Hello everybody, we're here today with Hellripper. We're at the Motocultor Festival, you just played a fantastic show. How do you feel about it?

James — Yeah, it was fun. Yeah. The audience was crazy. Yeah, loads of pits, loads of walls of death, loads of... It was very hot and dusty. But it was fun. Yeah, really cool. I really enjoyed myself and I'm going to enjoy the rest of the festival.

Jack — Yeah, I had a great time.

So, you've been playing in France for several years. You keep coming back. Is there something that makes you want to come back to France?

James — It's just fun. People want to see us. The shows are fun, you know. We played in Toulouse a couple of weeks ago with Testament. It was really, really good. Really fun. We played Paris during our headline tour a couple of months ago. Four months ago. And that was one of the craziest shows of the tour.

Max — You get juice on the flight.

James — Max got juice on his flight. That's the main reason. (laughs) No, it's just fun. (looking at Max and Jack) They're discussing the juice while I'm trying to answer.

No, it's fun. People want to see us, we come back. The shows are good, the shows are fun. But today was really great.

You released a new album a few months ago. You explore even more Scottish folklore and all those themes that you already got into on the previous album. How do you feel it has become part of your new identity?

James — The last album was kind of inspired by my move to the Scottish Highlands at that point. And I thought, yeah, let's make an album about Scotland. It's still similar themes. It's like the devil and horror films and horror stories and all that kind of stuff. Just this time with a Scottish twist, I guess, which kept me inspired. It allowed me to conjure up different atmospheres and use different words. Describe different settings and things like that. And I realised there was so much to explore that I was still inspired. So it just kind of carried on.

I just kept with that theme. The new one's got Scottish poetry, horror, stories, folklore. It kept me inspired creatively. It was fun, it's a little bit different to what usually a black speed, black thrash band would talk about. I guess it just became part of Hellripper's identity. If that's the correct word, I guess. If it allows me to write songs and keeps me inspired, then I'm going to keep at it. I'm not going to question it.

What is usually your creative process?

James — I sit for a billion hours with a guitar, getting angry that I can't come up with a riff. Whenever I finally come up with a riff, I get angry that I can't expand on that riff. When I expand on that riff, I get angry that I can't expand on that riff.

It just takes a while, me messing around on guitar, coming up with different melodies, recording into my phone, making sense of what I've got on my phone, writing out tabs, music, recording loads and billions of different things, trying different versions of songs, trying a different bridge with a song, then another different bridge, then another different bridge, different styles. Then eventually I'll have a song that resembles a song that you can listen to. I'm relieved and I'm happy.

It's not really a complicated process, it's just coming up with stuff, recording it, building on it, and seeing what that previous part needs. Usually guitar and bass come together, I guess. Drums get added to parts and get changed later on, depending on the vibes you want to create. If you want to go half-time or blast beats or whatever.

And then vocals and lyrics come last. Vocal melodies sometimes come early in the process. A vocal melody will sometimes inspire the riff or the guitar part, if that makes sense. It's different every time, I guess. But it's fun.

So, as a composer, you're more like a one-man band. But when touring, you have a whole crew. Can you present them or can you introduce yourselves to us a little bit?

Max — I'm Max. I play the drums, and I break a lot of the drums doing so.

James — Accurate.

Andy — I'm Andy and I love Maiden.

James — He does love Maiden.

Andy — I do love Maiden.

Jack — I'm Jack and I'm the new guy, I guess.

James — Jack just joined us last May.

And when you're composing, do you sometimes ask for some feedback from the touring crew?

James — Yeah, I think I do. I think I sent you stuff.

Andy — Yeah, the last album. I wasn't there for the album before, but for the last album, you sent a lot through.

James — Yeah, I kind of write stuff and I send it to the guys.

Andy — He's like, “What do you think of that?” Yeah, I give some really good feedback and then he says “no”. And I'm like, “Cool. It's nice to be asked, though. It's nice to be involved.”

(laughs)

James — Yeah, no, I'll send it to people, you know, like the band members and people I trust and stuff. You know, it'd be the guys and their friends and some people at the labels and stuff that I trust and whose opinion I value, and see what's going on. Yeah, and usually ignore what they say.

