Vomit Grinder: A master and his craft

Someone call the authorities! That poor child is not only being forced to wear track pants at an early age, she's also being subjected to seventh-rate pornogrind created by a man who wears pants so large they would have been mocked at a rave in 1995.

Man, you blink for only 20 years or so, and the entire pornogrind scene changes drastically. Back in my day, Traci Lords Loves Noise and early Meat Shits defined the sound of a musical movement that seemed unstoppable. Young upstarts, like Illinois' own Vaginal Dissection were making significant contributions through their endless flow of cassette releases.

Today, things have changed, and one primary outlet for this musical style is the medium known as the YouTube. All I have to say is, thank god for the YouTube. Today thanks to technology and the internet, we are brought inside the inner circle of pornogrind masters like Vomit Grinder, artists of the highest order who previously performed their craft in relative obscurity. No more. How many of us have said "Oh to have been a fly on the wall when Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto", I know I certainly have. Such longing is no longer warranted. Simply watch the videos below, and enjoy a rare insider's look at an artist and his craft.

Please note the tasteful decor which surrounds this musical genius as he works on his musical masterpieces. It appears as though he went to the Funeral Home Decoration Depot and simply said "I'll take it all". While the decor may not be groundbreaking to other trailer owners, the rest of us are left in an emotional state upon seeing such beauty. Like a fat American tourist who sees Versailles for the first time, it becomes clear that while such opulence is common for those who live in it, the rest of us are simply looking from the outside in.

Enjoy his oversized pants, his huge amp, and please note his creative solution for not having a mic stand. Oh, and one last thing, look closely in the second video, as you will surely see the muses that inspire this creative genius.

Metal Inquisition Archives: pencil renderings of metal bands (Part 2)

Here we see Angela Morales, of Emerson Middle School in Bakersfield California. Angela is one of the first students in Metal Inquisition's "Metal And Art For All" program, which teaches kids art through the works of established masters. In this picture, we see her copying my drawing of Slayer. Great job Angela! Keep it up!

This is part 2 of the "pencil renderings of metal bands" series. If you want more background about how/when/why a 10-11 year old version of me (and my brother) drew these monstrosities, read this first. For those of you that already know the background behind these masterpieces, enjoy.





After moving to the United States, I had a very tough time adjusting. I didn't know the language, got hassled endlessly in school because of my mullet, my sweatpants, my gold chains and my Brut cologne. In retrospect, I guess an 11 year old with gold chains and Brut cologne is pretty funny, but how was I supposed to know?

I remember sitting in the front seat of the bus the second week of school in the United States. Back home, I had been a pretty cool dude (perhaps as a result of my gold chains and cologne) but here in the States I was starting way down in the pecking order, and I knew that. School had become a hugely stressful affair, and I was merely trying to make it through each day without making a complete ass out of myself...which was hard since I didn't speak the language and clearly looked like a damn foreigner. That day on the bus, I sat in the first seat quietly, and put on my heaphones. I began to play Master Of Puppets, and sat there looking at the back of the fat bus driver's neck, which looked like a packet of hot dogs with all it's undulating rolls of lard. Suddenly I noticed someone sitting next to me, which had never happened in the week I had been at that school. I looked up, and it was a girl in a full cheerleader's uniform. Back in South America, our school had no cheerleaders, no school did...so seeing that girl wearing that outfit was as odd to me as seeing a real life cowboy or something. I took off my headphones because I realized she was speaking to me. Taking them off made no difference, I didn't speak a word of English. I looked intently at at her, trying to understand what she was saying. She was very pretty, and seemed unnecessarily friendly towards me. She moved in closer to me as she spoke, and began to smile. I was a bit freaked out by this, because it didn't feel right, something was up. I told her in Spanish, that I didn't understand what she was saying. When I spoke in Spanish, she burst out with laughter, and as soon as she did I was hit in the back of the head with something that felt like a baseball bat. I looked behind me, dazed, and saw one huge kid standing there with his fist still behind my head. Along with him was every other kid on the bus, they were all laughing maniacally at this majestic set up I had fallen for. I guess I had fallen for something, to this day I still don't fully understand what happened, what she said and why he hit me right at that moment. It was a pretty good introduction to what the first few years in this country would be like for me. I know what you're saying "wah wah...poor you". But see, I'm merely trying to explain to you how my move to this country went down, in order for you to understand why I suddenly began making these drawings again.

