New Track from Upcoming Album Osborne is a Fierce Reckoning with Addiction, Big Pharma, and Recovery
With blistering lyrics and a growling rhythm section that calls to mind the fury of early Sabbath and the urgency of punk protest, Milwaukee singer-songwriter Trapper Schoepp releases his most confrontational single yet: “Satan is Real (Satan is a Sackler),” available now on all streaming platforms. The song is the latest release from Osborne, Schoepp’s forthcoming full-length album due September 19, 2025 — a concept record chronicling his personal journey through addiction and recovery.
“Satan is Real (Satan is a Sackler)” is Trapper Schoepp at his most confrontational — a searing indictment of the pharmaceutical industry and its role in the opioid epidemic. The track takes direct aim at the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, whose aggressive marketing of OxyContin in the early 2000s helped fuel a national wave of addiction and loss.
“They blame it on a pusher / They blame it on a cracker / But I know the truth / So I blame it on a Sackler / Took Valium not to feel / And Oxy to distract her / Satan is real, Satan is a Sackler.”
After nearly a decade of dependency on prescription painkillers stemming from multiple spinal surgeries, Schoepp entered the Hazelden Betty Ford Center near his Minnesota hometown in 2024. He was placed in the Osborne unit — a rehab wing with an accidental but poetic nod to Ozzy Osbourne. What followed, he says, was “an exorcism of my demons,” channeled directly into the songs that would become Osborne.
Today’s release arrives in the shadow of the recent $7.4 billion settlement for the Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis — an important milestone in accountability, but a fraction of the pain left behind. “As someone who’s been caught in the crossfire of treating chronic back pain with prescription painkillers, I wrote this song to stand alongside the victims, survivors, and families affected by their actions — and by the system that enabled them,” Schoepp says.
"Satan is Real" captures the righteous anger that sits at the heart of Osborne — a project that fuses personal experience with larger cultural reckoning. “This song is my response to the rage I felt looking back at how I — and millions of others — ended up in the crosshairs of a medical system that didn’t protect us,” Schoepp says.
Produced by Mike Viola (Andrew Bird, Jenny Lewis) and Tyler Chester (Madison Cunningham, Jackson Browne), Osborne trades in the Americana-leaning roots of Schoepp’s earlier albums for a darker, bolder sound — with influences ranging from Black Sabbath to Suicide to Springsteen. Much of the album was recorded live to tape in a California church basement just a month after Schoepp completed treatment.
Though the subject matter is heavy, Schoepp balances ferocity with moments of dark humor, melodic finesse, and bursts of art-pop experimentation. He’s previously earned acclaim for his storytelling, including a rare co-write with Bob Dylan on the 2019 song, “On, Wisconsin.” As No Depression once noted, “Schoepp is ultimately a storyteller deeply rooted in folk music… his songs connect to the past, yet breathe freshness into the present.”
Now, with Osborneand its searing lead tracks like “Satan is Real,” Schoepp adds his voice to a new kind of American folk tradition — one that confronts addiction, corporate greed, and redemption with open eyes and unapologetic guitars.