“Scottish vampire priests? That fits us perfectly!”: Inside the metal thrashing mad world of Hellripper

The Hunderprest they called him, The Dog Priest, The Vampire Of Melrose Abbey. In the 12th century, he was a clergyman housed in the monastery, between Hadrian’s Wall and Edinburgh. Not a particularly Godly man of God, enjoying vice and disobedience, with a particular preference for unsanctioned shagging and hunting with dogs over scripture.

“In his lifetime he was a chaplain that lived a life of sin, not a very nice person overall,” explains James McBain. “When he died, legend says he was buried in the graveyard of Melrose Abbey.”

Folklore historian John Lang described the Priest’s death as “no more holy than his selfish, sensual life had been”. Indeed, by all accounts he refused to stay in his grave.

“When night fell, he would harass and haunt the villagers and former mistress to satisfy his bloodthirst,” notes James.

Eventually, a troupe of monks were dispatched to Hunderprest’s grave, whereupon they saw him rise and try to attack them. After beating the ghoul back with a staff, at dawn they exhumed his corpse, which they found to be in surprisingly good nick, with newly-drawn blood around the mouth. They burned the body and discarded the ashes to the wind, but right up until the 19th century, sightings and disturbances around the abbey have been put down to its resident vampire.

“It’s a classic piece of Scottish folkore,” grins James. “It’s pretty metal. And it fits Hellripper perfectly.”

This kind of thing is baked into Hellripper’s brilliant new album, Coronach, titled after a type of Scottish funeral song. “There’s poetry, horror stories, folklore, true events like Burke and Hare and the Body Snatchers of 19th century Scotland,” he continues. “There was a lot to explore within the theme of Scotland in general. Using Scotland as the backdrop allows me to kind of conjure a different atmosphere.”

As it happens, the friendly frontman and his band have spent the past decade or so carving their name into the list of Scottish notables. Even without Coronach’s references, across their previous four albums there’s been an indelibly Scottish quality to Hellripper and their wild-eyed thrashings. “It kind of gives the band its own identity, especially in the thrash, speed metal scene. There's not many band singing about Scotland!”

It’s done them alright so far, and found James playing songs that started as a bedroom project (and sort of remain so, on the studio side) on stages from their nominal home of Aberdeen to Texas. Coronach comes at a point where Hellripper’s fortunes are such that their next two years are basically already in the diary, hitting almost every continent, and James has been able to call it his livelihood for a while now. Even having to find a temporary bassist for their upcoming Goatkraft And Granite Tour after Andy Milburn buggered his leg in a bizarre ice-skating accident can’t slow them down, in any sense.

“I think it was literally his first time skating. He was coming off and broke his knee,” winces James. “He’s fine, but he’s out for two months. He’s getting bored, he’s been doing word-searches and sudoku.”

Today, Kerrang! joins the frontman at his HQ up in the Highlands, “Not quite in the middle of nowhere, but three or four hours away from the nearest music scene, or where the airport is.” Away from the madness of shows, this suits James just fine, being by his own admission “kind of a loner” by nature.

“I like working by myself,” he shrugs. “I get better results.”

He even recorded the album by himself, bar the drums. This goes back to the start of Hellripper, beginning as a project he eventually shelved for a couple of years. “I wanted to record music on my own, inspired by a lot of these one-man bands like Midnight, Bathory, Toxic Holocaust.”

It’s a great work, as speedy and cartoonishly violent as one would want or expect, but with an icier element, something more haunting. There's also “prog bits”, and flashes of Converge or The Dillinger Escape Plan.

“I’ve been describing it as a ‘colder’ sounding album,” he says. “I don’t know if it means anything to anyone except what I’ve got in my head. Maybe it comes from the atmosphere I’ve added with synths and piano and violin. It’s more diverse, there’s a lot of different things going on.

“Whatever we try and whatever influences I put in, it all ends up sounding like Hellripper, though.”

It was as a teenager in Aberdeen growing up listening to indie – “Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, all that,” he says, wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt – that James discovered thrash via Megadeth’s Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? and Metallica’s …And Justice For All. He’d always been drawn to guitars, and started seeking out music properly as a kid after singing The Beatles’ Love Me Do at school, leading him on to “Queen, The Eagles, AC/DC, Sabbath, classic rock stuff.” But this changed something.

“When I heard thrash, something just clicked. Immediately I was like, ‘Ah, I’m now a metalhead. The aggression, the energy, the style of riffs all stuck with me, or made things click. It was the thing that made me go deeper into being an actual metalhead. I'd heard bands like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, but this was my kind of music. I was like, ‘This is what I’m supposed to listen to. I've been looking for this for my entire life.’”

Too young to get into gigs yet, James instead focused on the guitar he’d been neglecting, spending weeks perfecting ’Tallica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. Quickly, it replaced a previous affection. “Before that I played football, like, five or six days a week, and that kind of ended after I got into metal.”

In the secondhand shops of The Granite City, James would nab albums for a couple of quid, furthering his obsession finding metal online. When he turned old enough, he took full advantage of the remote town’s surprisingly fertile music scene, going to three or four gigs a week, “metal, punk, doom, everything.” Still, when he had the idea of doing a thrash act of his own, going it alone was the only way.

“A lot of my friends didn't want to play this kind of music, or weren't interested in this particular style. We’d be getting together to jam and do Metallica or Velvet Revolver covers, but it wasn’t like this. I wanted to do this because it's my favourite style of music. I wanted a band like this of my own.”

An EP was written, then shelved, then re-appraised when “I’d actually learned how to write songs and record properly”. After a while, people around town started asking when he was gonna play live with it, meaning assembling a line-up for live duties. Quickly a reputation spread, but the modus operandi between the isolation of creativity and the “balls to the wall rock’n’roll” of Hellripper’s frantic live shows also made itself known to James.

“I almost see it as two different bands,” he says. “I never take the studio side or the live side into consideration for each different thing. I want to write the best music possible. I'm very deliberate with what I do. I like experimenting using different instruments, creating textures, atmospheres. And then when we play live, you know, it's just all-out rock’n’roll.”

This usually involves James standing on the barrier and smashing a can of beer on his head. You’re also likely to find more goats – masks, shirts, signs bearing the legend ‘All Hail The Goat’ – in the pit than anywhere else.

“Goats are cool, aren't they?” he says, proudly. “The goat thing is funny. It’s kind of become a mascot, totally accidentally. I don't think for the first two years of the band there was like any mention of goats. And then there was like the song Bastard Of Hades, with the 'I am the goat' line.

“At the same time, I wanted to do some merch that was a kind of parody Motörhead, the ‘Hellripper Scotland’ thing. It was meant to be just 50 shirts, but it got so popular that it's now our logo and it's on everything. There’s worse things to be associated with, though. Goats rule!”

Yes, as do vampiric clergymen, haunted highlands and tales of stealing corpses. And, indeed, thrashing like a maniac. For this quiet, friendly man, that’s actually what’s best in life. As he stares at two years going around the world, like his discovery of thrash, something just clicks about it all.

“I'm lucky that writing music is what I enjoy, so I do it as a hobby. I don't really require rest, or a break from it, because it’s just what I do anyway.”

Vampire, goat or thrasher – clearly, there’s no rest for the wicked…

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