As a result of this tough transition after my family moving here, I often reverted to doing things that made me happy back in South America when I was a bit younger. After not having drawn bands for well over a year (which seemed like an eternity to me back then), I went back to drawing a lot, as well as building plastic models of cars. In retrospect, how did girls not love me back then? Nothing says "stud" like a dude who draws and builds models. Am I right ladies? Anyway, this was all an attempt to revert to an earlier time, and a way to seek some escape from what I felt (rightfully) was a pretty dreadful and stressful living situation. I have no training in psychiatry to back any of this up, but the last time I was in Vienna I visited Freud's apartment, which I feel gives me enough insight to make these claims.

This drawing comes from that time in my life. As you can see, I was somehow introduced to the concept of perspective. I would like to say that this came about due to my admiration of the work produced by Diego Velazquez, particularly his masterpiece Las Meninas. Even if that's not exactly the case (and it isn't), this drawing was just as important in my artistic development, and like Las Meninas, it will be studied by generations to come.



As you can tell by the shirts that the band is wearing (Obituary, Morgoth), my musical tastes had changed radically. This drawing was highly influenced by pictures of a Death studio report I saw in Metal Maniacs, including shots of Scott Burns relaxing behind the board. It was also highly influenced by the pictures on the back of the Terrorizer album, which showed band members (Oscar Garcia in particular) using huge headphones as they recorded. As such, this would be a depiction of a made up death metal band recording at Morrisound. The name of the band, by the way, was Abnegation. I picked out the name from a dictionary, not knowing that an actual band would later use the name. As you'll see in future posts, I drew this band many times...but this is the only depiction of them in the studio.

Please note:
- Plexiglass surrounding the drumset. Something I had seen on Saturday Night Live in order for the drum's sound to not bleed into other microphones.

- Check out the portable little tables that the guitar player's headphones hook up to. This is also from the Death studio report. One picture in particular featured such a table, which in reality was probably just a music stand.

- Classy track lighting at Morrisound Studios

- The logos on the bass drums are covered with tape, something I had seen in an old issue of Metal Hammer. It was King Diamond's drummer that had done this, probably because he was forced to play a drumset made by someone other than his official sponsor at a fest. You'll see this as a reocurring theme.

- Vocalist in the booth is wearing one of those Scum shirts that Barney always wore back then. Was that a club in England or something? I don't even know.

- Bass player is very clearly based on Frank Watkins, but his pose (sitting calmly while rocking the fuck out) is probably taken from Metallica's epic "Nothing Else Matters" video, which shows Jason wearing those rapist glasses that make him look like a Greyhound bus, as he plays sitting down. I always thought it was funny that, although he was sitting down, he felt it was necessary to use a strap that basically looked a damn sleeping bag.









This one is a collaboration. Actually, it's pretty much all drawn by my brother except for the drumset. Wow, where do I start. You see, back in 1988 my brother and I started a "band". Why do I put the word "band" in quotes? Because we didn't own any instruments, didn't know how to play any instruments, and we were basically little kids pretending. Still, after having heard The Exploited, we figured it wouldn't be too hard to play music and put out an album. Much like other kids play house, we played band. Along for the ride came my friend Alejandro, he was our guitar player. The extent of the band was the fact that we once played along to a bunch of Maiden and Alice Cooper songs for my family to watch. This is insanely embarrassing, but painfully true. It took us about a week to prepare for it, and we put fliers up all over the house. We prepared lighting, and made a drumset out of pillows from the couch. I was the drummer, and under me, pointing up, was one of those super hot red light bulbs intended for muscle pain. My brother's bass guitar was made out of cardboard and my dad's old T-square. Luckily, only days before our big concert, Alejandro's dad actually bought him a real guitar. So there we were, in our family room pretending to play along to the music on the stereo....with my parents and my sister watching. In front of us was a Union Jack flag that my brother made as his batik project in art class. In my last trip back to the old country, I sat around with my friend Alejandro and laughed about these memories until we cried. The whole thing was absolutely insane. Along with this concert, we also made an album cover, which my brother drew with color pencils on white cardstock. We even took one of my mom's Donna Summer albums, and covered the center label with one of ours. We came up with a bunch of song names, and eventually tried to record a couple of them with my dad's stereo. The songs that were recorded were "Huecos" (which translates to "holes") and Brain Putrefaction. Yes, the last song was in English. If you're going to ask if tapes of these songs exist, I have to tell you (sadly) that they don't. The recording session amounted to my brother's Casio keyboard providing a shuffle beat, and my brother merely singing the lyrics into a pair of headphones. Since I was the drummer, I was allowed by my brother to hit the "fill" button, which made the keyboard to this absolutely awful shuffle drum fill. "Huecos, huecos para esconderte...huecos, huecossss" was the song's chorus. In case you're wondering, this means "holes, holes for you to hide in, holes holes....." I know, it makes no sense. This is yet another topic that will need an entire post to really get into. Particularly because my brother has digital pictures of the album's cover, which Alejandro still has. Anyway, the drawing above is a fictitious concert from our fictitious band. My brother is on bass, Alejandro on guitar, me on drums.

