Messed!Up
At the end of the summer of 2016, three action rock-fuelled Hellacopters fans and die-hard Turbojugend members joined forces and stormed onto the scene, fired up by booze, beer and rock ‘n’ roll hedonism. The Drippers was born and they set the bar low from the start: their ambition were set for playing in Hamburg because if The Beatles could have their breakthrough at a seedy club on Reeperbahn, why can’t The Drippers.
After working with Hellacopters-producer Thomas Skogsberg in Sunlight Studios, the band released their debut album Action Rock in 2019, thus claiming the concept. And they decided to throw a banger release party at the same time as they played at Weltturbojugendtage in Hamburg 2019, a massive celebration gathering all Turbojugend members across the world for a four-day party on Reeperbahn.
The exposure at Weltturbojugendtage and support slots for bands as Hank von Hell and Monster Magnet made the band ready for a breakthrough in Germany and they had dates set for everything to take off in the spring of 2020, to get that sought-after foothold in the German music scene. But just like for every band out there it was all cancelled due to the pandemic.
While The Drippers wait for their new album to be mixed and mastered and ready for a release in a few months, Messed!Up met up with Niclas, Victor and William in their rehearsal space and chat about their upcoming second album and targeting the German scene. And then they did a 20-minute rehearsal session for Messed!Up.
Doing it like The Beatles
I did my homework and found out that The Drippers started already in the summer of 2016. That’s five years ago this summer. Have you reached as far as you wanted after five years?
That’s insane! Five fucking years with the band – we’re old (laugh)! But yeah, it all started somewhere around July or August 2016. William joined the band a few months later, we had another guitarist when we started.
We never really had any goals at all, not anything bigger than playing in Hamburg. Just like The Beatles we wanted to have our breakthrough in Hamburg (laugh). Another goal was to play at Pustervik [venue in Gothenburg] because it would mean that we would play the bigger venues at home, but since that happened quite soon after we started there’s nothing left to achieve at home turf (laugh).
Our first gig at Pustervik was huge for us, we had a support slot for Hank von Hell [former Turbonegro frontman], it can’t be bigger than that – we thought. But two months later we supported Monster Magnet at Pustervik and at KB in Malmö, and they’re a lot bigger than Hank.
We had very low ambitions from the start just to make sure that we can reach them. We knew it wasn’t impossible to get a few gigs in Germany, and if that would happen we would probably pass by Hamburg as well. Wouldn’t it have been really weird if we did a German tour and didn’t get a gig in Hamburg, just playing in Freiburg, Magdeburg and Chemnitz? How pathetic wouldn’t that have been? (laugh)
Best so far is our gig at Weltturbojugendtage in Hamburg, four days of party at Reeperbahn. The problem was that we played the last night, on Saturday, and had to stay calm the first days to not be completely smashed at the gig, and that’s not easy when you’re at the world’s biggest Turbojugend party on Reeperbahn (laugh).
When we got booked for Weltturbojugendtage we decided to have our debut album release party in Hamburg. Scumbag Millionaire, our friends that have the rehearsal space next to us, found out about it and booked a gig in Hamburg as well just to drink beer with us (laugh).
When you released your debut album Action Rock two years ago it felt like a restart of a rock scene that slowly was fading away.
Yeah, and keep in mind that we claimed the concept, we have an album to prove it (laugh).
A lot of new bands started around 2015 and older bands like Hellacopters, Gluecifer and Backyard Babies did comeback tours. The genre is on the way back. In Gothenburg bands like Scumbag Millionaire, Hot Breath and Deadheads have emerged in the scene the last ten years and made it popular again, and a lot is happening again, both in Sweden and across Europe.
The problem is that many bands claim to be action rock bands and then they record a super slim and well-produced record – that’s not action rock at all. The gritty and dirty garage rock sound is lost when you do it like that.
But it’s no secret that you are huge Hellacopters fans. Didn’t you even say that Action Rock sounds just like Hellacopters debut album?
