a traditional label, or something meant to live between scene, media, and movement?
RC: Actually, it was originally going to just be a record label, nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, I happen to be an idea guy; they just NEVER stop, it’s kind of debilitating. My boss had to sit me down once and tell me to stop texting out ideas to the entire firm at 3 AM. The idea came to me – a hybrid record label and digital interview magazine (unfortunately, that idea came to me at 3 AM, so I had to get out of bed and start working on it). Is anyone else doing this sort of hybrid? Probably, but I can’t find any. As for the name, I started off
thinking of something a little more traditional – Excelsior, or Vintage, or Pinnacle, or three dozen others. Everything was taken. Then I looked up how many record labels there are in the world, and it’s estimated at approximately 100,000, most of which are pretty tiny, but I’m
not going to take someone else’s name. knifetwister was an online nickname I used to use back when I was … umm, not quite the friendly, upstanding citizen you see today. That was it.
SZ: What’s been the hardest part of building something independent in a post-pandemic, algorithm-driven world?
RC: There are a few things, and please remind me to put the soapbox away when I’m finished with this, don’t want anyone to trip over it.
One – social media. I fucking hate it. But there’s just no way around it – forget trying to work with bands, I can’t even find out info about shows
without an Instagram account. As someone who has worked in tech for – yikes, 31 years now – I’ve seen the Internet change in all sorts of ways, and you can justify the need for social media any way you like – sure, it brings people together, you can organize union activities, and you can see what your grandparents are up to or whatever – but it’s not healthy. I’m not sure that’s even up for debate.
Take a look sometime at the spike in teen suicides, especially girls, coinciding with the advent of each new platform. Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok – there’s a direct 1:1 correlation, and I’d say causality. I don’t want my kids looking at filtered and airbrushed glamour shots of their classmates, it doesn’t benefit the poster, and it doesn’t benefit the viewer. It benefits a billionaire who does not care about you or your well-being.
The second thing is that I get sent Spotify links all the time, and I have to ask for another platform. The founder of Spotify is a huge supporter of the IDF, the company itself runs ICE recruitment ads, and as mentioned, pays pennies per thousand streams. I have to install it periodically when one of my bands releases something, I take a look at the release and
uninstall it. The whole thing feels dirty.
Oh right, the soapbox, got it. Thanks.
SZ: “Community over profit” feels like a manifesto. Why was that non-negotiable for you?
RC: Money is a necessary evil. It often takes beautiful things and cheapens them. I’m a very serious pool player, at least two hours a day, but it’s sometimes hard to get a game because I won’t play for money; it feels all kinds of wrong. I obviously have to pay the maintenance on
my apartment, I have to feed my dog, but I felt that if there was any way to take money out of the equation in this endeavor, I would.
SZ: What does it mean to run an ethical label in 2025, when the industry still feels so extractive?
RC: I don’t want to pat myself on the back, but it just feels like the right way to do it. I think there is a move towards more ethical labels these days in the micro sense, but look at the history of labels – it’s always been exploitative.
Blues singers in the 30’s. Girl groups in the 50’s and 60’s. Some of my favorite metal bands of the late 80’s/early 90’s (including my favorite band, White Trash) got dropped about ten minutes after Smells Like Teen Spirit aired for the first time on MTV. The grunge bands then got dropped when Nu-Metal reared its unfortunate head.
Now there are people sitting around in a board room somewhere deciding that a talented punk band – take your pick out of the ones we’ve interviewed – aren’t as profitable as terrible some autotuned dance music that takes a day and a half to create from start to finish. People’s musical tastes are actually being manufactured at this point. So, if you have a moral compass at all, I think these things have to bother you a little.
SZ: Do feminist ideas shape how you lead — in curation, management, or mentorship?
RC: Absolutely. Funny story, I’ve always been pretty vocal about being a feminist. And sometimes people would ask me why I was a feminist, and I would often start to explain, but it got a bit tedious. So, after a certain point, I would respond with “yeah, I’m a feminist. Why aren’t you?” Nobody was able to really answer that. But it does affect the way we do things.
I get a request from a band for an interview – if I get a whiff of toxic masculinity, it’s a hard no. Happened just last week, and I was pretty explicit in explaining why they weren’t getting an interview. Hang on a second, where did I leave that soapbox? Oh right.
