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 Mike Riggs, a.k.a. Riggs, is the founder, lead guitarist, and vocalist for the band Scum of the Earth (although he states he wishes not to be the latter) formed in 2003 after he departed ways with Rob Zombie . S.O.T.E. released its debut album "Blah...Blah...Blah...Love Songs for the New Millennium" in 2004. Known for the ex-pli-ci-tee of it all, Riggs and Scum push the limits not only lyrically, but visually as well.
Riggs recently spoke with Fears Magazine and offered his thoughts and comments about the band’s latest endeavor (Sleaze Freak) and more.
Fears: First and foremost, is the follow-up to Blah...Blah...Blah...Love Songs for the New Millennium (Sleaze Freak) completed?
Riggs: Just about.
Fears: How long did it take to put it together?
Riggs: Oh I despise just doing the vocals; I don’t even want to be the singer. I tried to find somebody else to be the singer for the record, but the record company wouldn’t let me use’em. A super rad singer that’s a kind of mix between the dude from Mudvayne and Phil Anselmo. A really good singer.
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Fears: And why wouldn’t they allow the change? Because, of course, you are Scum of the Earth. You are the frontman.
Riggs: They didn’t think it was a good idea. Just cause they thought it would be weird to change singers. Like to have one record where I’m singing and another record where there’s another singer. I tried to convince them that it would be better and we would probably sell more records if we had a better singer, but they didn’t care. They’re like, “Whatever.” They thought it would ruin it and I argued and argued that I didn’t want to sing and I wanted this dude to come in and do it.
Fears: And his name is or can you say?
Riggs: Ah, probably not. He wasn’t anybody that anybody has ever of which is the other cool about him. He’s just really fucking good. I was super excited to have him be the singer and me just play guitar.
{rokbox album=|SCUM OF THE EARTH| title=|Mike Riggs from SCUM OF THE EARTH-Photo by Jeff Kroll }images/stories/2007/MUSIC/SCUM/s2.jpg{/rokbox}
Fears: So you would just be content playing the guitar off to the side?
Riggs: Yeah, that’s where I’d rather be. I just fell into it, being the singer. I live out in the middle of nowhere and if there was gong to be a singer on it, then I had to do it I guess. You know I’m not, very good with singing. I gotta put some effects on there and, you know, figure out someway that I can scream a bunch of words and make sense.
Fears: You honesty is rather enlightening.
Riggs: What’s taking so long on this record was the singing part.
Fears: Is there a projected dated for its release?
Riggs: (answer is based on the time of the interview) That’s the tricky part because the record company doesn’t want to put a release date on it until they have the finished, mastered version of the CD in their possession. They’ll get the mixed version, but then they have to send it off to L.A. to get mastered, then get it back from them, then they’ll figure out a release date will be figured out.
Fears: What type of budget do or did you have with regard to putting together Sleaze Freak?
Riggs: I think they refer to those kinds of budgets as a shoestring budget.
Fears: (laughing)
Riggs: (chuckling) Yeah, they wrote it into the record contract.
Fears: Did much money come from your own pockets?
Riggs: No, not this time. Last time it did. This time, Eclipse got the bill.
Fears: What did you bring to the table this time around that maybe you were not able to when you were putting together Blah… Blah… Blah… or did you just take a different approach with Sleaze Freak altogether?
 Mike Riggs photo by Pamela Littky
Fears: Didn’t you have some sort of person or thing to guide you with your decision making?
Riggs: No. Nope. I just figured I could do it. Like how hard could it be? A lot harder than I thought it was. So this time, I was more prepared. So this one is a lot better.
Fears: In what way? Tighter? Heavier? Edgier? How is Sleaze Freak better?
Riggs: Yeah. This time we’ll live up to the name Scum of the Earth with this record.
Fears: In what ways do you attempt to establish your own sound to where people know
Riggs is playing the guitar? If it’s not from Prong or Zombie or whatever, when people hear the guitar, they will know it’s you playing.
Riggs: I guess you just got to put out enough records where they will get use to it.
Fears: But as a musician, I would think you want to change up things to always have a fresh sound. Maybe you want to put out the same sound.
Riggs: It wouldn’t bother me. I mean nobody is gonna say it sounds like Educated Horses that’s for sure. The comparisons will stop after this record comes out.
Fears: How did you hook up with Paul Garner ? Had you collaborated with him in the past?
Riggs: Through MySpace . Yeah, I just saw his stuff on MySpace and I sent him an e-mail or he sent me an e-mail; somehow we just got in touch through MySpace. It was that simple.
Fears: Did you have much say in the cover art or did you allow him to do his thing just on knowing who Riggs is and what Riggs has done?