Yeah, why hide the obvious! We love Hellacopters but we don’t try to copy their sound, it sounds a bit different. Hellacopters sound like Hellacopters and we don’t need another band sounding like them. We’re trying to copy Gluecifer but are so bad at it that it sounds very different (laugh). But see us like Gluecifer and Turbonegro combined in a bad way and sounding a bit Swedish (laugh).
Someone also said we sound a bit like Motörhead and maybe we do, but it’s all unconsciously. Everyone loves Motörhead, so do we, but it’s not our biggest inspiration when we write music. Well, Lemmy is always inspiring (laugh).
Sophomore album pressures
It may be perceived as a cliché that your second album is never as good as your first. The difficult second album is an enduring concept in music mythology. New bands put their formative years into creating an explosive debut that draws on their whole life experience, then stumble when their record label forces them to do it all again only a year later.
Although there’s no label pressure on The Drippers, they put pressure on themselves to release a banger album because a great album is a ticket to more and bigger shows, and festival slots where you reach out to a whole new audience. And a great album is also the key to enter the German music scene.
You recorded your debut album and the upcoming album in Thomas Skogsberg’s Sunlight Studios. Skogsberg is behind the sound of bands like Hellacopters and Backyard Babies and I guess his previous work decided where to record the album.
Most definitely, he has a huge influence on our sound. Both Gluecifer and Hellacopters recorded their first records at Sunlight and a few years later bands like Nomads, Backyard Babies, Demons and Puffball did the same. You know, bands that have released our favourite records have been at Sunlight – we just had to record our stuff there as well.
But it was a longshot the first time, we never thought he would have time for a crappy unsigned band from Gothenburg that only had two gigs at Sticky Fingers at their resume, but he just said “Hey, just come along”. For us that was amazing; “Fuck, we’re recording our album at Sunlight!”. We probably spent the first day just listening to Thomas’ stories about other bands recording sessions (laugh).
And this year you have released three singles already. How far away is your second album?
None of those songs will end up on the album, they’re split singles with Bitch Queens and The Chuck Norris Experiment and a song we had on a tribute album to New Bomb Turks called Demolition Derby Vol.2, but we have released them as digital singles on Spotify.
The new album is almost done, it’s in the final stage of mixing and mastering at the moment, and hopefully we have a new record ready for a release in a few months. That would be great for us because we would be ahead of our schedule for once.
What can you tell us about the new record?
We’re really happy about Action Rock and wanted it to be a statement – and a statement it is. It’s always hard to write the second album after a record like that because we need to find the path where it doesn’t sounds like we only repeat ourselves and where we evolve without losing our sonic identity.
The point is that we started to write the second album even before we released our debut album just to have something to start from when it was time to restart the writing sessions again. There’s always loads of shows after you release an album and you won’t have time to write on something new until you’re back home again, but by doing it like this we could kickstart the whole process. But it wasn’t until the pandemic started that we really had time to start working on the record.
Swedish bands have a great reputation for doing high quality music, but with that comes a lot of pressure to keep up the high standard, especially from ourselves. Of course we want to be in the frontline of the new wave of action rock bands, but then we need to do a great record. This album is more explosive with a powerful and uncompromising sound, and despite its gritty and dirty sound there’s something catchy about it. Our combined frustration and disillusion over what happened in society lately resulted in some really powerful songs – it’s our soul on that record.
Skogsberg had a bigger role in the production process on this album, and we also brought with us more songs to work on together just to have more choices. And it is a much better crafted record this time because we had time to experiment, and in the end we could pick out the best pieces to put on the album. Looking back at the whole recording process, Thomas squeezed out maximum capacity and a bit more from us. We just hope that people like it.
You said you started working early on the album. Have you deliberately slowed down the release process a bit just to avoid releasing the album during the pandemic?
Maybe we kept it a bit slower, we didn’t really want to release it during the pandemic because we can’t play any shows and promote the album. But it was also a slower process for natural reasons. William became a dad in December and we hadn’t finished all the songs by then we he needed to have a break, and then the pandemic stopped us from meeting up.