Generally speaking, this world would be far better off if women ran things. Plain and simple. Would we still have wars, and poverty, and inequity, and unfairness? Yeah, there are always going to be a few Hillary Clintons and Margaret Thatchers that just don’t have hearts or souls. But you give me a magic wand tomorrow which allows me to choose anyone I want to be president, Greta Thunberg is going to be one very surprised young woman waking up in the Lincoln bedroom (yeah, I know she’s not a U.S. citizen, it’s a magic wand). I want someone like Abby Martin running our foreign and domestic policy, or Arundhati Roy, or Angela Davis, or Ana Kasparian.
Here’s something: the United Nations has actually calculated how much money it would take to end world hunger permanently. Jeff Bezos could do this, right this second, without making a significant dent in his net worth. Every morning, he wakes up and decides not to. His ex-wife MacKenzie Scott got 4% of Amazon in the divorce settlement. She has already donated $19 billion dollars, and has pledged to give away at least half her wealth, no strings attached. That is a human being. Her ex-husband made an $11 million donation last week to end homelessness in DC and had a press conference. Yes, he graciously donated 0.00046% of his net worth. And in the half hour it took someone to write the press release for him, he actually earned nearly all of that 11 million back. How the fuck does this guy sleep at night?
If it sounds like I’m cherry-picking examples here, maybe I am. We may never know. Would love to go back in time to see the pre-Colombian matriarchal societies, but that’s not quite possible yet. I worked for a private equity firm until the market tanked in 2008, it was like Animal House, the guys were absolute pigs. The receptionist would come back from lunch and there would be a handful of traders crouched there sniffing her seat. I’m sure you’ve seen movies like Boiler Room, or The Wolf of Wall Street; same kind of deal, your basic New York chop shop.
These are the people running the country – politicians are essentially hired help, and hired help doesn’t bite the hand that feeds it. So, do you want to stick with what we’ve got, or is it worth rolling the dice and seeing where female leadership takes us? I know my answer.
SZ: You recently ran a feature on Pillowbiter, a band that feels raw and fearless. What drew you to them — the sound, the politics, or just the energy they put out?
RC: Initially I was drawn to the name, which was kind of disturbing (I mean no disrespect – they push boundaries, it’s a boundary-pushing name). The lyrics are absolutely brutal in their honesty. I was fortunate enough to interview Sasha, the lead singer, and yeah, raw and fearless fits. And when I say fortunate, I do mean it – that was a moving, emotionally charged interview; I invite you to read it. I was really happy to help get her message of trans rights and love for her community out there.
SZ: We Might Die blurs the line between hardcore, punk, and alt-rock. When you’re curating the label, how do you make space for that kind of genre collision without losing your centre?
RC: I’m going to sidestep this question slightly, because I have a lot to say about that band, and I think the story of how we connected is kind of illustrative.
I followed them kind of at random on social media a few months ago, was just browsing around, their name looked interesting. And I got back a message “hey, thanks for the follow”. How often does that happen? Yeah, exactly. This was in the early days of trying to get the interview magazine off the ground, so I replied “you’re welcome. Want an interview?”. And I wound up interviewing a band, seemingly at random, that would soon become one of my favorite bands.
The interview went so well that we immediately did another one with just Liv, the lead singer/bassist. And that was fantastic – to the question “if you could write a jingle for any product, what would it be”, she answers “gas station boner pills”. Yes, you read that right. She’s ferocious, outspoken, dedicated, fierce, she’ll rip you a new one … and then answer the next question with emojis.
Their manager Stephanie (Liv’s mom, and the wife of Chance, the drummer) was the one that initially thanked me, and she is one of the nicest, most supportive people I have come across in … well, maybe ever. She has been a wonderful friend to me, and has talked me through many frustrations and just generally crappy things that happen in life. I won’t say we’re besties – her besties are and should be Chance and Liv, but I’m hoping to be top 5 someday!
So, why am I mentioning all of this? Because I discovered a great band and made a great friend, because of four simple words – “thanks for the follow”. It didn’t cost her a dime to thank me. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, I think.
SZ: Do you go by gut when signing a band, or is there an invisible checklist — shared politics, ethos, a sense of danger — that makes someone knifetwister material?
RC: Invisible checklist, all the way. Four boxes, and four boxes only. We signed the amazing Queens band MANiK last month, so I’ll use them as a template. Question one: are they actually talented? Check. Two: are they dedicated? Another check. Are they dicks? They are not (that’s actually a checkmark you don’t want). And four – can they put up with my shenanigans? That remains to be seen … Incidentally, you may have noticed that I kind of use “I” and “we” interchangeably. I added my dog Annika to the website as Senior VP for Artist Relations so I could say “we”, makes it sound like a bigger operation. In truth, she contributes almost nothing. Not sure how long she’s going to hold the position, I may have to sit down with Human Resources and discuss a severance package. If she sues, she sues.
