So I went to the MoCCA art festival this past Sunday, and bought all kinds of stuff. It was great. I wish it happened more than once per year.

One of several highlights for me was all of the attention I garnered for wearing my Immortal t-shirt. I had the pleasure of having probably 7 or 8 different people throw comments at me like “That shirt is fucking badass” and “You look badass” and “Your ass is BAD” etc. etc. One such admirer pointed me in the direction of a table (AW Illustration I believe …) that had a comic I might be interested in.

I picked up the above comic, “True Tales Ov Black Metal” and had a hilarious several minutes of a laugh. There are references to Mayhem, Immortal (YAY), and Norway in general. I’d scan that whole thing and post it, but that’s probably not nice.

Check out A Warner’s blog at http://aw-illustration.blogspot.com/. There is some black metal artwork there, among other awesome things.

19 for the age of Nazi/Heathen/Singer/Murderer/Nut Varg Vikernes when he joined metal band Mayhem (where he was known as Count Grishnackh). About a year before he decided to burn down churches and murder fellow guitarist Euronymous (and then allegedly eat some of his brain).

Varg paved the way for depressed Scandanavian youth to express their emotions and feelings through awful avenues, and is a shining example of what happens when one lives in their grandmother’s basement for too long.

My favorite Varg moment has to be when he tried to escape prison in a stolen car. Good going.

One of my favorite books was the Lords of Chaos, which probably references Varg and Mayhem/Burzum more than any other character/band. There’s a movie version coming out as well, which should feature some interesting conversation with the released Vikernes.

If there are two things Vincent and I enjoy, they are Halloween and Metal.  So it goes that right here and now am inventing a new sub genre of metal called Halloween Metal.  This will be the first of several posts about bands that bridge the gap between vanilla metal and horror metal.  Let me explain.

Lamb of God is metal as shit, but they don’t necessarily espouse thoughts of zombies crawling the earth or decapitation via chainsaw etc. 

On the other end of the spectrum lay bands like GWAR or Mayhem, who bring the blood and guts and costumes right on stage with them and make horror a part of their persona.  Good in their own right, but you need to be in the right frame of mind to listen to and enjoy that.

Then, you have the bands who through their imagery/logo/cover art/tone/overall sound atmosphere generate a dark and sinister image in your head.  You know, something not too sinister, but something that will make you smile and recall scenes from Army of Darkness or the feeling you had creeping around during Halloween as a kid, maybe riding around town stealing street signs or egging the mayor’s house.

At the same time, you want to punch the next person in the face who walks by.  It’s the best of both worlds!

I think this feeling is something one immediately associates themselves with, or thinks is absolutely insane.  I am of the former, and I hope you are too.

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