Scumripper
Scumripper… I really don´t know what to say here. Maybe you should just listen to them without any further shit talks.
Who are you and what do you do in your band?
Name is Rat Pitt and I do vocals/guitars in Scumripper. Other members of the band are Son Stalker (drums) and Cliff Anger (bass guitar).
When/where was your band formed?
I believe it was late 2014 when we first discussed with Son Stalker (also known from punk bands Nuoret Sankarit and Kovat Arvot) that we should start a savage punk-driven death metal band. First rehearsals as a two-piece occurred in Mikkeli (town of origin for us both) in early 2015. After some jamming we knew that we’ve got something here, so we were confident enough to get a third member to fill bass/guitar duties. We asked a good friend for the deed and soon Cliff Anger (lead guitarist of black/thrashers Evilnight) joined, first to play guitar, but after one or two rehearsals with full lineup, he switched to bass. Two of us are now stationed in Lappeenranta, but calling it our hometown is still a bit off.
Why did you choose to play Death Metal?
I thought I could be happy not playing death metal anymore. All in all, the classic stuff often feels so unattainable. I’ve been doing Lord Fist (my heavy metal band) since 2011 and the ongoing progress with that group had pretty much kept me away of even thinking about forming any other bands or projects. But hearing Nekrofilth in 2014 totally changed my mind . They had such a great hybrid of death metal and punk going on. Raw, simple and uncompromising, yet unbelievably catchy. Finland had a great deal of young quality death metal bands but the emphasis seemed to be more and more on occult themes and almost arcane feel. I mean bands like Swallowed, Krypts, Lantern and Vorum today. They are absolutely fantastic but me and Son Stalker felt that there’s still room for the more gritty stuff here in Finland.
How do you compose your music? Does only one guy do everything or does everyone contribute?
So far it’s been me coming up with the riffs and the final song structures have taken shape when jamming together. Other members will probably contribute more on writing in the future. And I also hope they’ll share vocal duties with me at some point.
Tell us about your lyrics, writing, inspiration etc.
I didn’t overthink it at all, just started writing. Came up with some funny titles that are small tributes at the same time (Run to the Pills, Burning of the Midnight Tramp, Cum Killa etc.) and just wrote the lyrics around the titles. I like to use lot of rhymes because I am new to playing and singing at the same time and it makes the job much easier when the lyrics are memorable.
But the lyrics differ a lot between songs. If you judge by the title, ’Run to the Pills’ would sound like the most thoughtless yarn ever written but lyrically it’s actually the track with real meaningful content. It’s a very brief expression against the overmedication that’s already taken over the western society. Our patience has sinked to a such a pathetic level and without consideration we stuff ourselves with chemicals rather than utillize more natural processes to heal and recover from diseases or pains those are relatively short-term. Other than that, lyrical themes on the EP revolve around all kinds of low-life street scum. But I’ve tried to add a somewhat unearthly feattures to most of the lyrics, which makes them more over the top and amusing. For example, the characters portrayed in ’Shit Needle Crown’ or ’Cum Killa’ could be some kind of underground comic book villains or something.
Japanese Abigail/Barbatos has definitely been an encouraging inspiration what comes to cherishing sheer impropriety. What comes to lyrics being funny, the ’Revenge of the Scabby Man’ from US legends Impetigo is definitely one of those numbers that’s got me cracking. Lines like ”He farts alot, he rapes your wife / You cut a fart and he licks the knife…” are just pure gold.
You released your first demo in 2015. Tell us about it and what´s next for Scumripper?
After a few rehearsals we decided to book a weekend for the recordings, just to make sure that we get things done and the band doesn’t dry out. There’s always a risk when people live in different cities and have other bands as well. In November we went to our rehearsal place in Lappeenranta to record a demo/EP. Cliff Anger did all the engineering and mixing, me and Son Stalker just played our parts. We got it together very fast and the result sounded even better than we had hoped for. We put the tracks on bandcamp straight away and planned on self-releasing it as a cassette as well. But before we managed to finish the layout and order the tapes, Ignacio of Caligari Records contacted us and offered us a deal on the cassette run. We were convinced that he and his label should do us good so we went with Caligari and couldn’t be more satisfied: the cassettes look great and he did some very good promotion for the release.
How do you see the state of Death Metal music these days in your country and in general?
I can’t imagine it being much better here. Lots of great bands, real quality bands. Compared to that they don’t even get the audiences deserved, especially live. But it’s underground anyways and Finland is still a pretty small country. Subcultures, such as this one, appear small if you think about the number of people involved, but the bands and performances really speak for themselves.
In general it feels that death metal (even the most underground) is just becoming more popular each day. Or maybe it’s just that people are more connected nowadays and the most die-hard enthusiasts are just incredibly active and continuosly digging up new bands to listen and support.
What are your long term plans as a band? What do you want to achieve?
The first EP release turned out a lot better than we expected really, everything just clicked. The songs worked and
the production is almost perfect. It’d be safe yet boring to carry on putting out short releases, but we are going straight for the full-length ripper. It’ll surely be a challenge to double the playing time and still keep the intensity, catchiness and scum-fun shock value of the EP. Other than that we are just looking for to play fierce shows with good bands.
Name an other Death Metal band from your country that everyone should hear.
Galvanizer, young lads just showing everybody how it’s done.
Free word.
Look up our spring live dates from bandcamp or facebook. We should be covering Helsinki, Tampere, Lappeenranta and Mikkeli at least. And check out some top class Finnish death metal: Malicious, Cadaveric Incubator, Obscure Burial and Axeslaughter for starters…
Paluuviite: SCUMRIPPER – Self-Titled EP On 7″ Vinyl | The Metal Den