SZ: What’s the magazine’s role in amplifying artists who might otherwise go unheard?
RC: That’s really the raison d’être of everything, to be honest. I love music, I want to support small bands that might not otherwise get the exposure. The fewer Instagram followers a band has, the more eager I am to interview them. Big bands don’t need it, and it doesn’t mean as
much to them. If Metallica reached out and asked for an interview, I’d have to politely decline. Okay, that’s totally not true. I’d probably soil myself and then spend three days without eating or sleeping crafting the perfect interview questions. But you get what I’m trying to say.
SZ: How does knifetwister records fit into the current NYC underground — ally, agitator, or both?
RC: I suspect we are kind of like that kid on the playground that is trying too hard to get everyone to like him. But, we’re relatively new. Give us some time, I think we’ll fit in as both. We want to be allies, and we want to agitate. And if you don’t want to do those two things, you have no business in the punk scene.
SZ: What kind of scene or future are you trying to build — for your roster and for the culture around it?
RC: I’ll give an illustrative example. We have a compilation CD called Not In Our City coming out toward the end of December. All proceeds are going to benefit the homeless of New York City, and 21 bands graciously donated their time and music. I expect it will sell out, we have some press lined up, and people are excited about it. So, we’ve got 21 bands, an artist (Chris from RockToonz), a company (Rob and Mike from Dispoze-A-Bowl – they are our jam!) that has helped fund the project, and an up and coming record label (that’s us). That’s 24 entities coming together to do something good – yes, on a small scale, but still. That’s what we are trying to build.
SZ: You’ve worked in two boy-heavy worlds — tech and metal. What kind of sexism have you seen up close, and how do you call it out?
RC: I’ll start with metal. There has been a sea change in what is acceptable, and I’m glad to see it. Late 80’s, you’d watch a metal video and it would be a half-naked woman eating a cherry pie in a sexually suggestive manner, or you’d see Tawny Kitaen writhing around on the hood of a sports car while the members of Whitesnake leer at her. That shit doesn’t fly anymore.
You’ll still see vestiges, I think I saw a Facebook account a few years ago where it was just a dolled-up woman in lingerie holding up classic metal LP’s and looking seductive, and it was a little sad to see the engagement this got. But generally speaking, female metal musicians aren’t putting up with that anymore, and good for them. They should no more want to gain success by throwing their bodies around than I would want knifetwister records to coast along purely on my dashing good looks and incredible physique.
As for tech – yeah, sexism exists. The number of female top execs at tech companies you could probably count on one hand. I don’t really see that as a tech problem honestly, or at least not exclusively – same goes for investment banks, energy companies, probably even the major record labels. I think we’re getting there, but we have a long way to go.
If you are the parent of a young girl, do your best to raise a strong, independent, uncompromising woman, and you’ll have done your part.
SZ: How do you make sure knifetwister’s spaces actually feel inclusive — day to day, not just in mission statements?
RC: Actually, we started off with kind of a slogan. Google’s original slogan was “don’t be evil”, which turned out to be a sad joke, with all the misery that company has inflicted upon the world. Look up Project Nimbus sometime, just please use a different search engine.
Our original mission statement was “we’ll interview you as long as you’re not dicks”. Pretty silly, but we have actually kept to that. We’ve interviewed bands and encouraged them to use the platform to speak out about trans rights, about exploitative streaming services, about the
dangers of AI. Sure, this gets out my personal opinions, but punk is about an ethos; it isn’t just music. Inclusivity isn’t just about creating safe spaces, it’s about letting artists speak to what they feel passionate about. That matters.
If a band wants to talk about drinking and getting laid and going after random people with a boxcutter, that’s fine – it’s a big tent, and there’s room for everyone. But we do want artists to get their message out, whether or not we agree with it. They’ve already done the hard work – they’ve made music that reflects their values. We just hope to be able to amplify that a little if we can.
SZ: You grew up between the Bronx and Westchester — how did that mix shape how you see power, privilege, and access to tech?
RC: I was born in the Bronx, the poorest of the five boroughs in New York City. This was the early 70’s, and if you don’t know what the Bronx looked like back then, you can probably see footage of it on YouTube – half the borough was on fire, crime was rampant, and getting shot at wasn’t taken personally, it was just how a lot of people said “good morning” in those days. Anyone who had the means to get out did so, and that was primarily white people.
Unfortunate, and not really fair – but my parents had two little ones to think about, I’d have probably done the same.