But not being stressed about releasing an album has also been good to us. Don’t get me wrong, we love to play live, but not having any gigs while writing a new record was awesome. Or writing a record; I [William] do everything in the very last minute and usually say, “It’s ok, we’ll fix it guys”. I wrote three songs in the car to the studio and we played some of the songs for the first time ever when we recorded them (laugh). Viktor always plan like a year ahead but I don’t work like that (laugh). It’s even worse with the lyrics; “Fuck. I need to record vocals in half an hour. I have to write the lyrics” (laugh).
As we said, this record means a lot to us because a good record gets us gigs. If we do a great record we’ll hopefully get more festival gigs, and more gigs in general, which would make it possible to tour for maybe two weeks with not too many days off in between. Festivals are important, that’s where you reach out to many people at the same time, and they will come to our club shows later.
Germany, we have a problem
With longstanding membership in Turbojugend and with the World Turbojugend Day in Hamburg, the goal is clear: to play Hamburg in particular and Germany in general. However, The Drippers need someone to take care of business in Germany, someone who knows the German scene. So here’s a shout-out to all German bookers out there: The Drippers need a German booking agency!
I know you announced that you’re looking for a German booking agency, you posted about it on Instagram. Is Germany your target country for touring?
Yeah! Write it in capital letters, “WE NEED A GERMAN BOOKER” (laugh). Germany is such a huge country and have so many cities and venues where we can play; it’s one of the biggest countries in Europe.
We have a shortlist of bookers we would love to work with, like Two Hearts Music Group that book shows for Scumbag Millionaire and some other Swedish bands, but they seem to have a full roster at the moment.
The point is that we started to gain a foothold in the German music scene in 2019 and had a few gigs booked last spring, together with dates in Holland and Spain, but it was cancelled because of the pandemic. That was our window of opportunity after a really great 2019, but it closed on us. That’s the reason we want this record to be really awesome and cause some stir in the German scene and get us gigs whenever it’s possible again.
Our debut album sold more than we expected in Germany and our label, The Sign Records, had to release a second batch of albums already half a year later, which means that we have an audience there. But we need to get a real chance to tour Germany and build a reputation.
If we can get Thursday to Saturday gigs it will work out for us, we’ll be down in a second. It’s easy for us to fly to Hamburg, there’s a direct flight from Gothenburg, and we can play a few more shows on the way home, maybe also in Denmark. It’s not even a problem for us to take the ferry to Kiel from Gothenburg as long as they serve a buffet (laugh).
Would it be much easier to have a booking agency rather than booking shows on your own?
Yeah, we’re quite sure about it. We have been thinking on getting us a manager that could do it all for us and have an eye on all the scenes in Europe, it may be worth the money. It’s really important to get attention and an opportunity to show off on stage. We know that people like us in Germany, it’s just super hard to book shows for us when we don’t have enough contacts there. The shows we had booked for spring last year we booked ourselves through our own contacts but we need more gigs.
As it is today, and it’s probably the same for all bands, it’s frustrating to have a new album on the way and know that you may not be able to tour it. Things like that worry us a bit although it usually works out in the end, provided the pandemic is over.
We also understand that it will be tough to get a foothold in the German scene but we’re prepared to work really hard for it, it just need to be financially viable. Of course we’re prepared to spend money and not get that much in return in the beginning, we rather see it as promotion that may give us something back in the future.
I know it’s really hard to say anything about 2021, but do you have any kind of plan for the rest of the year?
To get the record ready for a release – that’s our first priority. We also have another project on the way – it’s still a bit secret – and we will release some of the songs that didn’t make it onto the album. That’s good because we recorded fifteen songs for the album but had to pick a few to put on the album, and this new project means that we can use the leftover songs.
We’re quite sure a lot will happen this year, and maybe we’ll be down in Hamburg in the fall. We need to have an Astra soon (laugh).
Photographer: Krichan Wihlborg
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