Gothic Rapper Syringe Wants to Deafen His Listeners

19-year-old rapper Syringe isn't interested in cohesion.

Image via Syringe on Tumblr
Image via Syringe on Tumblr

Image via Syringe on Tumblr

Daily Discovery is a feature that highlights a new or recently discovered artist who we’re excited about. See the rest of our Daily Discoveries here.


There are certain sections of the internet that feel legitimately dangerous to surf, and that’s an impressive accomplishment in 2016. Tumblrs that are essentially moodboards filled with nudes, pictures of knives, and blood-soaked Nike clothing can feel wrong to look at, but there’s something inherently fascinating about it, too. 19-year-old rapper Syringe is one of the first artists to successfully translate that feeling to music in a post-Geocities world.

From Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Syringe fills his social media accounts with pictures of his fist covered in cum and selfies sporting black lipstick and wearing high-heels. His scruffy appearance translates over to his music, with a variety of sounds sitting somewhere between Skinny Puppy’s most austere output and Future’s more melodic moments, albeit delivered in a more reckless and unsettlingly strange way.

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With some of his tracks bordering on deafening, and others possessing an unorthodox beauty, Syringe isn’t interested in cohesion. He’s been making music since he was 12, but he only recently adopted the alias of Syringe in an attempt to fully flesh out his scattered vision. With his sixth release of the year, HELLHORSE, Syringe is offering his best moodboard of material yet.

Despite some of his deliberately off-putting aspects, like a release titled Shuv These Colors Up Your Anus, and the disorienting opening track on HELLHORSE, Syringe’s intent isn’t to make inaccessible music. Burying some of his catchier melodies beneath an intense cacophony of noise one moment, and laying them bare the next, Syringe pulls and pushes his vehement antagonism and hatred until the lines between sonic onslaught and beauty blur.

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Perhaps one of the best examples of this intricate balancing act is the Blank Body-produced “Shoot The Party.” With its catchy but hard to follow hook, the song is an engaging blend of his two extremes. “Fuck off with that mess I’m tired of hiding / None that shit that poppin’ is exciting / Rather rob ya blind than seem inviting / Instead of fucking starving I’mma take all of it / Fuck that underrated I’d rather be hated now,” he raps at the start of the track.

Other tracks like “Teach You To Be Lonely” and “I Don’t Like You” force him to shift his anger towards apathy or even misery, with lines like, “Nothing to say, now wait for the hook and get out my way,” and, “Cut my fucking dick off and place it on your chin.” Rather than suppress his darkest thoughts, Syringe opts to put them on full display.

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So Syringe is a pretty severe name, what made you settle on that?

I actually started with another alias, though as time went on I started not fucking with it more and more. It always felt like I wasn’t expressing my ‘aggression’ to the fullest. Each song I made I was dropping nonsensical and euphemistic ass bars and shit, and it was super weird because I had so much more vile anger and energy in the past, so I always hated how it wasn’t matching in the songs I made back then.

So, last year I fucked around with a couple of nicknames I made up, and landed on Syringe. Looking up what it meant, eventually it clicked with me, like, ‘I plan to inject or implement or like introduce how I really feel about everything and my experiences,’ in a musical way or output. Plus I knew niggas wouldn’t call themselves a fuckin’ syringe, so it helps for the hard drug use assumptions as well.

Is there much of a scene in Sheboygan, Wisconsin if at all?

Nah lmfao. It [kinda] does, barely, but it’s very dated. I really like the city name, though, it’s very strange. The only places I like here is Milwaukee. They’re very experimental with the rapping and noisy shit, along with Wausau—the rappers seem to dress more gothic and shit which nobody really sees for real.

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Going through your output on SoundCloud, it would seem that HELLHORSE is your most aggressive release yet. What fueled its anger?

It’s really all the fucking rap niggers and nigglets that a) Attempt to sound like Eric North and myself without any real structure or interest, and b) Wear all these heavy metal and hard rock band tees walking around all proud and shit like they didn’t clown the niggas who wore and listened to that shit at school. Then have the audacity to get mad when asked, “What is your favorite song from that album on ya chest?”


Like fuck rap honestly we’re generating sonic brutality.

It’s a common topic that Eric, Blvc Svnd, and I discuss all the time. We’re all in the same collective, weirdclvn, so we talk about it all the time. That, and how annoying everything is now, with niggas on YouTube who aren’t even funny, rather cancerous, and the scene we’re surrounded by on SoundCloud on a daily basis.

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There are a lot of rappers on SoundCloud adopting this intense, shouted approach to outsider hip-hop, but yours features a strong emphasis on melody. Do you think it’s important to maintain a balance between ugliness and prettiness?

For sure, absolutely. At times I like to deafen everyone on purpose because I might be highly pissed one day, and sometimes I like to slip in a melody everyone will miss because it’s ridiculously catchy. It’s all in the balance.

You seem heavily into gothic and metal aesthetics, how would you say this has influenced your output?

For metal, I’m frankly new to it. Ghostie, who’s also in our collective, really put me on to a lot of the metal and music I like today. He and a friend of ours one night played a song from Rings of Saturn, and since then I felt like a missed out on years of shit that really struck me. I’m used to trap and all that boring shit so it was like a wave of fresh air.

From there I knew what I wanted to make and how, then later on I figured I needed to change my look, so I started looking at goth shit on tumblr, the fashion, some makeup, and I started integrating. I feel like this has definitely helped with the output, I feel more like an ‘Alternative Nigga’ now than ever. Like fuck rap honestly we’re generating sonic brutality.

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