Riskee & The Ridicule
If you pay attention to the current state of the British punk scene then you’ll have undoubtedly noticed the rave reviews written about Kent band Riskee & The Ridicule’s incendiary live shows, and of their incredible Blame Culture album. Now they’re back with a new release, Body Bag Your Scene, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down or becoming more restrained.
Unique amongst their contemporaries, lead singer Scott takes a modern approach, with jack-hammer vocals spitting anger and humour equally in a rapid-fire style that owes more to Stormzy and The Streets than Rotten or Strummer. Cynicism about modern life is a mainstay of their lyrics, as is their pride in being outsiders even to the punk scene.
“My roots are in what came before Grime,” says Scott. “I used to take part in MC rap battles and the like, but punk always appealed to me, but I suppose that’s where the lyrical play comes from in our songs. Punk always had more to say to me though, and that’s how I ended up here. I knew I wanted to do things in a
more traditional style, and after meeting Jimbo in a pub we started hanging out, writing songs and stuff. We’d jam at house parties, and it just developed as we went along. We played an open mic night and got a massive reaction, which encouraged us to put an EP together.
“We got on the London circuit and were often pulling in more fans than the headliners. It seemed the reason promoters weren’t putting us on the top of the bill was because we were an acoustic act, and it was a hard sell putting us above a full band. We understood that, and it prompted us to form a proper band.
“That said, we still find that a lot of older punks dismiss us because of the Grime aspect, but that’s only my background. On the other hand, Jimbo comes from a more hard-core punk background, Jordan is into Math Rock and Matt loves pop punk, so it’s all come together and mutated into this sound that makes us a little hard to pigeon hole. But that’s who we are. The sound is what it is. If people want to call it punk, that’s fine, but if they don’t – who cares? We’re still going to sound the same!
“I’d say that our debut album, Dawn Of The Dog, was a very personal release, but that my writing has come on a long way from there. Experience improves it and gives other perspectives, which we’ve carried forward as we’ve gone along.
“Our second album, Blame Culture, was a monster. It pissed all over our
previous work. When we toured the record, we noticed that people really got behind the lyrics. That showed us that we’d extended our reach into different territories. People were there to see us, not just to go to a punk show.
“We’re obviously proud of the new album, though. We’re trying to channel a lot of the anger that there is in the country – anger at politicians, at the media, at music even – but we don’t like to preach, we’d rather use humour. People don’t want to listen to bands that just rant. We just want to take the piss out of people! Word play is a big part of who we are, I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s always there. I don’t tend to listen to our old material, but Jimbo does, and he’s always hearing things he’s never noticed us do before, even though he’s a part of it. We certainly don’t have our material on in the van. Once it’s recorded I just want to move on. Although we’ve always self-released in the past, our new label, Bomber, have been brilliant in supporting us. We’ve got PR support we’ve never had before. We’ve Joe from Random Hand to thank for that. They’re signed to the label and he said that he thought Bomber would suit us. A chat with label owner Donagh was all it took to convince us.
“It was such a quick deal that it led to a slightly odd moment in the filming of the promo for our lead single off the album, ‘Kaboom’. Normally these things take a couple of days to complete, but I had all of two hours as I had to be somewhere. The videographer wasn’t impressed with the idea, but went with it. Towards the end he asked if I had a piece of paper that I could wave, as if to make a point. I said yes, and emerged waving the only paper I had – the contract with Bomber! I’d brought it down for the lads to sign, and it was all we had to hand. As to what the future brings, this album is the important one, but I’m sitting on enough unfinished songs for another album. It’ll come when we’re ready.
“If you find that you do like our sound then come with us. You’re all welcome, regardless of what you call us, or yourselves. We’ll keep moving the goalposts anyway!”