Riggs: We changed the cover like ten times because of censors. Like we had a problem with the cover last time. So this time, Eclipse wanted to get the cover done really soon. Originally it was these three chicks hangin’ out in like, uh, jerk-off booth in the Red Light District kind of thing and that didn’t go over. Then it turned into two chicks, and then it turned into two chicks with more clothes on. At first it looked like a porno mag is what the cover had looked like. Now it looks like a comic book cover. We had to change all the sayings on it. Like at the bottom it had this little a tag line that was really fucking cool, now it’s watered down – a bunch of crap.
Fears: So is there a formula to get want you want, yet still appease the censors?
Riggs: You just have to do too much at first I think; I might have it figured out for the next one. But this time around it seems like if you do too much on purpose and then cut back, then they’ll be happy and you’ll get away with what you were trying to get away with – maybe. I don’t know; I haven’t tried yet. If it was up to me, it would be the devil crucified on the cross on the cover of the record.
Fears: Similar to your MySpace site?
Riggs: Yeah. I had Paul do that, but that would never fly. Nobody would ever sell the thing.
Fears: It begs the question of just how important imagery is that at times it must be scaled back in order for the public to be afforded the opportunity to purchase the CD in many stores versus a select few.
Riggs: I don’t know how important it is. It bugs us. But at the end of the day, I guess we just put out a freakin’ CD and it doesn’t matter what is on the cover.
Fears: How does Riggs know when the right chord or riff has been stuck and it should become part of the song?
Riggs: Ah that’s a good question (pause). Ah, I don’t know. I don’t think I ever thought of it.
Fears: There has to be a point in the studio, or wherever, that the tracks that have laid down are the ones that will become the final project. How do you know those are “the ones?”
Riggs: We get some riffs and just keep putting more riffs on it and then just go record it and hope that it turns out good (chuckling). That’s really about it.
Fears: In the beginning of "Bloodsukinfreakshow" (from the album Blah… Blah… Blah…), the lyric “I see the devils” does not pertain to “the devil” per se but to women correct?
Riggs: Yeah, you got it.
{rokbox album=|SCUM OF THE EARTH| title=|Mike Riggs from SCUM OF THE EARTH }images/stories/2007/MUSIC/SCUM/s4.jpg{/rokbox}
Fears: Now call it analyzing the song too much, but it sounds like the person saying, “I see the devils….” is a child.
Riggs: Oh yeah, that was my son who sang that. That’s kind of like an old song. He did it when he was about seven years old.
Fears: Does he aspire to follow in his father’s chosen profession?
Riggs: No. He wants to program video games.
Fears: When writing songs, are you mindful of the content due to young kids possibly getting a hold of the CDs?
Riggs: I’d love nothing better to be the worse influence of all time (laughing). Not the kids, but I like to piss everyone off. I didn’t have a really good chance do to that on the first record cause they weren’t gonna make, uh, an edited version and an explicit version. They told me I couldn’t, so I had to change the lyrics. I had to change the samples. I changed all the shit throughout the whole record. So it (Blah… Blah… Blah…) did good enough where this time they’re gonna make an explicit version and a clean version like I wanted.
Fears: That’s good to hear about the clean version. My son likes the band, but I’ve only allowed him to listen to a few of the songs for obvious reasons.
Riggs: Yeah. See that’s kind of the trick on the last one cause it should have had a sticker on it but it didn’t. We slipped it through the cracks. We put all the curse words and stuff toward the end of the CD. Then a bunch of stores started catching on and stop ordering it cause there wasn’t an edited version. So record sells kind of went down the toilet whenever all these huge chainstores stopped buying them because people were complaining about it.
Fears: It seems you must have pushed some buttons on that one.
Riggs: Kind of, except it backfired and they were just like, “Fuck you, we’re not gonna order anymore. We’re not gonna sell it anymore cause it’s not an edited version.” So this time there will be an edited and explicit version. The clean version will have about two lyrics on it.
Fears: Just all music huh?
Riggs: Pretty much.
Fears: Metal is the genre Scum of the Earth is closely related to…
Riggs: (interjecting) We call it Stripper rock.
Fears: Okay, Stripper rock it is. However, growing up in the seventies, how much does that era of music seep into S.O.T.E.’s sound and your playing?
{rokbox album=|SCUM OF THE EARTH| title=|Ivan and Riggs from SCUM OF THE EARTH-}images/stories/2007/MUSIC/SCUM/scum_ivan-riggs_679412.jpg{/rokbox}
Riggs: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s weird you bring that up cause there’s one song on this new record that I just did, kind of out in left field, that to me reminded me of some old seventies songs. Like the style of guitar playing in it. It’s hard to explain.
Fears: Well, you’ve got Nazareth ; you’ve got your Kansas …
Riggs: Yeah, kind of like that Hair of the Dog (Nazareth) vibe. But there’s only on like that though.
