1. Greetings Ripsnorter Ripsnorter: Hell-o! I'd like to start off by asking you to give a brief introduction of your band to the readers. Jme: (Deep voice) Ripsnorter! 13 years, probably more, in the making. From the bowels of evil... fast food? Andy: Keep going... Jme: Breaks the crust and belches (laughter) EVIL! Eh, catchy music... J: Magma, with a melody. Damien: Hi, I'm Damien. (laughter). J: Damien's the new guy. We've been around a long time and play a range of music punk, hardcore punk and horrorpunk. Melodic, energetic, hard-hitting... Andy: Hard punk horror-billy. Jme: Thought-provoking. J: Thaurght.. thart.. fart-provoking... (laughter). Damien: Take two! (laughter). Andy: Whatever the fuck we want. J: Pretty much. Punk, hardcore punk and horrorpunk. Jme: Yup. 2. You put out your latest release, "Infected" last year. It was definitely a breath of fresh air to hear that. Damien: Awww... J: That's swell. Jme: Thanks. Andy: Sell it for crack! I've got to ask...what made you decided to cover CCR's "Bad Moon Rising?" Jme: The movie "American Werewolf in London". J: Boom. Simple as that. Jme: Done. J: Would that be considered a montage? Jme: Naw, that was just a Lycanthropy transformation. J: That's pretty much it. Jme: When I get the Blu-Ray, there's going to be an "American Werewolf in London" party at my house. Damien: As long as "American Werewolf in Paris" will also be shown. (laughter) Jme: That's actually not too bad. Damien: Yes it is. (more laughter). J: I never saw it. Damien: It's pretty much terrible. J: When did that one come out? Damien: Like the late 90's. J: Oh, ok. Andy: I thought it was kind of, going away from the "American Werewolf" thing, it just kinda also fit just with all of the shit that's been going on around the last couple of years. Like tsunami, Katrina and all of the other fucking disasters going on. J: The Paris one was good? Andy: No, the CCR cover. J: Oh... the CCR cover... (laughter). J: Gotta shift gears here... Damien: No, the Paris one wasn't good! J: Ok!, Just wasn't following the thread here... (laughter). Jme: Back when they wrote the song it was all about war. Like the Cuban missile crisis. That was the 60's, right? About 1968? It's like the end of the world was in politicians hands. And, here we go again. J: That hasn't stopped. It just mutates. Andy: It's the swine flu. (laughter). J: Here we go. We are so timely. 3. Can you tell me a little bit more about the Quincy Punx tribute you'll be a part of? Andy: Is that even coming out? Jme: No, because it keeps shuffling labels and stuff like that. Everybody's recorded on it seems to be some "heavy hitters" on the album and everyones up on the WM3 and it's just in time for the new trial and evidence that's coming out. J: Somebody pick it up and give 'em the proceeds. Jme: I haven't talked to Robertson in awhile. He's the guy. What track are you doing? Damien and Jme: "Tina". J: We have some history with that one. Jme: Yeah, our ex guitar player, Steve, his sister Julie, who was dating Al Long of Misery... anyway, we have a song called "Return of the Living Dead" because I had a wicked crush on Linnea Quigley, so I just wrote an homage to her and the movie fuckin' rules. But they came out with ah, they must have had one too because they had an album called "Eat a Bowl of Fuck" and that's from "Night of the Demons", which is a Linnea Quigley movie, and they had a song called "Tina" which we both kind of ended "Tina, if you really love me, you'd let me eat your brains" and Julie called the Quincy Punx out on it saying that (in a high voice) "you ripped that off from Ripsnorter" and they remember that story, so when Mike approached us to do this, he was like (deep voice) dude, it be really funny if you did "Tina" because of the story. And that's about it. That's why we did "Tina". (laughter). And then we added the intro to "Return of the Living Dead" to the song "Tina" and then added the outro to it too. So it's kind of the "creamy nougat", and it works pretty good too. Andy: It fit together quite well actually. J: I just love that we did that too, because that story alone. We both wrote a song about the same thing at the same time circumstantially. Jme: I thought Tina was an uninteresting character. J: She was lame. Jme: We wrote about the... J: The whole movie, zombies and... Jme: U-Need-A Medical supplies... U-Need-A, we got a. (laughter). J: Like this job? 4. Do you guys have any plans on doing a tour anytime soon?...especially, any dates in Florida? Andy: We played there yesterday. Jme: I'd personally love to play