Halloween Bonus: Zombie Pinup

Back in September I posted Little Dead Riding Hood, courtesy of Amy, who I met in Penn Station.

Amy has a new tattoo, which she generously shared:


It's a zombie pin-up girl, and appropriate for the holiday today.

Like the previous piece, this was created by T.J. Mcinnis at Mcinnis Tattoo Company in Providence, Rhode Island.

Thanks again to Amy for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Have a safe and ghoulishly fun Halloween!

If it wasn't...it is now!

HA.

For those not in the know, this is the lovely Audrina Partridge, from MTV's The Hills.

Shiri's Logos

"Excuse me," I called, loudly, on the 34th Street train platform, "Can I ask you about your tattoo?"

Anyone reading this who has been featured here may recognize this as my opening salvo. Most people are open to my questions. Very few dismiss me. For this I am thankful.

Shira was the woman to whom I was speaking, and she was very welcoming to my inquiries.

Here is the best of the many tattoos I saw she had:


It's a fairly intricate (and extremely well-done) replica for one of the album designs for a band named Sponge. Shiri had a matching t-shirt, but taking a picture of that would have been borderline creepy, in my opinion. Unfortunately, the only image online I could find was small:


On her left arm she had two other band designs:


The one on the right is from the group Gogol Bordello, which surprised me as I had seen a similar tattoo several weeks before (and recounted here).


The logo on the left was from a group called Spookey Ruben.

Obviously, Shiri is a big fan of all these groups. The tattoos were all inked by her brother Ron.

You can see other band-related tattoos by clicking on the appropriate tag at the bottom of the post.

Thanks to Shiri for sharing her cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

"You Gotta Go There to Come Back": Sarah Shares Three Tattoos

Sarah's half-sleeve jumped out at me in Penn Station as I was quietly bemoaning cooler weather and the dwindling of my blog backlog.

I was pleased to find Sarah more than accommodating, as she shared several perspectives of the ink tattooed on her upper right arm.

Visiting from Newcastle, Australia, her tattoos revolved around this piece at the center of her bicep:


I asked if there was any significance to these two women, but Sarah noted that they were just two pretty girls.

This fluid script is on the outside of her arm:


It states "You gotta go there to come back..." or, in her words, you have to "understand how shitty it can be, before how good it can get".

On her inner arm is the following tattoo:


Sarah says that this design of an angel on a cigarette break is based on the work of a popular London graffiti artist named "Banksy".


All of her work was done by Pat, the owner of 2012 Tattoo Studio in Newcastle.

Thanks very much to Sarah for sharing her incredible tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Hang the DJ

I met Rohan on a Brooklyn-bound A train.

He has "thirteen or fourteen" tattoos, and he offered up this one from his right arm:


The phrase "Hang the DJ" refers to lyrics sung by Morrissey when he was with The Smiths.

I was only on the train with him for two stops, so I didn't get a full explanation of the tattoo until later, when Rohan e-mailed me:

I got this tattoo for several reasons - first and foremost I love The Smiths and their music changed the way I viewed myself against the social and cultural backdrop that we're all in. I thought a jukebox with the lyrics "Hang the DJ", the refrain from the song "Panic", was ironic.


The jukebox is what allows all of us to be the DJ and in "Panic", Morrissey is singing about how the music the DJ is playing means nothing to him and his life, and I share that sentiment with most of what I hear. The tattoo is sort of an encapsulation of how I feel about rock and roll and how certain bands and certain songs can, when they're really good and really honest, mean a lot more than just entertainment value.

The tattoo was inked by Dusty Neal in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is currently working at Donny Manco's New Republic Tattoo.

UPDATE: I exchange a few e-mails with the artist Dusty Neal after this posted and he remembered doing this tattoo very early on in his career as an artist. He wanted me to clarify this point, and to communicate that he feels that his art has developed to the point that this piece does not best represent his work as a tattooer. A look at photos of his work on MySpace here certainly showcases some amazing tattoos. Dusty encourages people to check out his current endeavors and, with all due respect to Rohan and the tattoo in this post, judge his talents based on what he has done more recently, and not early on in his career.