We moved to Westchester, which is a suburb of New York City, and does have some pretty wealthy areas. If you’re an executive at Goldman Sachs, you don’t live in the Bronx, you head up the river to Westchester. And it’s changed. When I was a kid, the guy across the street sold vacuum cleaners. That same house now is a couple – he’s a doctor, she’s a lawyer, something like that.
So, yes – I had advantages that others didn’t. I had access to things that other’s didn’t. I made mistakes and my parents were able to bail me out (figuratively, not literally. Okay, one time literally). I was never hungry, or homeless. And I never really thought about it; I took it for granted. Kids always do.
So, you can go one of two ways with that as you get older. You can say “screw you, I got mine”, or you can try to give back. I try to do for others; my whole family does. But I can’t ignore the fact that there are a hundred kids in the Bronx right now smarter than I was, more talented, more ambitious – and they’ll probably never get a shot.
SZ: You started in ’94 as the internet caught fire — what did those early years teach you about systems and vulnerability?
RC: It’s funny – every year that I’ve been doing this, there’s a new panic. One year it’s a new form of identify theft. Or a new Russian hacking collective. Or a massive data breach. Some Trojan starts making the rounds. Every year I have to tell people “calm down, there’s
something new that happens every year, and it always blows over (this time around it’s AI, which actually does scare the shit out of me, but that’s a topic for another time).
I have learned two important axioms that are vital to understand if you’re in cybersecurity – one is helpful, the other is kind of nihilistic. The nihilistic one, and there are almost no exceptions to this: “nobody cares until it’s too late”. This sadly applies across the board – environmentally, politically – but is especially germane when it comes to your own privacy and security. If you’re a thinking person, I guarantee within the next 5 or 10 years, you’ll come across a situation in regards to your digital security where you’re going to say “ahh, I wish I had known, but now it’s too late. I vaguely remember that one guy trying to warn me about this … eh, whatever”.
The more helpful one, of which I advise people all the time, is “do not be the low hanging fruit”. There is no such thing as 100% security or privacy. Every one of us willingly carries around a GPS tracker in our pockets, for crying out loud, and the company that selflessly provides us all this wonderful free stuff, our friends at Google, hands over your data to the government. No, it’s not a case them being asked for data without a warrant and they hand it over; they proactively provide metadata to the alphabet soup of government agencies. Nobody is invulnerable – I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and odds are I’m going to get hacked some day. Just don’t be the low hanging fruit. You don’t have to outrun the cheetah; you just have to outrun the people you’re with.
My Dad likes to say “there is no free lunch”. He’s right. Electric cars are a perfect example; they were going to save the planet. Turns out now we’ve got 600 pound batteries sitting in landfills, we’ve got 8 year old kids in Bolivia mining lithium for said batteries 14 hours a day, and all we’ve really done is switch the point of combustion from the car to the power plant. No free lunch.
SZ: You spoke at the Hands Off rally for LGBTQ+ youth — how does that activism bleed into your creative work?
RC: Yeah, that was nutty, complete impulse. The news later said there were 2000 people there – I’ve never spoken in front of more than a dozen people, other than I guess my brother’s wedding.
Roughly 45 seconds elapsed between my decision to ask to speak and me actually speaking. I was the last speaker at the rally, there were about 200 people pointing their cameras at me, and I had actually never held a microphone before in my life. I don’t remember what I said, but a lot of people came up to me to shake my hand.
That wasn’t my aim. My aim was just to have one kid there hear my words – one kid feeling alienated because of their sexuality or gender identity, or unsure about how to handle feelings that maybe they didn’t quite understand, or just any kid feeling alone for any reason – I wanted them to know that someone cared. Someone they didn’t know, didn’t know them, but cared about them nonetheless. Someone who was once that alienated kid. I cannot separate that motivation from what I do creatively; they are inextricable.
SZ: Burnout — unplug completely or power through?
RC: I haven’t taken a vacation in 6 years. I get home from the pool hall at midnight and go back to work. I don’t expect to burn out. But if I do, boy – it’s going be a doozy! My neighbors will probably end up getting interviewed when that happens. “He always seemed like such a
nice guy ….”
SZ: If you could send one encrypted message to your younger self — or to the next wave of label founders — what would it say?
RC: I probably wouldn’t encrypt it, because my younger self would have no way of understanding current encryption methods. But I will give you one thing, and I will say this and immediately regret having said it, and when this gets printed I will cringe when I see this, but it is “follow your dreams”. Sincerely.
Website: https://www.knifetwisterrecords.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knifetwisterrecords
Contact: info@knifetwisterrecords.com
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