Runaway Ricochet is a mathy prog and jazzy influenced ska band out of St Paul, Minnesota. Their 2024 album Diminishing Returns was among my favorite albums of the year. I’ve always been impressed with their ability to write complex instrumentation that sounded catchy and beautiful and pleasant. They are some of the most talented artists with a knack for creativity that manage to make everything a little lighter. They break from the formulas and brighten your day.
Seeing this newest single titled “Choke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em” felt a little unexpected. The album art immediately caught my attention: A black image with white ink line sketch, a hand reaching for a cigarette, the brand being a circle with a line through it over a cube. The cigarettes actually packed together with faces with balaclavas, wraparound, sunglasses, ball caps. Some say ICE on the chest. The subject of the song becomes immediately clear, and I start trying to anticipate the jazz and prog rock notes that might set the tone. Is this going to be bouncy, tongue in cheek?
I hit play and as the first note sounds, I’m caught off guard and can immediately tell this is different. A dirty rock guitar, thick and with distortion, alone establishing a rhythm – heavy metal – letting the final note hold and play out for a couple seconds. The drums enter on the cymbals. The horns join after about 20 seconds adding texture and thickness to the rhythm: Nothing jazz, pop, or remotely light.
The vocals that had always been pretty and melodic are now punk and aggressive. The first line begins “These DHS fucks never learned to read a damn thing”. This isn’t tongue in cheek, not clever and biting. This is poignant. Direct. Clear. The time for cute has long passed, and as the first lyric implies, if the message was coded or hidden, clever or metaphor, the subject wouldn’t understand it anyway.
The song is still far from formulaic, and doesn’t sit pretty in any genre. It’s definitely got hardcore and metal elements, but it also has some ska (and I don’t mean horns). It also features Goon Tribune- a Minneapolis based indie rap band with a rapped verse. What the song lacks is a chorus. The song is thick, lyrically dense, verbose, and doesn’t repeat lines. Instead, it changes tempo and style, it’s still mathy as fuck, which keeps it feeling fresh and alive. The song is less made for you to sing along with, and more for you to listen and pay attention.
The first verse discusses topics like using Christianity to justify hating gay and trans people, and people of other religions, but ignoring the Bible when it comes to loving your neighbor, and ICE being born of racism and bigotry. It celebrates immigrants while mocking ICE, and ends with a powerful “No matter how much tear gas you throw, Minneapolis gonna make you choke”. The first half of the first verse has a ska guitar rhythm, with an aggressive drumming rhythm and quick lyrics, but halfway through there is a breakdown: The vocals slow as the horns come in. The tempo changes several times, building and breaking down. The aggression is constant, with different instruments adding and pulling back. The bridge, which still has screamed aggressive vocals, continues the pace, starting with a driving persistent drum rhythm and ends with an almost spiraling horn rhythm is equally crazy.
The middle verse features Goon Tribune and is rapped, pulling in imagery of the national anthem, celebrating resistance, talks of being a street medic at resistance protests, taking pride in Minnesota standing up to evil, braving the coldest weather to prevent ICE from kidnapping neighbors, and reminding us the only thing standing in the way of ICE is “JUST US”. Justice does not exist on its own, it must be enforced by We The People. The music through the second verse often drops out to bring more attention to lyrics. It has thick heavy undertones, breaks and bursts, it demands your attention.
The final verse picks back up the tempo and turns it to new heights. The lyrics go on to name and shame corporations that have contracts with and profit off of ICE and Homeland Security. You can’t pretend to care about your neighbors and your community while giving money to the people who profit off of their exploitation and removal. These companies pay to advertise in our communities, to tell the world that they are bringing us together with warm commercials on your news programs, in your social media feed, on your favorite YouTube videos and halftime shows. Meanwhile they are aiding, abetting, and profiting off of the exploitation and destruction of the communities they claim to promote. The song mentions the following companies, so I will name them here: Amazon, GEO, CoreCivic, Palantir, Paragon, Dell, FedEx, UPS, Menards, Home Depot, Target, Hilton, and Caribou.
The song ends in an extremely satisfying finish. The tone of the song reminds me of a cover that I don’t think many recall, but at least everyone will remember the original, and that is Link 80’s cover of “Harvester of Sorrow”.
Runaway Ricochet somehow managed to stay extremely true to their style, in that the song is mathy and complex, while expanding in a way that I was unfamiliar with, and that is aggressive, angry, punk, heavy metal, and rap, while still maintaining ska undertones. This song is ambitious, unique, powerful, and executed flawlessly. Proceeds from this song on Bandcamp are being donated to mutual aid in the Twin Cities. Take a listen below. Fuck ICE.
Written by Gimp Leg