Fears: I went to your MySpace site and listened to the four demos (music only). Musicwise, the songs sound lower and much more together. A little different flavor.
Riggs: Yeah, it’s tuned down a lot lower. I left in all the programming and dancey, stuff that makes it all dancey, I took all that crap out of the last record for some stupid fucking reason. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to…
Fears: (interjecting) Well with how technology continues to play a more profound role in the music industry, how are you able to recreate the song we hear on the CD to when it is played live? Do you rely on tracks to bring the paying pubic the sound they came to hear or are you all live through and through?
Riggs: The drummer is.
Fears: The drummer is what?
Riggs: Relying on the tracks that’s on the (pause) we have like an Alesis, I don’t know, some kind of Alesis hardrive thing that plays the loops back to the drummer. So he has like the drum loops and the sounds and the people talking and whatever samples and a little click track going in his ears. He plays along to that and we just play along to him.
Fears: I have heard that the drummer is the person to follow.
Riggs: Yeah, I mean, if he gets off, the whole song is going to fall apart.
Fears: Unlike Blah… Blah… Blah…, were most of the samples left out of Sleaze Freaks?
Riggs: I took most of them out of Blah… Blah… Blah…. I left them all in this one. There’s probably about four songs, maybe five songs that don’t have any samples in them, but I just figured it would be cool to do some old school heavy shit.
Fears: It sounds as if Sleaze Freaks will be more stripped down than Blah… Blah… Blah….
Riggs: It’s going to be a mixture of both. Some of it is and some of it is like really, uh, the super titty bar songs. It’s got a little bit of everything. Instead of having like metal, like on the last record, we had two acoustic songs. Like if it was up to me, there would only be eight fuckin’ songs on there.
Fears: Only eight?
Riggs: Yeah man, everybody always used to just put eight songs on the record. I like the super awesome records that only had a few songs. Raining Blood, Master of Puppets, Hair of the Dog (chuckling).
Fears: Aren’t bands contracted to record ten songs per CD?
Riggs: We’ve gotta do thirteen on our contract. We only had eleven last time and I only wanted eight so we had to slap three together and that’s why there is like acoustic songs on there. So on this record, there’s no acoustic songs on it.
Fears: Will you be adding more song snippets to MySpace?
Riggs: Well, I don’t know. It will be up to them (Eclipse) what I can put up onto MySpace. I mean there’s stuff, there’s songs done now that I could put on there. I don’t give a shit if it’s mastered or not. You know, I mainly put those four songs, those four little snippets on MySpace to see what people would say about that really fast double bass song that’s kind of like a 90s sounding guitar riff. Because I was thinking instead of putting like a slow song on there why don’t we just put a super fast metal song on there just to change this up a bit. So I put that on MySpace just to see what people would say.
Fears: How much control does a record label have over band and musicians?
Riggs: Ah, they just, you know, (pause) have their theories that this is a good idea, that’s a bad idea and I don’t fuckin’ know. If it’s something that’s like totally obvious that I disagree with them with, I’ll just do it anyways. Then they’ll get all mad and yell at me. It’s little easier on the independent label. You have more freedom to mess around.
Fears: The responsibilities of fronting a band and to keep it moving forward must weigh heavy at times. Finances, I’m sure, play a major role for to you to continue to say it is worth the time and effort?
Riggs: Well, not yet it’s not, but hopefully it will be. It’s rough to be on an independent label. We don’t really get money for…I mean everything is a shoestring budget. When we go on tour it just cost us money. There’s pretty much nothing we do that doesn’t cost us money; short of putting out the record.
Fear: So the passion for playing music must be the key for the continuous.
Riggs: That’s it. We definitely don’t make any money in this band.
Fears: Not to get personal, but that must be rough.
Riggs: We just live a meager existence. No fancy cars or big houses. All our money just gets dumped back into being in a band and going on tours in hopes that it pays off.
Fears: Speaking of touring, have any dates been set?
Riggs: Some of them have been confirmed. We just pushed some of them back to just have more time to prepare and have the venues promote the shows. We pushed them back two weeks.
Fears: Well Riggs, we greatly appreciate the time you have taken to speak with us. I can say that I look forward to hearing the finished product in its entirety.
 Riggs: We’ve definitely got it since the last record. This one is way more organized and a lot better. It’s just better. There’s no other way to put it.
"Sleaze Freak" tentative track listing (not in order):
01. Bombshell From Hell
02. Devilscum
03. Love Pig
04. Hate X 13
05. Macabro Expectaculo
06. I Am Monster
07. Sleaze Freak
08. Corpsegrinder
09. Deathstomp
10. Just Like Me
11. Scum-O-Rama
12. Devil Made Me Do It Again
13. 13 Freaks
Visit Scum of the Earth at: http://www.scumoftheearth.com and http://www.myspace.com/scumoftheearth
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