Please note:

- Backdrop behind the band says "The Nightmare". Maybe there was other Nightmares around and we wanted to let everyone know that we were THE Nightmare?

- The date on the backdrop states that the tour was in 1999. I guess this is what we dreamed we'd be doing in 1999. Boy were we wrong.

- My brother (on bass) is wearing Haro pants? We didn't really ride BMX or anything...but we did share a knock-off Mongoose bike, which I pretended to ride the Tour De France in every summer....so the Haro pants are a bit of a mystery to me. Maybe he can clarify.

- The double cross symbol on my brother's shirt (and the "just die") message were like his signature. The symbol on the center bass drum was my symbol. This, I think, the idea for these symbols came from a bunch of places. The most important source would have to be the signature/symbol that was in all Maiden covers (the little circle with the arrow pointing down which was artist Derek Riggs' signature), as well as maybe Led Zeppelin's Runes album...although we weren't Zeppelin fans.

- Logos on the bass drum are covered up, since the drumset I was playing was not supplied by my official sponsor..and I didn't want to get in trouble for playing a different kit.

- Alejandro's boots say "Kiss", as he was a huge Kiss fan. Aside from being into metal, he was also into a lot of 60s music...hence the peace sign.





When I first saw Slayer's performance in the Ultimate Revenge video, back in 1988, I was floored. The music sounded nuts, the solos were noisy and almost painful. The image must have stuck with me, because I went on to draw it a few times over. This is perhaps the better of the Slayer pieces. If you're familiar with that video, you probably remember their outfits and instruments. I'm happy to say that I got most of it pretty damn right. Kerry King's outfit, and partially burned guitar are correct (even if the shape of the guitar is off.) Araya's shirt is spot on, as are Jeff's guitar (including the little chains all over it.) and leather jacket. I did miss the Agnostic Front shirt, and Jeff's hair is dark...but hey...not bad. Also, I'm not sure why I chose ADA as a brand name for amps. This was either me getting confused with DOD pedals, or a result of having seen a commercial for ADA security systems.

Please note:

- Kerry's pedal

- Uncut guitar strings

- Araya's face is as large and round as a flour tortilla, so it's pretty accurate.

- Lombardo just hit one of his cymbals, and it's still moving as a result. Damn, I had mad art skills.





There are many more drawings to go. Maybe way too many to post them all. Still, I'll probably do a couple more posts in the next few weeks, culminating with the grand opening of our online store, which will feature lithographs of these pieces, signed and numbered by yours truly. Not really...but hey...we can all dream.

Great moments in art history: Black Metal paintings

Here we see curators hanging one of these priceless pieces of art at the Louvre.

As much as my writings for this blog have been hailed by critics as being both groundbreaking AND insightful, I know that all the praise could easily dissipate as a result of one bad post. My internet fame could collapse like a house of cards that gets knocked over by the seismic activity created by Shane Embury walking nearby. Why bring this up? Because I'm sometimes afraid of posting something that the entire M.I. readership has already seen elsewhere. This, by the way, is very possible, since I'm rather disconnected from most metal activities online. This is a particular concern of mine when it comes to anything relating to black metal. Look, I know and understand that black metal and making fun of it is old news. You see, whereas in other households the phrase "like taking candy from a baby" is often used, in my house we say "like making fun of black metal."

