Review: Sack – “Ripper!”

Red Scare Industries, 10 Jun 2022

Sack’s new one is a dumb mean Ripper!

Sack is a mean-riffing street punk juggernaut – the kind that would fit well soundtracking something like “Mad Max” or pretty much any muscle-car racing scene.  The band (featuring Kody Templeman of The Lillingtons and Teenage Bottlerocket) keep light years away from pop punk, instead opting for irreverent and assaultive punk that plays with punishing power and twisted and sordid jokes.  And the songs tend to be fun, even when they are also desperate or ravaged sounding.    

Ripper! is the newest from the band, a follow-up nearly 20 years in the making.  Really, the fact that Ripper! exists sort of freaks me out.  That previous album, 2003’s Get Wrecked, was a debauched punk winner with songs like “One Helluva Party” and “The Headbanger” searching to destroy, but not much activity has followed and Templeman’s other ventures seemed pretty time consuming.  That said, Ripper! gets fired from the same Get Wrecked cannon, with tough (sometimes) hard rock-to-metal guitars, caffeinated and violent rhythms, and cheeky and derisive words sung with a conviction that makes it hard not to sing along.

The best Ripper! stuff tends to rant about ridiculous things.  For instance, opening song “I Hate The Beach Boys” is one of the most intense songs on the record while Kody goes nuts on the constant love afforded one of America’s legendary bands.  Working in lines like “I never gave a shit about surfing”, “smoking dope and hanging out with Charles Manson”, and “Brian Wilson, what a primadonna asshole”, Templeman has opinions and somehow The Beach Boys really piss him off (don’t take my tone as either an endorsement or a condemnation of the band, only an astonishment that a band this inoffensive could evoke such pure rage).  This one’s followed with “Wet Banana”, a hilarious rant about the dangers of slip-n-slides.  Not quite so much an angry rant as a public service announcement set to full throttle punk rock and cool lead guitar, the song becomes a sorta singalong after a few listens.  Later, “I Tried Suicide” revels in a fast, near-Robo rhythm that is almost obnoxiously hypnotic while guitar shreds cut across the base and Kody rants and howls in a mantra-like state, sounding as desperate and broke as I’ve heard him.  Other highlights include the “whoa-oh” heavy catchiness of “I Used to Give a Shit”, the bass-driven mid-tempo stomper “Turf War” (with one of the better guitar leads I’ve heard in a bit), and the paean to fantastical fun “Live, Laugh, LARP”.  Oh, and I’ve gotta mention “The Return of Mr. Bong”.  It’s a dumb tale, to be sure.  But the chugging guitar riffs, vile descending guitar accents, and deliberate stomp really land with a memorable thud.  

And while there’s no dud on here, a couple of numbers don’t quite hang with the rest for me.  “Night Shift” is a cool song (I actually like it quite a lot), but it feels much more like a Stella Sapiente-style Lillingtons song.  Placed right in the middle of the record, it doesn’t seem to fit quite right with the rest of the album.  Later, “Hot Shit” sort of annoys me when it starts up.  It’s bounciness gets under my skin for some dumb reason (and this is an “it’s not you, it’s me”-thing), though when the chorus kicks in, I do rather enjoy singing and howling “she really thinks she’s hot shit”).  Some will be turned off by the ridiculousness of “The Thesis”, which opens with feedback for a good 15 seconds, then powers through an incomprehensible song in approximately 3 seconds, before closing with another near 30 seconds of feedback, though I kinda like this sorta thing.  Finally, closer “Staple of the Stoner House” has some really cool flanged-out lead guitar and the song rips along with Kody hitting the high notes nicely on the singalong chorus, but some will maybe drag on it for the second half where it meanders a little, goes away in an extended fade-out only to come back and rock away until a dying shut off.  But I think it works well as a closer.  

I’m a huge Kody Templeman fan.  I love pretty much any of his stuff from The Lillingtons and Teenage Bottlerocket.  Same goes for Sack.  If you’re coming into this because you like the poppier side of some of his other bands, this may strike you as a bit confrontational or abrasive.  But if you just wanna hear some unadorned punk rock with some of the meanest sounding guitars around, Ripper! is the ticket. This is easily one of my more listened to albums of the past couple months and I’m not bored yet.  

Favorite song: “I Hate the Beach Boys”

Favorite moment: the desperate howls coming from Templeman during the frantic rant later in “I Tried Suicide”

Favorite whatever else: the ludicrous lyrics of “Wet Banana”