Hellripper links together the ancient tales of Scotland’s darkest past on their rippin’ new album Coranach.
Release date: March 27th, 2026 | Century Media Records | Instagram | Bandcamp | Facebook
The role of the critic is not to center the criticism on themselves; however, in many ways it’s impossible to separate the listening experience from our own lives. So walking up the hill in the morning to the school where I teach, listening to the new Hellripper album Coranach creates a kind of physical synergy: it’s the pre-fight walk-up, a way of centering my focus that allows me to apply the pedagogical uppercut to the spawn of some of this country’s wealthiest citizens. Somehow, my world got so derailed that I ended up spending almost my entire adult life teaching teenagers. It’s a sobering experience, one plied with a soundtrack of diminished chords and distortion pedals. If I don’t break out into death growls in the middle of a lesson, it’s not because I don’t want to, trust me.
‘My ears have been whatever the opposite of blessed is.’ – 8th grader.
These are the words of one of my esteemed advisory students— pleasant, cheerful young kids whose world is filled with designer sweat pants, Longchamp bags, TikTok channels and Birkenstocks. I played the new track “Mortercheyn” for them and asked them for their feedback, in attempt to see where extreme metal fits into the pantheon of acceptable social networks— the old school kind of social networks, the ones that took place in school cafeterias or underneath the football field bleachers. Their responses, if predictable, were witty and cognizant, and it also made me realize why metal has been such a central part of my listening journey. As such, I will pepper this review with such witticisms from my kids, in an attempt to get at the heart of what makes Hellripper such a powerful force in extreme metal.
Coranach is the fourth slab of ‘speedin’ black thrash metal‘ from the one-man project of Scottish musician James McBain. Hellripper has always been at the top of their class, an unlikely big man on campus, one whose visage would never grace the hardwood floors of a high school gym during a pep rally. McBain is thoroughly a product of the wet, damp woods of Scotland, and Coranach is Hellripper’s hymnal for the dead. But even the dead spent twelve or so years of their lives in indentured servitude as students at public mental institutions. (And by this I mean SCHOOL).
The album opens with the explosive “Hunderpast”, a bludgeoning track of propulsive black metal that sounds like Blackwater Park-era Opeth. Like most songs that typify the Hellripper sound, there’s a healthy dose of saliva-soaked punk rock. You can almost feel the spit from McBain’s mouth splattering across your face. Split into two halves, the second half of “Hunderpast” is pure black metal gore. The vocals are pushed up front, relentless in their intensity, and the ending solo is a glorious throwback to some of the greatest of thrash metal’s giant solos.
‘Type of songs sixty year olds listen to feel like bad boys…’ – 14-year old student.
“Dog Priest” in Scottish, “Hunderprest” tells the story of a 12th century priest who much preferred hunting with his hounds in the hinterlands than trying to save souls from eternal damnation. But isn’t this much like being incarcerated in a school, after all? Forced to do one thing, when all you want to do is another. While I’m far from a dog priest, there are plenty of moments where I stare out at sea of adolescents and think I’d rather be in the woods being hunted by wolves than telling another kid to take the pencil out of their nose.
Which brings me back to school, and by ‘school’ I mean the school I went to: a suburban morass of whiteness and mid-century homes, cheerleaders and football players, a parking lot full of big trucks, and a toxic social cutthroat existence that forced one dorky dude towards the outer edges of punk rock and heavy metal. And it’s Hellripper that acts as the hydrogen peroxide on the eternal cut of being on the outside looking in as a teenager.
‘...and the crowd goes wild (telling you to turn this off).’ – 8th grader.
Hellripper’s nihilistic rage continues throughout the disc. “Kinchyle”, an ancient battle cry of Scottish warriors from the McBain clan, is a black n’ roll call to arms. And the black n’ roll, which is the moldy bread and butter of McBain’s modus operandi, insinuates its way into all of the songs on Coranach. The brutal one-two punch of “Blakk Satanik Fvkkstorm” (0/3; misspelling, inappropriate use of colloquial language) and “Sculptors Cave” (0/2; punctuation) is a giant middle finger to the normies. Nothing makes one more metal than being relegated to the social periphery by those that make the ‘rules’. A black Satanic fuckstorm, indeed.
There’s an admirable consistency throughout the album both musically and thematically. “Biobhan Sith (Waltz of the Damned)” is, well, a metallic ‘waltz’ that shifts from a 3/4 rhythm to a black metal freakfest in the span of a few measures. Evil Scottish fairies, the biobhan sith lurk within the rain forests of the Scottish isles, reaping holy hell on any man who makes the poor choice of sharing a dance with these fairy hags. Desperation is often the demise of many forlorn souls.
In the wise words of one of my other 14-year old music critics, Coranach elicits the kind of anxiety that can only come from being stalked by mystical figures in an ancient Scottish forest. But for a lot of kids— the minority, usually, but a loud one— those mystical figures are the teachers and normies of their own Scottish forest of mental aptitude (or ineptitude). And having McBain ‘yelling in your ear’, as my student said, can, indeed, increase one’s heart rate. She left her review with this rhetorical question: ‘Does Mr. Loschi listen to this so he can go back to his rebellious, buzz cut, mohawk, teen days?’
Yes, he does, Carolina. Yes he does. And he’s silently judging the cheerleaders and jocks the whole time. Rock on.