FL, just so I could finally meet Roz from Pooch. I talk to her on the phone enough. J: Is that where she's from? Jme: Yeah, I think our gimmick is going to be more conventions, like onsie-twosie weekend things. J: Try to shoot for that NY thing and a couple of dates with Graves in IA and IL just got the Blitzkreig kibosh, so. Andy: But we're still going. Jme: It's going to have to be organized. Touring is such a big pain in the ass for us. Weekend convention things where we can actually meet people, like a shit-ton of people before the show and get them to come and have more of a social outing works better for us than just touring city to city. J: Do they conventions, like a big one down in FL? Jme: Each state has their own independent... Andy: They have a Ren-Fest. (laughter). J: I think that's the wrong crowd for that one. Jme: WoW, get a horror convention going and we'll show up! 5. I believe that "Infected" is a very strong release. Jme: Thank you. J: Hells yeah. Jme: You bet your balls. Andy: Sell it for crack. Are you guys planning on recording any new material in the near future? J: That would be a big YES. Damien: All sorts of stuff. J: All kinds of stuff. Jme: More than you probably want to listen to. (laughter). If so, do you plan on following the same formula as "Infected" or do you guys just go with the flow when writing/recording? Jme: We kind of go with the flow. Andy: We have bits and pieces of probably over two albums worth of stuff that we just don't know what to do with. J: We just need to find a direction and focus on it and go. That's what happened this last time. Jme: Yeah, the new song "Echo" fuckin' rules. J: Yes. And that's about the same vein as "Infected". Jme: A little slightly more aggressive than "Infected". J: I think that a lot of stuff we're going to be dong now is going to be still have the "Infected" tinge to it , but I think it's going to be broader, I think we're going to bring in more of our harder stuff... Jme: "Infected" is our first flirt with melody. J: Not our first... our first full length. Jme: This is our first where the song was written around the melody. Not injected or added like in "Wiping Out the Human Race" where we found the melody after we recorded the songs. Andy: (To Damien) Chime in bitch! This is about your future. Damien: Put that in there. J: (Deep voice) What do you want to do with your life? Jme: I wanna rock. J: How come the bassist is always the quiet one? Conversation digresses a bit... 6. What influences your band to create darker oriented music... namely the horror influenced stuff? Damien: Because zombies are awesome! J: Yes. Yeah, pretty much. Zombies. Zombies and their awesomeness. Andy: Zombies. Movies about zombies. Jme: I think that we're all just drawn naturally to horror and darker entertainment. J: We love horror and we love zombies. Jme: Yeah. Andy: We all grew up on them. Old horror movies, and still are. Jme: Yup. Everything is coming out in 1080p now. The Thing, Halloween, Dawn and Day of the Dead. I hope Romero's at the con. J: That would be pretty cool. Do you know what the roster is? Jme: We'll look it up after this. J: Cool. Andy: See! This is why we do these kinds of songs... (laughter). Andy: You can't see Jme's face when he's talking about this shit, but his eyes are bugged out and he's all excited... (laughter). J: We are infected. Horror is awesome. Horrorpunk is awesome. We play some Horrorpunk, and some other stuff and it's all awesome. And zombies. 7. What are some of your favorite bands to play and/or tour with? Also, do you have any good tour stories to share? Damien: We don't really like anybody else. (laughter). J: Everybody else is a bunch of jerks. Damien: Until they're zombies. Jme: We don't really tour... J: We get along with Impaler. Jme: Yeah, we get along with Impaler, U.K. Subs and Vibrators are nice guys. Every incarnation of Graves - Michale Graves - they've been really cool... Andy: What's that Re-Animated band (Damiens other band)? Damien: Aw, shit, those guys? Damn! Jme: They suck a good dick. J: I hear they have a song called Cock-Gobbler... (points to the set list on the wall with "cock-gobbler" written at the bottom). Andy: I manage to nearly get into a fight every time we go out of town. (laughter). J: Yeah, we have to keep Andy on a short leash. He gets uppity. Probably from listening me jawing all the time all the way down. Andy always gets stuck with me... Joe bottomed out his car... Jme: Oh, that's right. (laughter). Jme: Shit, I forgot about that... yeah because MapQuest directions were all