an interview with razorz of EPILEPTICS — a talk about music, molly and life
today, we had the honor to interview razorz, the frontperson of EPILEPTICS, once a witch-house & electronic band, now a reggaeton, post-hardcore & rave one-person project. EPILEPTICS has been in the industry since 2013. the band quickly gained popularity because of the self-titled LP released through the YOUTH 1984 label. the LP has been adored by fans of the witch-house & electronic genre. songs like Esoteric, Heroin Chic and Carpathian hit the charts, making EPILEPTICS a legend and a huge influence in the international Witch House scene, along with their chaotic live shows and then-elusive personas, setting the blueprint of aesthetic and sound for many bands and artists to come.
[this interview includes explicit content & mentions of self harm. some viewers might find this content triggering. proceed with caution.]
thorns of the future: first question: how did you find out that you wanted to be a music producer?
razorz: Out of necessity, I was 15-16 playing in black metal, crust and grindcore bands, I always realized that I was the only one writing songs and throwing ideas. When me and Amanda Failure started EPILEPTICS, we had no idea how to do electronic music, I read somewhere about this software "Reason 4". I cracked a copy and started messing with it, I was amazed that you could do music, an entire song on a laptop, a 2008 HP mini to be precise, we came from the world of guitars, amps, pedals and drums, we couldn't believe it. Now I do records and remixes for other people and I can tell you 100% that I'm not sure of what I am doing, I can't let other people do my songs cause I am very specific with everything, only a couple of occassions this has happened, MYKKA from Argentina, a superstar prod. she produced for Bad Bunny, Duki, Bhavi, Ysy A, and a bunch of other important people and she made some of the heaviest, nastiest dubstep ever before that, she has legit Gold Records and is one of the top producers from Latin America, so she made the beat for Suicide Season because I bugged her for a year and she thought that EPLPTCS was kinda cool and weird and SVGAWA (Ukrainian Witch House rockstar) a brother to me is the only person on earth that reads my mind and knows what I want, they are the 2 only people who have made beats for me, I became a producer but that was never the goal, when we started I did not even know what a producer was.
thorns of the future: tell us about the craziest person you've ever seen in the crowd during your live show.
razorz: On a festival in Moscow 2018 there was this girl and a dude that tried god-knows whatever designer drug and they were on the floor, could not move their legs or talk but they were moving their torsos to the music, they were in the back and I was impressed how unphased everybody was, like "hey, I think these guys are dying" and nobody gave a shit, here in Mexico in like 2017 some girls and dudes showed up with mutilated arms to the front row and I used to cut myself on some shows if I had a vibe going on, at Station Hall in Moscow I stagedived at the end with wounds open in the arms and some girl I believe licked them at the stagedive, that was crazy, after me, King Plague was gonna DJ and she refused to until the stage was cleaned up, I left it full of blood, that's the dumb stuff I was doing at the time, when I saw that followers of the band were destroying themselves from us openly encouraging the use of drugs and self mutilation, I stopped with that, a couple of people I really cared about actually died from that, there was this infectious "bug" on tours that was not healthy for anybody, we were dangerous to ourselves and the people around us, but that's the past.
thorns of the future: what were your thoughts during your first ever live show?
razorz: As EPILEPTICS? I was very nervous because Failure got in trouble and couldn't make it to the show but I didn't know, I played at like 3am at this indie little festival in a hall in here, a girl complained it was too noisy and it was hurting her ears, there is video of that show, gonna upload it to YouTube and about Failure, days later she answered the phone and turns out she was caught drunk driving that evening so her parents were getting her out of detention that night, I barely remember it, I was coked out of my mind and drinking anisette on that one, but I had played a bunch of metal/punk shows before EPLPTCS which are the worst, after coming from those scenes you are 120% bulletproof to anything, nothing is worse than those shows, you work and play your ass off for nothing in the tiniest places in the worst conditions with the worst crowds.
thorns of the future: what made you switch from electronic music to your current genre?