Having said this, I simply felt I had to share this amazing artwork with all of you, even if some have already seen it. Under each painting I will give my critique.



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A challenging piece for the viewer to take in, to say the least. The terracotta tones (perhaps an homage to postmodernist architect Michael Graves?) ground the figures, while their scale clue us into the artists take on the subject matter. Not since Andy Warhol's erotic films have homosexual characters been depicted in such a manner.

Not content to merely use traditional symmetry as a way of creating balance, the artist has opted for the asymmetry common in modern art, as well as modern architecture. The quality of the facial features shows us that we are looking at true outsider art, perhaps the work of a retarded person, a monkey, or a homeless man...or Danny Spitz and his googly eye. Reminiscent of Mies Van Der Rohe's early floorplans, the characters slide past each other, much like walls did in his Barcelona Pavillion. Somewhere between abstraction and respresentational painting, this piece not only challenges, but also shatters pre-existing notions about art and artistic depiction. Had this guy been around when Demolition Hammer was putting out their first album, he totally would have gotten the comission.


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Much like Franz Kline's seemingly brute black and white canvasses, this piece speaks not only to our humanity, but also to our brutality. The duality of the black and white brushstrokes seem to hint at the hidden characteristics of the music it speaks of, while connecting with the viewer at a visceral level. The laughable proportions, lack of chin and asymmetric visage may seem erroneous, but are in reality a statement about man's inhumanity to man....or perhaps the artist needs glasses. One is also left to wonder "why are his nostrils so damn small?" The artists is taking a gutsy approach (to say the least) in specializing in portraiture, when he clearly has severe problems sizing up even the simplest of human features, but is that not the same for most black metal bands? They can't play their instruments, and yet they go on playing. Go figure.

This piece also has a slight connection to Demolition Hammer. How you ask? Does the angle of the face look familiar? Just look at the image below, which clearly served as inspiration.







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Exaggerated proportions and interesting brush technique speak to varying visual references, primarily the later work of Andrew Wyeth, as well as more banal visuals...such as the runny quality of a drunken hobo's diarrhea. The wispy quality of the brushstrokes is clearly influenced by Wyeth's work, and his depiction of prairie grass in his haunting masterpiece "Christina's World." Perhaps serving as a statment about the childlike nature of black metal's musical complexity, this portrait features the nose of a baby, thus layering meaning within the painting.






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Drawing upon visual cues from different areas of design and artistic expression, this piece is perhaps the artist's strongest statement. Not content merely making visual references to the work of assorted modern masters, the artist goes one step beyond and references the unlikely world of automotive design. Clearly influenced by the work of designer Chris Bangle (the rear of the BMW 5 series in particular) the subject's features seem to converge onto a single point...as though he has just eaten a very sour lemon. The extremely short length of the subject's chain is also worth mentioning, as it looks more like a choker from the Delia's catalog circa 1996.

Although much of Chris Bangle's work for BMW has been criticized, his impact on automotive design is undeniable...much like Possessed's album Seven Churches.

Another possible use of allegory by the artist is the repetition of the upside down cross. What is he trying to tell us? Perhaps it's a simple reference to the recurring pitchfork shape that is clearly seen in Grant Wood's "American Gothic."

Note the pitchfork shape, which is repeated both in the overall's pocket, as well as upside down in the top window of the house.

Moving Sale - Everything must go... into storage.

Ah!! It's good to be back! This is my first post since 9/24/08. As some of you may know my life has been a total pile of dog shit since. As we have said many times before, MI staffers are reluctant to reveal too much our personal lives, but I'm gonna make an exception and tell you that my wife fucking left me. The details aren't important, but what matters here is that we are selling our place and I have to move out. I'm selling a lot of my stuff, but not all. I have no idea what shithole in Bed-Stuy I'm gonna end up into, so I'm moving what I'm not selling into storage. As I'm packing, I'll share with you a few things I run into that may be of interest to our readers. Today: some awesome T-shirts.

