Defunct Local Band Profile Series: Sykotyk Rampage

It's now time for this month's Defunct Local Band Profile, continuing our monthly feature series on inactive local metal, hard rock, and punk bands in our band links, all as randomly selected! This month's choice was originally the hard rock solo project StrykerGC (now Stonesmith GC), who actually resumed their public activity after they were selected, so I picked an alphabetically adjacent band to replace them, and what a band we have this month! This group should be familiar to many metal & punk concertgoers from the early-mid 2010s, and in prior decades, so here's what you should know on them!

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Sykotyk Rampage

Genre: Alternative Rock (commonly described as "Blue Chinese metal crash punk" and "original crash music" by the band)
 
Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Members: (Members not in their last full lineup in italics. This lineup information only reflects Sykotyk Rampage's permanent lineups during their last decade as a live band, As most of their active run predates social media, information on former members from the 1980s-1990s is not prevalent, though lineup changes were frequent. Note that select albums of theirs from before 2008 featured guest musicians, and some of them are credited on their WordPress page.

Paul Becker, vocals/drums
Dirk Becker, guitar/vocals
Shane Kokis, guitar
Tony Briglio (The Fury), bass
Brian Cattapan (Avant Apollo, Aggressive Acoustic), bass

Audio/Video: An ultra prolific band (owing heavily to their method of recording 100% improvised original songs live in studio), Sykotyk Rampage recorded and released 61 albums between 2000 & 2018 at their own River Front Recreation Studios, and while these were primarily digital, CD copies are known to have circulated for some of them. All were put on sale publically at some point, including original, concept, compilation, and faux live albums, and while not all of their massive catalog (featuring blues, punk, hard rock, outsider, and psychedelic influences) is currently online to buy or stream, the widest swaths of their discography are currently available on Reverbnation & Soundclick. A fair amount of videos are out there from their own YouTube channel, and elsewhere from late-period concerts of theirs, plus their own music videos. Here they are playing their signature song "Drinking On The Weekend" at a battle of the bands back in 2010!

Info/Analysis: Founded by brothers Dirk & Paul Becker way back in 1982, Sykotyk Rampage were easily the longest lived local hard rock band we've ever covered. Though early lineups aren't recorded online, Shane joined the band on guitar in 1999, which preceded the release of their first canon album "Baked Brain Tumour On Toast" in 2000. After Brian joined on bass in 2008 (with Tony replacing him in 2012), Sykotyk Rampage would become an active live band, and would play numerous local concerts from 2009 onward, including at four battles of the bands,  opening for touring acts like The Shotgun Dolls, The Creepshow, and Evilheart, and sets at the Swampstravaganza and Bushplane Musical Madness. By the mid-2010s, the band was mostly seen annually at the Soo Zombie Walk, and while they did play in Sudbury in 2016, and kept releasing albums through early 2018, they have been publically inactive since, aside from the occasional teaser of a private jam.

With an irreverent and often ribald sense of humour & online presentation (be advised of adult content), Sykotyk Rampage stamped out their own niche in the local scene! They never took themselves too seriously, but their method of learning their improvised studio songs for live shows (drinking songs or otherwise) served them well, and with Paul's deep bluesy vocals, Dirk's well contrasted singing, and fun guitar & bass input from Shane, Brian, and Tony, Sykotyk Rampage were always a fun band that I looked forward to seeing! It also helped that my mom was a good friend of Dirk's since high school. Hopefully we'll see Sykotyk Rampage (and C. George) back in some form down the road, especially with the pandemic winding down!

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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! This series will return on or around July 10th when we look at two bands, as the first that we randomly selected doesn't have enough surviving public information for a single profile, so I picked one more band in a similar state to round things out with. Both are from Sault Ontario, as we're looking at mid-2010s grindcore duo This Is Your Band On Drugs and mid-2000s hard rock band Apocrytha! Look for this next month, and for a new news post soon! Thanks everyone!