fuckin' wrong. So, I was like, Dude, I think you gotta turn here, and he's going like 40 or 45 and it's Spring time and I'm like, Make a decision, and so he cranks the wheel, hits gravel, spins out, goes down in the ditch, pops a tire... (laughter). Jme: I can't stop laughing. I'm laughing so hard, he gets mad at me. J: Joe got mad. Jme: Yeah, Joe got mad at me and he's like fuckin' dick you just sit there and laugh... (laughter). J: Yup! Jme: And then we changed the tire and got to the club. Or else there was that time we played in Mankato with Misery where I had my Ford Escort where I put the cabinet in the back and I closed the hatchback and the corner of the cabinet went through the window... J: SMASH!!! (laughter). Jme: I was like aw, fuck, so I taped the back window and we're driving back to Minneapolis, and there's a bug on my windshield, so I go to kill the bug and I crack the front windshield. (laughter). J: There's the time I got dysentery on the way to the X-Fest show we were playing. Jme: Yeah, we were playing that X-Fest and uh, you had (laughs) you got there, took a shit and you were on the shitter for about four hours. Dude, you all right? You need some water? Yup! (laughter). Jme: You just took a shit the whole time. Touring sounds like fun! J; I drove the whole way out there and I got progressively sicker as we kept getting closer. Jme: And then after the show we got back to the hotel and snored all night. J: And then we got up in the morning it started snowing right away, so we high-tailed it out of there to beat the snow. Jme: I think we had a good cheeseburger. The burger and malt joint was pretty good tho. J: With all the $1's we got paid in. Andy: And I managed to set off the door alarm. (laughter). J: Oh yeah. Oh, god! In that redneck restaurant. Oh, that was bad. Jme: Well, it looked like additional seating, but it was the reflection. Andy: (Shoves his arms forward) BOOM! J: That was a bad scene. It's like, bad enough walking in all goofy looking and trying to keep a low profile... (laughter). J: Andy sees this emergency door, What's back here? (Makes alarm wooping sound). (laughter). J: THAT got their attention! Jme: We're from out of town. Andy: I didn't just push it, I (lunges and shoves arms forward and up) BOOOM! J: He committed. Jme: Well, it looked like additional seating. Cuz like the windows were so reflective, we were, let's just get away from everybody. Whoop! Whoop!... that's outside... J: I was so sick, I couldn't even taste anything. (laughter). J: I was just wrecked. Those good enough stories. What other ones we got? Jme: We don't tour. J: We told our fire stories and all that stuff before too. Damien: What about the slide? Jme: That was on vacation. (laughter). J: The legend. Jme: The infamous Phantom Shitter. Andy: Except I was getting blamed for it for awhile. (laughter). J: How weird is to to show up at a show and have some people walk up to you and go, you crapped on the slide! (laughter). Jme: What? Did you crap on the slide? Did you crap on the slide? J: You crapped on the slide! I was like, what are you talking about? Andy: That was such a weird question, I didn't know what to say, I said Yes! J: You crapped on the slide. Jme: Did you shit on the slide? J: Honestly, I was looking at them like... what are you talking about man? Then Jme had to fess up. Trollwood park. Jme: Next day there were outhouses. (laughter). J: Now, that's how you get things done. Jme: Have you ever been told too little too late? (laughter). Andy: The force for change, right? Jme: Some kid cuts his knee on a peanut buried in a shit (screams). And the bottom of a shirt, used for wiping. Andy: What happened to your socks? Jme: What socks? J: We don't need no stinkin' socks. Andy: You shit your pants, didn't you? Jme: Your asshole smells like foot... (laughter). J: We get sidetracked really easily... Jme: We should probably... J: Ok. We'll move on. 8. Tell me more about The Ripfits... your Misfits tribute band. (laughter). Do you guys only play Misfits tracks? Does the Ripfits contain the same members as Ripsnorter? Andy: The RipFits is a MySpace entity. Damien: We just put that on the MySpace to get more friends. J: We just did a lot of Misfits covers and got on a lot of comps and stuff and so we just decided to post it out there. Jme: Well, the "Four Hits from Mars" actually probably made us a band. It got us the momentum. Cuz we actually got released. It was kinda neat, so... and the Misfits tributes always gave us a nice break from the monotony of writing our shit. Because, the Misfits songs were so easy to fuckin' do and then just recorded them. J: We did release "Pulse" before that. That's how we all learned how to play instruments is just playing Misfits songs. They're so easy, it's just like let's just lean this one you know? Two minutes later... you know, you got it for life. (laughs). We did enough of those and there was enough material we did the RipFits incarnation and it is what it is. And, yeah, it's got the same members as Ripsnorter. (laughter). J: It's us just saying, Let's play "Skulls" now. 1 2 3 4... 