razorz: We never intended to be a Witch House band, we just wanted to blend what Salem and Glass Teeth were doing with UK rave music and jungle, we were "adopted" and thrown in the bunch by the people and we are grateful for that, I see the impact now that us and the Russian bands and prods had on the current musical landscape, we were a bunch of angsty teenagers that just wanted to unleash. Anyway I lived the Witch House thing to the fullest, I played all the fests, met everybody, got signed twice and made money, I was in Russia when Witch House was mainstream music there, you would walk into a Bershka store and they were playing Crossparty, it was not underground at all, in Spain it was a big deal as well, before Sidewalks toured the circuit, before Crim3s, I did, I saw it and we all knew it was gonna end eventually, everybody was living the lifestyle, everybody was running out of ideas and americans put the final nail in the coffin of Witch House with their stupid songs about ghosts, terror and daft shit like that, around 2019 the scene was dead worldwide and you can ask anybody who was there, Dann K left the band and it was only me now, I always hated rap music but we were played on Mexican radio a legendary station in here called Reactor 105, they believed in us and played our songs, one day I was listening and Bring the Noize by M.I.A. came up, I was floored, I could not believe the sound of that, so I started listening more, started to consume UK grime, weird ethnic stuff like kuduro (it's a music genre) and soundsystems, reggaeton was huge in here always and at that time there were this really dense/heavy loud af tracks coming from South America along with the trap scene from Argentina and I was into that as well, I needed a rebranding of everything and now I was gonna front so I did "lost u" which is a monster witch pop song as a goodbye for the "Version 1" of the band, plus me being razorz and EPILEPTICS being pretty much my life for 5 years at that point, I was not 18 anymore and you have to think like "I guess this is what I am gonna do, so I need to be more commercial" and at that time I was partying a lot and liking commercial af music and seemed reachable so I went for the full selling out if you will and I don't regret it at all, underground is not fun.
thorns of the future: how old were you when you first started making music?
razorz: I always played music, my mum is a huge music fan, she was an 80's goth and she also liked metal so I got my 1st drumkit when I was 3, then a guitar at 6, she was very supportive, my dad didn't really care, I never learned theory, so I would play CDs and learn from there, my first song I'd say I was 12 (?) it was some sort of a Carcass death metal song. So it went from there, there is this ultra depressive neoclassical autumn vibes piano/acoustic guitar project called 'Bläire' (which was my pseudonym in black metal bands I played in) I recorded it alone in my bedroom when I was like 15, it was supposed to come out on cassette on a Finnish black metal label but it closed 2 weeks before the release and that broke me so I put a couple of those tracks as hidden tracks on the 1st and 2nd EPILEPTICS records (Autumnal Black Metal Tape and Santander respectively) I will eventually put that whole EP myself on Spotify.
thorns of the future: who's your biggest inspiration?
razorz: Way too many people to mention, but Liam Howlett (The Prodigy), Skrillex (who I was a fan of since From First to Last) and Ethan Kath (him exclusively, fuck that other person in that band) made it seem realistic cause they were punky guys like me. Nowadays I get inspired by anything, many people wouldn't believe all the shit I listen to, all over the place.
thorns of the future: what's your favourite song that you produced?
razorz: I am very proud of Nadia Comaneci, that song took me 2 years to write when I was homeless (by choice) and on meth, it encapsulates the hate, actually becoming insane and paranoia like no other song, it has this totally incoherent lyrics that range from violence and death to school shootings, me being Hannah Montana, killing police officers, killing rock music, La Santa Muerte, asexuality as a way of living, suicide, life in the 3rd world, anti materialism, etc. 2 minutes, all of that in 2 fucking minutes, the music video is just a masterpiece too, that the director (Conejo Roto) envisioned, very disturbing and grotesque but not in the obvious way, I love it and its like 4 different music genres squeezed in 2 minutes, again: awesome, it's like a manifesto.
thorns of the future: tell us how you start the process of making music.
razorz: Listening to music, and just observing life, I can be listening to Britney and Kylie Minogue and steal a vocal melody from them, then maybe a drum pattern from Diplo and then a guitar lead part from old Bloc Party, The Kills or The Libertines and a synth from 100gecs and then a flow and snare from a Favela Funk song, or a figure from a riff from Darkthrone, my way of writing music is straight up stealing parts of songs from totally opposite genres and mashing them together, it is rare that a song comes to my head but sometimes that happens.
thorns of the future: how did you come up with the name for your band?