Thanks again to Rohan for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

As a little bonus, here is the video from "Panic" by the Smiths:

Benjamin's Amazing Viking-Geisha Sleeve by Tim Kern

Please join me as I extend a metaphor.

I approach inkblogging as if I were one of those guys that goes out on the beach with a metal detector.

You find a lot of interesting stuff and, every once in a while, you find treasure.

Earlier this month, I saw a man in front of Madison Square Garden walking south. I was headed in the opposite direction and, despite my general reluctance to post sleeves here (I wonder if I can even do them justice), I stopped and asked him to show me the amazing work on his right arm.

I should also preface this by acknowledging how awesome it is to randomly find work by a tattoo artist who is at the top of his game, and is a recognized talent in the tattoo community.

Benjamin, the guy I stopped, was visiting New York from Denmark to see his artist, Tim Kern at Tribulation Tattoo. He was in town to begin work on a new sleeve. Benjamin happily shared his first sleeve:


Benjamin summarized the theme of his arm by stating that life is about choices. The two extrmes are, you can take a life, as represented by the Viking warrior at the top of the shoulder:


This is juxtaposed by the geisha who is taking her own life through ritual suicide:


The detail of the blood-spattered hand holding the seppuku blade is fascinating in its stark grisliness:


The sleeve also includes stunning waterfall and pagoda elements on the inside of the arm:


I especially appreciate the beauty and shading of the pagoda:


The color and artistry of this entire sleeve are astonishing and we are honored that Benjamin consented to contributing this work to Tattoosday.

We thank him and the artist Tim Kern for their work!

Blow Out

(World Painted Blood has leaked)

M: SLAYER Frontman Blows Out Voice Prior To Melbourne Concert; Show Goes On - olllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllld man araya

J: tom obv tried to sing antichrist from SNM and blew his voice.
awesome :D

M: i know, LULZ all round. so much for all those people who go on about slayer still kicking ass :D

J: yeah, their mighty singer can't fucking sing.

M: :D

J: srsly, it's a cop out that they've pulled this, tom can still play bass - kerry or jeff should sing, it's not that hard to sing slayer songs!
andreas sung for sepultura when max pulled out of a gig, fuck these pussies!

M: true dat, or get help - jonathan davis didn't play with korn and they just got loads of other people to help - i'm sure there must have been someone there that could have done it. all you have to do is shout angel of death over and over again and no-one would notice the difference

J: kerry could have sung, since all he does is boring rhythm, it would have made the gig special, but instead they pussied out
fuck slayer

M: also true, i love the fact that i saw korn with all the different people (even if it does mean i've never seen a complete korn line up) and i'd cut off my leg to have seen joey play drums for metallica!

J: james never pussied out when he couldn't play guitar :)

M: and he'd been set on fire :O

Maggie, a Fan of Pink, Shares Some Ink

One of the pluses of working near Madison Square Garden is that concert-goers and fans are always about.

Occasionally, they can be found camped out near the artists' entrance on 33rd Street. The presence of fans milling about can often be great opportunities to spot tattoos, as in this case, previously.

Earlier this month, I chatted with some Pink fans out on the street and one of them, Maggie, shared her tattoos:


Maggie has nine tattoos in all, and these represent four of them.

She seemed surprised that I was interested, more so because there weren't typical "stories" behind the art.

The top piece is a tribute to her mother,

and the heart, the bands, and the angel wing are just elements she felt like adding.

I particularly like the free form of the heart design.


All work was done at Tattoo Heaven in Manhattan.

Thanks to Maggie for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Joe's Tribute to His Uncle

I spotted Joe earlier this month outside of Penn Station. He has seven or eight tattoos, and chose to share this one from his right forearm:


Joe explained that this piece is a tribute to an uncle who had passed away. He had served proudly in the United States Marine Corps and had had a skull tattoo upon which was perched a top hat.

Joe collaborated with the artist, Pepe, at The Tattoo Shop in Medford, New York, to take that idea and customize it for Joe's arm. Another tattoo from the shop appeared earlier this week here.

The whole thing took about three and a half hours to complete.

Thanks to Joe for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Carmelita

A quick youtube search shows me that Warren Zevon's song Carmelita is a pretty popular one to cover.