Max — He'll send song ideas and be like, “Do you think we can play this live?”

How was it to join the touring crew?

Jack — Yeah, it's been cool. It's been a lot of fun. I've done, like, 20 shows in the past two or three months. Lots of cool shows and it's pretty chill. It's a lot more chill than I thought it would be for a band that's doing so much. In terms of, like, apparently you were saying earlier about live stuff. You're quite happy for people to have their parts. Max will play everything super fast. I'll add harmony to everything that I'm allowed to. Everything.

James — Good answer, Jack. You're allowed in the band for a long time. You're not fired.

Max — We're still not sure. Probation.

(laughs)

So, to go back to the album. You've got such a beautiful artwork by Adam Burke. So, how do you feel what's on the cover collides with the lyrics and what you wanted to convey from the album?

James — Yeah, I mean, Adam Burke is a ridiculously amazing artist. I've been a fan of him for ages. He's done some of my favourite bands and some of my favourite artwork.

I had him on the last album, but that was, like, a licensed piece. I saw a piece he did for the previous album, Warlocks Grim. It was like, he'd done that already and I saw it and I thought, “This is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted,” without saying anything. And so, I licensed that. Luckily, no one had taken it before.

So, for the new album, I was like, “yeah, I'm going to get him to do his own, my own artwork for the album on its own. Not licensed, something original.” And yeah, basically, I sent him a couple of ideas. You know, I wanted a kind of Scottish landscape. I wanted the colour palette, like a certain colour palette. I gave him very minimal ideas.

I gave him some song lyrics, themes and stuff like that. He just kind of came up with what he came up with. You know, I'm not a visual artist, I'm not an illustrator. So, I leave that to people that are good at what they're doing.

Yeah, he got it perfectly. He sent me that and I was like, “Yeah, that's it. It's great. Perfectly represents the album. Fits the bill. It's spooky. There's the goat in the background and the clouds.”

That was one thing I did say. I said I wanted something a bit more subtle. You know, in the past, goats were obviously the Hellripper thing. Sometimes they're right up front and in your face. Whereas the new album, the goat kind of blends in with the clouds, which is cool.

Yeah, you've got the Scottish landscapes, which were inspired by an area near where I lived at the time. Yeah, it's just really cool. I thought it fit the album. I thought it fit the music. It was kind of basically what I wanted. He knows what he's doing.

Andy — I think, if I'm right, it was like, as soon as he sent it, that was it.

James — Basically, yeah.

Andy — There was no, “Can you change this?” “Can you change that?” He sent it and it was like, “That's it.”

James — Yeah, I remember sending it to you and I was like, “Look what he just came up with.”

Andy — Yeah, this is the idea. I was like, “That's it.”

James — Yeah, he's great at what he does. Yeah, you can trust him to come up with something that's amazing.

Is there something that you want people to keep in mind, in them, after listening to the album?

James — Not really. I think, feel what you want to feel when listening to it. I'm not going to tell people what to think. I hope they like the music. I hope they enjoy it. Feel what you want to feel. Music's different, subjective for everyone.

Andy — I think it's cool to inspire people to go and look more into the folklore and stuff. You know, sometimes they're like, “What the hell does that mean?” or “What is that?” If you go and look into it, there's a really cool story behind it most of the time.

James — Yeah, that is cool. People have told me, “Oh, I looked further into this,” or “I discovered this film because of you,” or whatever. No, I mean, that's cool, yeah. I want people to enjoy it. I can't really ask much more of them than that. Feel what you want to feel.

Do you all have a message for people listening to you?

James — All hail the goat.

Max — Big beats are the best. All the time. Is that right?

James — Have you just messed up the big beat manifesto?

Max — Big beats all the time.

James — No, no, no, it's not. Big beats are the best.

Max — Play big beats forever.

James — And all hail the goat. Mainly all hail the goat. Mainly ignore what Max just said.

Andy — We usually do.

(laugh)

Thank you a lot for your time today.

Hellripper — Thank you very much.