Review
OC Rippers
Wasteland Blues

Ruined Records (2022) — Christopher D

OC Rippers – Wasteland Blues cover artwork
OC Rippers – Wasteland Blues — Ruined Records, 2022

“Fear is a hungry beast. The more you feed it, the more it grows”
J. Ripper

Tenebrific cloaked figures flutter in the darkest corners amongst the dustballs. They lurk with us appearing weak or feigning injury much like the most outstanding actor of the wildlife…The Killdeer. The aegis crooked hand of doom reaches out to lovingly unsuspecting sacrificial lambs led to the altar. Offering the God’s a burnt offering to eke out forgiveness for what they qualify as an untimely deed of necessity.

O.C Rippers hark back to a period of time when these Lost Sounds were dangerous, vulgar, offensive, and beautiful at the same time. Procurement of “My house smells just like a zoo, It's chock full of shit and puke! Cockroaches on the walls, Crabs crawlin' on my balls”! “and I don’t need none of your bedroom bruised sweet box and I don't need none of your spoiled ass sweet talk”

Snotty, acrid egg, phlegm balls that slide down your throat with ease as you cough up a lung up through your esophagus and wheeze it back down on the down-low. Projectile bile forced through your tobacco-stained coffee teeth, shot into the air with precision like an agile ballerina of mucus madness catapulted like a falling sky diving accident casualty back into your purrddy mouth only to be repeated until it vaporizes into a decrepit microorganism of infection.

Candy Snatchers are stealing the sweet sickly substances for the chubby sticky fingers of babes and devouring the half-eaten city fair sucker with a toothy grin.

Upstanding citizens from New Jersey lingering in waste treatment facilities amongst piles of unwanted and discarded garbage. Trying to keep their nose above the rising waterline with the big man’s boot on their bruised forehead. Ripping through your heart, past the meat morsel pecked rib cage and cracking out the sternum and landing at your feel like a big-eyed Mogwai. Temptation-led pathways encourage your dirty nailed digits to embrace and pull towards your loving Hippie Tree Hugging Granola hands.

The dancing death of cherubic nature lands you in the Devil's Snare floundering for mercy, forgiveness, and regret.

Want cute, cuddly, safe, and easily forgettable. Watch American Idol as we fawn over contestants molded into the march of consumed products. Elastic humans stretched beyond recognition and repressed into a facsimile of what they truly represented or what made them truly in the first place.

O.C Rippers plod and plot the Fonzi jump over the pool of man-eating sharks. AAAAYYYY!. Sit On it! Sit and Spin on the turntable as it emanates sounds of the now, no-frills, street rock, and roll scraped off your shit encrusted leather Italian soles and creeping up your inseam ready to infect your yim yam piss hole causing contagion and malaise. Think Candy Snatchers, Dead Boys, Fear, Lost Sounds, Reatards, and any other screaming, knuckle dusting, hoarse throated troglodytes ready to drag you by your hair roots to the heat source, tie you to the wooden stake and watch you burn with pleasure inundated with the noxious fumes of punk rocks big rotting, bloated stinking corpse. O.C Rippers squashing one Pop Punk band within their grasp and inciting them to smell the hairy unwashed armpit of true-blooded citizens and not a throbbing Japanese sex bot.

 

8.5 American Beers out of 10

OC Rippers – Wasteland Blues cover artwork
OC Rippers – Wasteland Blues — Ruined Records, 2022

Recently-posted album reviews

Nick Soulsby

Born of Struggle, Living in Hope: The Anarcho-Punk Lives of the Centro Ibérico (1971-1983)
PM Press (2026)

Living in Hope , as the subtitle suggests, is a punk-centric history of the Centro Ibérico, an anarcho-punk squat at 421 Harrow Road. It is also the first book-length treatment of the space, which was at the crossroads of far-right fascist violence, police surveillance, housing disputes, and the punk scene. Founded in 1970 by Spanish Civil War veteran Miguel García … Read more

Roky Erickson And The Aliens

The Evil One (deluxe edition)
Fire Records (2026)

I feel very fortunate to have seen Roky Erickson perform live at SXSW backed by Okkervil River in 2010 or 2011. Erickson passed away in 2019 at the age of 71. For those of you who aren’t already disciples, Roky Erickson was the lead vocalist of legendary Texas psych rockers 13th Floor Elevators. Recorded after the breakup of the Elevators … Read more

Mike D

Thank You
Capitol (2026)

Beastie Boys were a huge part of my transition from teenager into adulthood. An album for every stage of their growth musically matched the many chapters of my own personal development. Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D were like cherished friends for my earholes. The world mourned together when we lost Adam Yauch to cancer in 2012 and were heartbroken knowing … Read more