9. I've seen some of your promo flyers for releases and shows. Who the hell did those? Some of those are beyond amazing! Jme: Yeah. Andy: Awww... Damien: Oh, Jay. J: I did not write that question. (laughter). Damien: Whatever. J: (Deep voice) It's all me baby, it's all me. Mostly. Damien: Make sure you mention the DC comix guy. J: Yeah, Shawn. So, I've pretty much done everything, or ripped everything enough off for the flyers and everything and put text on them, but then I've pretty much done all the album covers... Jme: I chose the font! (laughter). J: And the only person who has done anything outside of me, on the me-ness, was a consigned Shawn Moll, who is a buddy of mine who I went to school with and stuff and he did the green cover of the "When There is No More Room in Hell" 7" ep. Jme: And the Jason flyer. (Gestures to a flyer on the wall). J: Yeah, he did the First Jason flyer. He's done a lot of artwork for the flyers and stuff like that we've done too. Ooh, the Orc (Gesturing to another flyer). Jme: He's done some Impaler illustrations too. J: Yup, he's done lots of stuff with Impaler too. So check him out. Jme: And he usually shows up at the comic conventions, doesn't he? J: Yup. That's his gig, so... he's done stuff for DC and Marvel. He worked on 52 for DC and She-Hulk for Marvel and a few other things. Jme: Did he do the F13 too? J: He did some Friday the 13th stuff too. Yeah, that's where we actually got some of his concept art there. Jme: Yeah, cool. J: I poked him for that show and we got it. He came through, baby. 10. I understand Damien is the newest member to join Ripsnorter. How long ago did you find him? Where did you pick him up from? Andy: (laughs). Jme: Is it going on three years now? You and I were talking about this for a year or two years probably. Damien: Probably. Jme: Yeah. J: He's been an unofficial member for two years. And we finally jumped on him, what, last October? Jme: Yeah, cuz Rob had to move to Milwaukee... J: He had to make a move and we made a move and... we've been playing with Damien's band Re-Animated for a number of years and we ended up sharing practice space and there you go... Damien: It just made sense. J: It just made sense. Jme: Damien and I would drunk-talk at the bar and a lot (laughs). Dude! J: (Slurred) You'd be great if you'd yeagh ya blargh ga blagh... wookies don't play bass very well (laughs/groans). Strike that... J: To Damien: You didn't say much. Damien: Well, what am I supposed to say? You guys found me. (laughs). J: We found each other. Destiny brought us together. It was destiny. Damien: The mutual need for a practice space. Jme: He has the sweetest adams-apple. (laughter). Damien digresses on a story about a guy with an adams apple and really skinny legs... kind of a pointless story really. J: That was it? Damien: Say whatever you want. Jme: The thing is he is a bass player, not a guitar player. J: Just let the wookie win. 11. How have the reviews for "Infected" been so far? J: They've been pretty freakin' good. Jme: They've been favorable. The Fangoria magazine ironically was lackluster. But all the other ones have been kind of lip-servicing... they've been very favorable. J: Yeah. Some of the best reviews we've gotten. Jme: The Fangoria review seemed like a metal head reviewing a punk album. He didn't bash it, it was like... J: Ah, another album... Andy: He said it was good, he just spent a lot of time saying he didn't like the intro. Damien: Yeah he did that. J: Yeah, he just doesn't like intros in general. Next! Jme: That's why it's its own track. Skip it. Are you guys receiving the type of reviews you expected? Or is the response a little more than you've expected? Jme: It's a little bit more than I expected. I kind of expected (high pitched voice) "meh", and we got, this is really good and this songs good and this songs good. All the reviewers are picking out different songs. So, I think that between all the reviews we've got, each song has been picked out... and the intro for better or worse... (laughter). But I