razorz: I have a cousin that was diagnosed with epilepsy that I didnt see often back when we started the band, he had a seizure and I was alone with him at our grandma's house, he had this fucked up convulsion and I was alone with him, his eyes went blank and his mouth was tweaking bad, I told Failure about it and she had a crush on Ian from Joy Division (lame) who was an epileptic too, so she named the band, I thought it was a stupid name and I still hate it, we released 'Esoteric' like weeks later and we kicked the Witch House/rave scene along with the russians and it became this minor hit in a matter of days so we couldn't change it, I still hate the name and think it is silly as fuck, almost 10 years still bothers me.
thorns of the future: what would you like to say to your fans?
razorz: I hate the word fans, I like calling them friends, I'd like to tell them to not have kids, that's the best advice I can give and to never listen to anybody, live your fucking lives however you want.
thorns of the future: what's your favourite drug and why?
razorz: I'm gonna go with molly, I had some of the best times of my life on that one and I did lots of music discovery with my then best friend Axl, we would do tons of molly, not eat for a week and just listen to music nonstop, Dann K. (vocalist/synths on The Sun Hurts My Eyes) got me into shooting coke right in the fucking neck for a bit but it was too awesome so I stopped and went to regular snorting I guess, I have a permanent damage on my palate from doing so much coke for years.
thorns of the future: is there a religion you hate most?
razorz: Oh man... haha anything that involves bombing, cowardly unaliving kids in other countries and treating women like garbage, not gonna name it but I think everybody with a braincell will know what I'm talking about.
thorns of the future: your most unliked subculture is…
razorz: Punks, fucking losers, lame mediocre, miserable people who like to pretend they live in 1985, metalheads too, are pretty stupid and childish and anybody who is playing glam music or trying to be Guns N' Roses in 2024 is amusing to me, oh djent is pretty fucking lame too.
thorns of the future: tell us your least liked artist - is it because of their music or their personality?
razorz: Gonna name a few in no particular order: XXXTentacion, Lil Peep, Arca bothers the shit out of me, mediocre techno, this Sarah Landry bitch who plays "hard techno" which is just a kick loop going on for 3 hrs what's that shit about? Nobody likes it but fucking dunces pretend to like it cause it's "cool", Nina Kraviz, dumb fuck thinking she is modeling while DJing, this stupid pop punk revival bands talking about pizza and smelling their mothers ass they are even doing that here in Mexico, it is insulting, bunch of fucking sons of rich privileged idiots, My Chemical Romance, Tool, 98% of American Witch House talking about ghosts and Halloween and shit lmao, post-2013 Grimes (hung out with her in 2016 and she was annoying as fuck) K pop boybands and girlbands, lame electronic like Porter Robinson, that BLAND stupid disco shit that Daft Punk did, white people acting black, Machine Gun Kelly, DJs who have girls twerking at their sets piss me off beyond belief, Drake is one of the softest and most pathetic individuals to ever put music out, etc man, my hate is unlimited and I have chilled out a lot. Honorable mention to this dumb fuck Anyma, he was Grimes' boyfriend or something, that instead of playing MUSIC he just puts this dumbass lame visuals on his shows, J Balvin and Maluma along with all that soft reggaeton pop bullshit is pretty embarrasing as well, they think us mexicans LOVE that garbage and we don't.
thorns of the future: what's the riskiest thing you've ever done?
razorz: For my own security I can't talk much about it but I am amazed that I was not killed, that I never had a fatal overdose and that I am not in prison talking to you today, whatever you think I've done multiply that by 10 and you will be kind of close, I lived the street life to the max when I was a meth addict and I don't like all this people around the world rapping or singing about it like it's cool cause it's not, the fear of police, paranoia, the nothing, hearing voices and seeing things that are not there, the cold, the "I don't know if I'm gonna come back alive from this one" or going to a free clinic to check if you have AIDS are things I do not miss at all.
we would like to thank razorz of EPILEPTICS for answering all of our questions. we really appreciate you. that's all for now.
images & videos: razorz
spotify:
EPILEPTICS: https://open.spotify.com/artist/20KlxRilj2aFPUDjglUebT
razorz: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3AvvaBzMypsd6UYoE3aNBF
instagram:
EPILEPTICS: https://www.instagram.com/epileptix/
razorz: https://www.instagram.com/r4z0rz/
hyperfollow: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/epileptics
