I panic. What the hell is this white, flaky shit falling
off this piece of red construction paper that the cook at Paradox
Café just handed me? The sheet was stuffed inside the case
of his punkish metal band’s homemade cassette demo tape. I begin to see
lyrics—scribble like, “There’s a burning in the night/No way’s
wrong and nothing’s right.” I turn the sheet over and find a hastily
stenciled, toothpaste-thick chipped outline of what might be a grinning
skull wearing sunglasses. DIY rock, I am reminded, is alive.
At a time when the heavy music promotion machine has gone mostly
virtual, with record labels like Nuclear Blast and Earache moving from
promo CDs to digital downloads, a physical recording in hand is a
surprise feeling for this writer, even disregarding Ripper’s crumbling
insert. It is rare for me to take in music that isn’t expressly sought
out or subscribed to, clicked on, and decompressed.
The actions of the cook, Ripper vocalist/guitarist Robbie Chronic,
suggest the revived cassette-tape medium is showing heavy music a way
back to its tactile roots. We talk by phone before another of his
kitchen shifts. He spent the morning making demo tapes in his bedroom
with the trio’s one master CD (“Stereophonic Mastering, that’s where we
went”), a stockpile of blanks from tapes.com (“You can get ’em for like $25 for
100″), and his beloved Technics dual deck (“So I can make two at
once”). No doubt he decorated and numbered each one by hand as he did
mine. “It’s an arduous process,” he says, laughing.
Pushing play recalls my first impression. Chronic shreds apart,
periodically invoking the banshee of a mid-’80s Flotsam and Jetsam ax
solo. His Amebix-like pipes strain toward unreachable melodic-rock
rafters. Bassist Mira Sonnleitner and drummer Dustin Ferris go as if
drag racing, their in-pocket grit and double bass kicks insisting no
song out of the six exceed the three-and-a-half minute mark. Explains
Chronic: “It’s intentionally simplified.” Adds me: Hell yes