think this guy liked the intro [WoW]. I'm just going to step up to the plate and defend the intro. Andy: I like it. J: The intro is awesome. Jme: If you are a horror movie fan, and if you've seen any old school John Carpenter movies... J: That's right. Jme: That's what we were going for. Damien: Speaking of John Carpenter, kind of indirectly, The new "Halloween" is bad. Jme: Rob Zombie? He kind of blows at making movies. J: Because it was "Halloween" by not John Carpenter. Jme: Yeah. If someone gave me $10 million to make a movie, it would probably be better than Halloween. Damien: I had problems watching it and separating it as a new movie. Jme: Yeah. Damien: Because I was judging the original "Halloween". Ok, like Michael Meyers was way younger than 10 when he went to the mental institution. Way younger than ten. He was like five. When he only killed his sister. Not the step dad, who else did he kill? J: Haven't seen it. Jme: He killed the boyfriend and who... they got the worlds ugliest actor to play the older sisters boyfriend. The metalhead guy (deep voice) eh, I'm a total dirtbag. I mean that guy... Damien: (Deep voice) Sorry dude... J: He got stabbed tho? Andy/Damien: Batted (bat gesture). J: Ooh, he got batted? Jme: The older sister was the little girl from "Forrest Gump". She grew some boobies. She had some nice titties too. Rob Zombie can cast boobies. Damien: I didn't notice. He's married to some of them. She was the mom, wasn't she? J: Did she get killed? Jme: No, she killed herself. J: Ok, well, indirectly. That still works. Damien: I fell asleep. (Whispers) I fell asleep.. Jme: I felt insulted when I left. I bout the DVD just because I, I was almost like, I have to see if it's... J: I still have to see it. Andy: I actually liked it. Damien: Malcolm McDowell, surprisingly enough, ok Sam Loomis. I can buy that. It's just the... J: Those are tough shoes to fill man. Damien: Donald Pleasance did an excellent job... J: He was Sam Loomis. Damien: He was Sam Loomis. Jme: Speaking of that, I saw "Prince of Darkness", that is actually not a bad movie. It's kinda 80's and dated, and a little cheezy, but the premise of it is pretty cool now. I remember seeing it younger and I was expecting like, that's when like "Rawhead Rex" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre pt. II" was coming out and "Prince of Darkness" comes out and it's a psychological thriller and you're like (makes face)... (laughter) but I actually sat down to watch it and it's very good premise. J: Where's the blood and boobs? Should we try to dovetail this back into how the reviews for "Infected"... (laughter). Jme: Oh yeah, that was back to the last questions, why we like... ah, yeah, reviews for Infected, good, good, good. J: Yup. They've been awesome. Jme: They've put the wind in our sails to write the next CD. J: We're going to keep on going. EPs, singles, look out... 12. Let's bring this to a close. Thanks a lot for your time. Are there any closing comments or words of wisdom for the readers? Cheers! Jme: Words of wisdom... J: Watch horror movies. Andy: Ah... Damien: Never fuck a chick with a sore on her dick? Ewww... gross... (Laughter, groans)... Andy: Watch lots of horror movies. Start a band that will get you out of the house once a week. J: There you go. Jme: Read books. Write books... do shit be creative. J: Don't just play video games. Andy: Unless they are zombie video games. J: I got to start playing some video games here... Damien: Especially when the Ripsnorter video game comes out. Andy: Is that where you try to not be the last one to practice? Damien: No, it's where we're the characters killing the zombies. It's the zombie holocaust, or zombie apocalypse. J: (Growing voice) Zombieocalypse! Damien: And Ripsnorter is your only hope. Andy: I'd play that. Damien: Jay's melee attack, he's got a machete. J: A machete? I have many machetes. Jme: Then if you die, and then they flash and (bink) respawn, you can be like (drum sfx) ga blek-a blek-a blek-a blek (laughter)... when you respawn. J: Drums in the deep... Jme: (guitar power chord sfx). Damien: Everyone has their own riff. J: The mighty P chord. Jme: When they respawn. J: I thought you were going to say something important or interesting. Damien: Do I ever say anything important or interesting... Jme: What have you been practicing? We're done with the interview, now we're onto the set list. J: Did we even answer the questions? Damien: I've been working on Black Widow and that part of Millennium a whole bunch... *click* Yup. It's pretty much always like that...