Crappy art by Stevo

It's no secret I love Impetigo. You can read about my obsession on this post from last year. This sweet Impetigo T-shirt was given to me as a gift by Richard C. of Wild Rags himself, outside the Eagles Auditorium in Milwaukee, WI on July 30th, 1993. It serves as the only piece of hard evidence and proof that I was present during Impetigo's good bye show later that evening. I also wore this T-shirt proudly as we visited Jeffrey Dahmer's place the next day. I was wearing an Impetigo shirt as I stood in front of apartment 213.





This is one of my favorite T-shirts ever. It's pretty bizarre. I traded this shirt with this guy I knew named Brian. I can't remember what I gave him for it, but I know he got ripped off. This shirt is the cat's pajamas! I've only worn this tee a handful of times, since acquiring it in '92. It's spent most of the last 10 years in a plastic bag as demonstrated by its wrinkled appearance. The art is not by Stevo, as Impetigo shirts usually displayed, but it's just as shitty. It looks like it was hand done, not silk screened and the back glows in the dark. That's fucking right bitches, I have an Impetigo shirt that glows in the motherfucking dark. That's how I roll, son!




Kreator 1993 Coma of Souls tour T-shirt. I think the sleeves were removed a few years after that. Not much to say about this one, really. Just that, as you can see, this shirt has been washed a shitload of times and it's so wide it can only be worn by George Costanza.





I don't know WTF I was thinking. Why did I cut the sleeves off on all these T-shirts? I weighed 117lbs up until 1999. My arms were the size of toothpicks, yet I felt my tiny guns needed to be displayed?



This is my favorite T-shirt of this bunch. If I remember correctly, I got this classic tee at a comic book store in Miami. My friend Camilo was waiting just outside in his white Grand Am. I grabbed the thing off the rack and bailed. I wore it at least twice a week since the summer of 1991 until 1998 or so. I'm wearing it in half of our band photos during that time. Many of the scars on the tee are pretty fucking metal, too. A few of the rips came in the pit and all the small holes at the bottom are from the spikes on my belt. The big chunk missing from the bottom happened after a patch I had sown to cover another hole, ripped off during a show in Dee-troit.

Once again, the sleeves were removed at some point. This time, the sleeves ripped and I've had this safety pin holding the thing together for years. I actually still wear this thing once in a while. I usually wear a Harmony Corruption long sleeve under it.

There's a whole box of these things. Every one of them filled with memories and stories.

Alright, like I said, it's good to be back and I hope to get back in the groove and start posting regularly again. Thanks to all the fans that cared enough to realize I hadn't been around. You all need to get a life. Stay metal.

Kane Roberts: Renaissance Man Extraordinaire

Are you shitting me? I could (and maybe should) do a whole post on this cover. Did you notice the 'KANE' letters are on fire? They are on fire, man! And the helicopter is obviously looking for him 'cuz everyone knows it's illegal to attach bottle caps to your leather pants.

Well, Kane Roberts is the infamous Alice Cooper axe-man better known as "The douche with the machine-gun guitar who tries to look like Rambo." What most may not know is that Kane (real name Robert William) is a multi-talented Renaissance Man. This fucker is also an artist AND a video game designer! I hate "video game designers." There's something about that title that enrages me. I'm not sure what it is... maybe the fact that 80% of the people who claim to be "video game designers" are just fat losers waiting to die from a diabetic seizure induced by an over consumption of Jolt Cola, who think they are better than everyone in their on-line community 'cuz they can write 3 lines of code in their 'puter in their parents basement and read an on-line tutorial on texture mapping. (I know that was a run-on sentence, but it's OK 'cuz it's a pretty bad-ass diatribe). OK, back to Kane: His "art" is illustrated below. It's SO FUCKING TERRIBLE, I don't know where to start, so I'll make no comment and let the images "speak for themselves." Try not to choke on your saliva when LOLing.




Here's a few other images I came across during the research phase of the post:

Alice: "I hate you, Mom.. I'll kill you!" - Kane: "Me have big biceps."

The lamest/awesomest guitar store in the world. Is that a guitar in the shape of a priest in the back?

Teens in Sweden LOVE a buff dude with feather earrings and Sigourney Weaver doo. Seriously, do you know how much fresh poon I got in Uppsala last time I was there