B i o g r a p h y

Skarpretter is a DIY fucking punk band that was formed in the autumn of 2004 in Ungdomshuset and consists of 5 misfits of dubious character.

Were been lucky enough to go some far away and great places with the band so far, and have had the opportunity to meet some fucking cool punx from Minsk to Romania to Beograd, people we hope to see again (there, you're been warned).

We are all, as mentioned above, from the scene around Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen. The house, which had existed as a DIY nerve center since 1982 seized to exist on the 1st of March this year, when it was evicted by police, supported by the Danish military. The house was defended for almost an hour before the cops overpowered the last of the people there. In the following days Denmark witnessed heavy riots, with more than 900 people arrested and more than 200 imprisoned. On the 5th of March Ungdomshuset was torn down and today there's only an empty ground where our house once was.

It is very hard to explain how much Ungdomshuset meant to us and how important it has been to the Danish punk scene. We wouldn't have had the chance of playing music if it wasn't for that house, most likely, most of us would have never even met each other.

The bastards in power have once again destroyed something they did not understand; something that didn't fit in the world of profit and greed. Fuck them, fuck their system, Ungdomshuset will never be forgotten, or their deeds forgiven.

Skarpretter is a middle-age word, meaning an official of the state appointed to carry out death sentences. The skarpretter usually only carried out death-sentences and only by chopping the head of his victims. This official of state would be considered master of his trade when he could chop of the head of his victims with one hew of his axe.
Today the word is antique, and rarely used, but in reality, the state still has executioners on its payroll: from cops and judges to the doctors of the criminal psychiatric wards. The state still legally murders those who cannot or will not fit in. Not with a chop of an axe, but with drugs, years imprisonment in total isolation and the extreme and endorsed violence of its watchdogs, the police.