Leslie Ripp

Leslie Ripp is an American musician, composer, rock/metal/blues guitarist, from Honolulu, Hawaii.

Today Leslie still makes the island paradise his home.

1982 Leslie met guitarist/singer Tom Azevedo, and formed the metal band Rat Attack. Rat Attack would be Leslie’s first experience at composing original music and the first band that would be dedicated to playing only originals.

1983, with the addition of Paul Schofield on drums and Marc Chambers on bass, the band self-produced, and released a demo album cassette titled Rat Attack, which included eight original songs written and recorded exclusively by the band.

The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered, at Rendez-Vous Recording, a popular local studio owned and engineered by Pierre Grill.

The album was distributed to several local and mainland radio stations, and quickly gained popularity and developed a following with the metal scene of the 80's.

Rat Attack was unfortunately short lived, and split up shortly after.

Surprisingly to this day, the album is well recognized as a cult metal classic, and is still gaining a lot of new fans and followers world wide. The album was re-released in 1995 - Old Metal Records, 2018 - Sonic Age Records, 2022 - Headsplit Records.

Today, original Rat attack cassettes are extremely rare and highly sought after collectors’ items. Leslie has claimed that even he doesn’t own one himself.

RAT ATTACK left to right: Paul Schofield (drums) | Leslie Ripp (guitars) | Tom Azevedo (vocals, guitars) | Marc Chambers (bass)

Currently, Leslie has been busy recording solo projects and has self-produced and self-released a series of albums, all featuring original, instrumental, rock/metal/blues tracks, showcasing his unique guitar playing style and sound. Leslie credits his own playing style as being influenced by guitar legends including: Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker, Steve Vai, Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen, Jimmy Page, and Carlos Santana, to name a few.