On their debut album, I’m Just Gonna Let Myself In, Philadelphia sleaze kings The Crippler do the sonic equivalent to ripping your spine out and beating you to death with it. Counting current and former members of Brutal Truth Eat the Turnbuckle, The Bad Luck 13 Riot Extravaganza, Drones for Queens and Total Fucking Destruction as accomplices, The Crippler throw grind, thrash and death metal in a blender with hardcore punk, spitting out a violent and volatile mixture.
Song titles like “I’m Just Gonna Let Myself In,” “Mangled Bodies” and “I Have a House Full of Guns” are par for the course, combining the band members’ irreverent senses of humor with a love for Cannibal Corpse-style gore, Repulsion-style grind and a few Mortician-style samples. The Crippler aren’t going to lie to you about who they are as people: they like violence and they like a lot of it.
The Crippler unleash their debut album via Horror Pain Gore Death on December 23 but our gift to you is that you can just let yourself in now. Guitarist SHLAK and vocalist Jag 13 also gave a joint interview about the new album, which you can read below the stream. Merry Christmas, you filthy animals.
You’re all busy dudes who spend a lot of time in other bands and making people bleed. How did The Crippler come to be and how long did it take to write and record this album?
Covid. Everyone was out of work, so we slowly put this band together to kill time and not other civilians. We all know each other, most of us have been in previous bands together. The side project became a main one as the shit materialized. Write and recorded the thing ourselves in about a year and some change.
A lot of this album is about hurting people. Did you have anyone specific in mind or are you just crazy?
Go with what you know. One thing The Crippler knows is hurting people. The band consists of former and current members of Eat the Turnbuckle, Bad Luck 13 and Call the Paramedics. Two of us are professional death match wrestlers. WTF do you think we’re gonna write about? Sunsets and holding hands?
What was it like to write and record I’m Just Gonna Let Myself In? Was it a quick process or were you working on it in bits and pieces over an extended period?
Actually, the writing process was fast. We do our homework, we already know our strengths and weaknesses, and how everyone plays. Dan [O’Hare, guitar] was in Brutal Truth, so if he knows what he’s doing then we kinda do too. The only thing that took long was getting it released because we are all drunk, busy as fuck and self-absorbed procrastinators.
What are your influences? I’m hearing a lot of classic grind and old-school slam/brutal death-type stuff.
Theft, strong armed robbery, the Unabomber, the gutter, alleyways, sex, drugs, rock and roll. Repulsion and Impetigo. Your basics.
SHLAK, in addition to being a musician and tattoo artist, you’re also a professional deathmatch wrestler, which means you spend a lot of time rolling around in glass and barbed wire. Do the constant small injuries make it harder to play guitar?
My whole body is fucked up. The most impeding thing would be my hands. They are always shredded into oblivion and beaten up from punching things like chairs and crushing glass in my palms [laughs]. I cant feel or move two of my fingers anymore from bad nerve lacerations. Luckily they are on my pick hand and not the fret one. It’s a hard job being the XPW King of the Death Matches belt holder and playing in a band, but the bills ain’t gonna just pay themselves.
What can we expect next from the Crippler, if anything?
A string of shows, maybe some weekend runs, we just got booked for Obscene Extreme 2023 in the Czech Republic so some shows around then, I suppose. We are in talks and about to start working on a split 7-inch with Remains, Tony from Blood Duster’s new band, while Jag is gettin knee surgery. So we ain’t disappearing anytime soon. Plenty more self-indulgent, sociopathic-inflated-sense-of ego grind coming your way. So start runnin’.
