It was fitting that this Tuesday, July 29th, 2025, a storm had been hovering around town all day, as the audience was about to be hit hard and fast by the intensity of James McBain‘s HELLRIPPER, making their Finnish debut tonight at On The Rocks.
Being early in the week, and with many people still out of town on summer vacation, the turnout for the gig was still good enough. A sizable crowd was already gathered by the stage when local thrashers CEASELESS TORMENT opened the evening. Fresh off a new guitarist in Tatu Nyman, the four entertained the audience with a pleasant display of violent old-school riffs and rough vocals. Even though their set turned out to be quite short, somehow leaving people wanting more, and also having to wait for 45 long minutes until the headliner’s show.
HELLRIPPER began their set with “All Hail the Goat,” which was featured in the banners on both sides and handwritten on some tape attached to the frontman’s guitar. It was clear from the beginning that this would have been a sweaty, frantic evening, and it had been quite a while since we saw another (relatively) young speed/black/thrash act play with such grit and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, which clearly affected the fans as well, with the occasional crowdsurfer (even though the other people didn’t really seem to play ball and most attempts failed rather quickly), lots of furious headbanging, and fists raised in the air. The members of the band, on the other han,d were at least as restless, constantly moving from one side to the other on stage and going as close as possible to the audience. Eventually, the vocalist and mastermind of the band literally announced that he would jump over the audience during the next song, joking to not let him fall down. The show covered a lot of the early material and not much of the latest record, “Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags,” from 2023, for the happiness of their most hardcore fans, who were also delighted with not one but two encores (at the second one it looked like they were just kind of fucking around by saying all the time “this is our last song” or “we still have three more songs” and so on).
Eventually the show came to an end, and it was not even half past ten at “night” – if one can call it that way when the sun is still out – when people started to head out for either more drinks or food or a combination of both (if not straight home cause you know, some still are working despite the summer!). As McBain mentioned during the gig, HELLRIPPER will be back very soon, and it’s already in their plans. Judging from how tonight went, that will make a lot of people happy. Check our photo gallery here…
CEASELESS TORMENT
HELLRIPPER
