“One promoter just bailed… So we stole his PA and sold it for gas money”: The life and times of infamous Philly punk icons Ink & Dagger

Ink & Dagger perform in makeup in a suitably punk looking venue with spray-painted walls.

Don Devore’s 2025 was filled with full circle moments. In February, the Pennsylvania-raised guitarist’s teenage hardcore band, Frail, began playing shows around the U.S. – their first since the mid ’90s.

Then this past October, he reunited with cult Philly outfit Ink & Dagger – the self-proclaimed “psychedelic hardcore” group whose mesmerizingly eerie melodies, frantic punk underpinnings and theatrically macabre vampire aesthetic made them infamous within the ’90s underground.