One of the most notorious musicians to try their hand at it was GG Allin:

When I first played this song at J's house, I never knew GG had done a cover of it and was pretty surprised J knew the song at all. Here's my version:



Sadly, despite all the different versions on youtube, I can't seem to find the original. To this day I've not heard it, I know it from years ago off some old Counting Crows bootleg.

Saturday Porn Slot

After...not very many weeks at all of this feature, I'll admit that it's getting harder and harder to fill. I guess it's like my friend P said: if people can play and they're really hot, they just join the regular music industry and make a shitload of cash. Metal is often the music for outsiders, for the ones that never fit in - not the beautful people.

However there's hope for us all yet. I still have a few hotties up my sleeve...

This one's another that's hot and can play. True, he's in a shit band now, but the Sepultura that recorded Arise fucking ruled. And I'm not alone in thinking Andreas Rudolph Kisser not only has a hilarious name, but is hot:

The ladies just can't keep away.

Look at him go!

He's my very favourite beardy Brazilian (ha!) and was mighty fine back in the day.

Also, props to him for playing in this band:

Had Gary Holt stayed with the band...I dunno, I don't think you can get better than Jason Newsted, Gary Holt and Andreas Kisser being in one band!!!

Now to be fair, in their time, Sepultura was a pretty hot group overall...

...but when you think about what Max and Igor have somehow turned into...you'll see why it's Andreas that gets this spot today:

There are no words.

The Legacy

J: MUSTAINE: Seems Like BLABBERMOUTH & ROADRUNNER Are Only People Who Don't Like Me Or MEGADETH - shut up, dave!

M: srsly. he's embarassing himself and everyone else, he's only going to isolate himself from the bbmouth/roadrunner people - who like i said last night, are the only people that care in this much detail about him...soon enough there'll only be people who've never heard of this debacle, or the people who have, who hate him :/

J: yeah, srsly, he really is making himself look like a chump. blabbermouth is the most read metal news on the net, though people make rude comments on their all the time, it's the whole internet tough guy thing, because they have a screen to hide behind, it's not like they'd say that to dave's face! it's just their outlet to say that dave's acting like a twat about the whole thing - every one can see that - apart from him

M: and instead of realising these are the only people that care about metal enough to read about it all the time, and thus the people he should go some way to ingratiating himself towards - he makes them hate him more and more!

>internet tough guy

maybe someone should tell him about this - they don't mean it, its just internet speak for them being unhappy about it, you're right

J: dave should just stfu and enjoy his holiday coffee :)

M:
LOL :D

J: i wonder if his daughter'll be as annoying as him...

M: i imagine so, i bet she's one of them pushy celebrity kids - she's already done tv and stuff. and she's called electra :/ (dunno if dave knows it, but in psychology terms, electra is the female version of oedipus...)

J: she's gonna be the 14 year old attention whore that dave already is, except she's female, which makes it over 9000 times worse!

M: LOL i bet you, when she's a bit older, she's gonna get interviews about how her dad used to be in metallica - we have another 80 years of this shit, it's just gonna continue through the generations XO

J: yeah, true that, she might take over his legacy of moaning about it.... oh god ;O

M: srsly, i reckon that's so gonna happen - first time she gets interviewed by anyone who has a clue about metal - she's gonna get asked about it. if she's sensible, she'll tell them to fuck off - but i bet it'll start a whole new legacy of whining, her and the hetfield kids together (or not, as the case may be)

J: you never hear about the hetfield kids :)

M: there's a couple youtube clips where he gets his girl up on stage - they sing her happy birthday one time....but apart from that, no. i don't think they're now minor celebrities in their own right like dave's kid - they're growing up in secrecy behind that giant wall he built (james, not dave) :)

J: yah, that fucking wall :)
whereas dave's kid is a child presenter for some kids tv network :D

M: exactly XO

J: aren't james' kids called something weird, like hercules, or is that
his middle name :?

M: it's cicero or something roman ish.

> Cali (June 13, 1998), Castor (May 18, 2000), and Marcella (January 17, 2002).

wiki solves it all :) castor is def roman*. well, his name is, not the kid haha.

