Based in Edmonton, Canada, RCMPatches is a company dedicated to producing merch for a broad variety of Metal/Rock ventures. Its mission is to help artists and businesses to offer their fans high-quality products. In the following interview, one of RCMP's founders talks about the company's maneuvers.
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| RCMPatches' logo, desgined by Michal Proninski. |
What motivated you to start a project like RCMPatches?
RCMPatches: RCMPatches was bred out of the desire to work in conjunction with bands I loved in an official capacity, to offer an alternative means of income for those bands, as well as hopefully helping people to discover new music that they may not have otherwise heard. At the end of the day, it's obviously nice to sell patches so I can make more, but if someone discovers a band that impacts them in a special way, that's what my goal truly is.
There are a lot of bootleg merchants out there and while I understand the value and the history behind bootlegs (live records, demos, merchandise, etc.) it's just not something I was personally interested in. For me, it meant a lot more to get a message back from a band I loved giving me the thumbs up to produce a design or a piece of merch and sharing that excitement with me than to just produce whatever I wanted. That also seemed rather lazy and too easy to me...it was always more satisfying to put in the effort and patience and then get approval from heroes of mine. I started in 2023 and have worked with pioneering legends of the death metal scene as well as up and coming legends in the making, and beyond that, I've built relationships and am grateful and honored to call many of these people my friends now. You don't get that just by bootlegging everybody's shit. I have nothing really against bootleg merchants at the end of the day, it just was not the avenue I wanted to take.
It seems that your signature products are patches. Can you describe the process of creating a patch?
RCMPatches: The process really can take many different directions, but usually I'll develop a mockup of a design using some piece of artwork in the bands catalog, be it from albums, singles, t-shirts, or even old posters. A Possessed one I did in particular was taken from a design done for one tour in Europe, I believe it was 2019, and I used bits and pieces from that to create something new that hadn't been done before.
Other times, I've hired artists independently or worked with bands to hire artists to commission a piece that's used for a patch design. Although not exclusive, they're usually drawn from the start with the intent of becoming a patch. We've worked with many artists in the scene including Gruesome Graphx, Claw Eight and Michal Proninski. I've also commissioned artwork for patches without having had communication with the band, just so I had something unique to present them, which given my principle of only working officially with the bands, really becomes a gamble. If I don't make it through to them, it ultimately becomes a dead piece of artwork. I don't really mind in the end since it's ultimately commissioning an artist anyways, so the scene still gets some support at the end of the day. That really means the most to me. I'll forever be grateful to get to work with such talented individuals and to get to be a part of this community.
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| Some of the patches produced by RCMPatches. |
Do you also produce any other kinds of merchandise?
RCMPatches: We have branched off into many different types of merchandise. I think, even if it wasn't a conscious thought or trajectory, it was always going to be a natural progression of things to produce different forms of merchandise and physical media.
We've since done limited runs of t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, all over print shirts, basketball jerseys, flags, lanyards, pins, unconventional things like fuzzy dice (which nobody seems to know were a thing, I guess? Haha) CDs, cassette tapes. Most recently, I worked with a killer band called Bonginator that surrounded the release of their latest album "Retrodeath" (featuring art by the amazingly talented Dan Goldsworthy and out now on Testimony Records) that consisted of 80s themed windbreakers, hats, fanny packs, and pit viper glasses.
If a band wants something done, I will always do my best to find a way to bring an idea to reality. It's my favorite thing to do, especially when people tell me, "It can't be done."
Despite being a Canadian company, you are an international business. You receive orders from all over the world.
RCMPatches: We ship worldwide and have worked with bands worldwide as well. It's still surreal to me, having grown up in a small town of maybe 100 people and one main road, that people from Cyprus or Japan are ordering patches from me. I get a lot of customers from the UK as well which is really cool. It just goes to show you that Metal is a universal language that breaks down borders and division, and that transcendence of traditional language and thought is something truly beautiful.
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| RCMPatches and the band, Satorum, sponsored part of the bookmarks for the new book "...And Justice For Art: Stories About Heavy Metal Album Covers - Ultimate Edition." |
You also distribute physical records by underground Metal bands. Tell us more about it.
RCMPatches: I've been an avid collector, fan, and supporter of physical media ever since I was a kid. It's truly an honor to get to work with bands now to bring those pieces of physical media to life. Right now, I've only released around 15 pieces between CDs and cassette tapes myself, although I carry hundreds of titles in my distro store (some of which I'm still working through uploading to the store). It's really insane to me, for example, to get to work with a band like Tenebro based all the way in Italy, but it really is the best feeling when I get to work with a band in my local scene of Edmonton. I look forward to eventually releasing an Edmonton collaboration tape that showcases what our city has to offer for metal. The scene here is absolutely blossoming with insane talent and musicianship that people need to hear.
I've created a branch off of RCMPatches called Sputum Records and that's where most of my releases will be done through moving forward. I felt that many people who buy physical media don't care about patches, and lots of people who buy patches just want patches. It also sounds a bit better on a CD release to have "Sputum Records" as opposed to a patch company name. On an artistic note, both logos for RCMPatches and Sputum Records were done by Michal Proninski.
How can bands and artists contact you to produce merch or distribute music?
RCMPatches: I do have a contact form on my website, www.rcmpatches.com, but bands can hit me up on Instagram or via email at contact@rcmpatches.com. Facebook is a bot ridden cesshole, so chances are if you message me there, I won't ever open it.
Any final comments?
RCMPatches: Support Death Metal, support your local scene, go to a show and mosh hard.
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