J: Castor, that was the one....
Virgil is his dad, that i think is who i was thinking of :) i knew it was the name of one of the Thunderbird characters :)

M: yeah, that's the one :) james' middle name is ALAN :D

*Continuing my rants about all things Roman - all the Hetfield children have Roman names, probably because of James Hetfield's father's name - Virgil. The name Marcella means 'dedicated to the god Mars'. The name Cali is from the name Calista, which was common amongst Greeks and Romans. Castor was another common name - one of the Gemini, Castor and Pollux, Castor was also the god of the Praetorian Guard. The son of Tiberius was nicknamed Castor for this reason.

A Little Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

I met Cristina on the R train several weeks back.

The weather was just beginning to turn cooler, and I noticed that summer had ended quickly, with no gradual diminishing of tattoo sightings, but a sudden disappearance, like shutting the light switch off in a large, bright room at midnight.

Cristina had this small, unusual tattoo on her foot:


Despite being small, I was curious to learn about this design.

Cristina explained that her husband travels a lot and that, on a whim, they each got sun tattoos while in Dallas. The designs are slightly different.


She told me her husband thought the sun tattoos were perfect for them because, he said, when they're together, he's walking on sunshine.

You can look at that as incredibly corny, incredibly romantic, or a mixture of the two. Cristina acknowledged that when she looks at her tattoo, it reminds her of what her husband said, about walking on sunshine, and that makes her laugh, which makes her happy, which can be a solace when her husband is traveling.

All from a little tattoo!

Thanks to Cristina for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

mihi non placet.....

Although I don't think I've mentioned it on here before, I make no secret of the fact that I'm a total nerd for the Romans. It's pretty much my favourite subject and I've always wondered why Rome doesn't turn up in metal subject matter more often. Greek mythology is everywhere: Symphony X's The Odyssey, Iron Maiden's Flight of Icarus and Manowar's Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy to name but a few.

Which is why, when I first read about Ex Deo, it was with a certain amount of curiosity and anticipation - here was the possibility that someone might blend my favourite music, metal, with my favourite subject area, Rome.

The disappointment is thus crushing. They suck. They really suck, their music SUCKS. It doesn't sound any different to any other generic death metal-lite band that I don't want to hear. The guitars are muddy, the synth only goes further to destroying the guitar sound and the vocals are really, really fucking horrible. The solos are weirdly paced (too slow) and mis-placed (they just don't seem to fit in the right places) and the drums have some very strange tones. It's embarassing.

Not wanting to put a downer on the whole thing: lyrically, I think they're getting there. Apart from over-hyping the Battle of Actium (although I suppose that's what Augustus always wanted), they get some nice lines in. Massive points for fitting "circumvallation" into a song and including lyrics in Latin (now that's what I'm talking about!).

However, why stick to the obvious stuff? I know Julius Caesar is famous, but wouldn't Hannibal and Scipio make for more brutal subject matter? Or the Aeneid for some extreme epic? Or the achievements of Pompey, Vespasian or Trajan? Of Marius or Sulla? There's more to Rome than Antony and Cleopatra, believe it or not.

J will probably say I'm being too high brow about it. But it seems to me that if you're going so far as to make a Rome-themed metal band, you should do it properly and do it justice.

You might notice that the Metal Archives review is a great deal more generous towards this band than I. If you look at the reviewer profile however, he's blatantly a twat. His notion that "In the middle ages and during the reign of the Roman Empire, if you lived in Northern Europe and wore long hair, you were a free man, if you had short hair, you were a slave." isn't really true at all. This was the case for early Greek civilisations, but by the 6th or 5th century BC shorter styles were more common.

Even in Classical Greece, "long" wasn't even that long: just look at all the statues of Apollo, Herakles and Zeus. To be honest, whether you had a beard or not was considered much more important.

In the Roman Empire, short hair was particularly favoured - especially in the style popularised by Augustus. Through the middle ages, it really depended on exactly which part of Northern Europe you lived in and on what religion you adhered to.

So bollocks to him and his shitty review :D

Iron Maiden

J: blabbermouth is back

"Roadrunner Records' entire web site — including BLABBERMOUTH.NET(which is hosted on Roadrunner's servers) — has been down since Saturday afternoon due to some hardware issues. (A major piece of hardware crashed and has to be replaced.)
We are in the process of getting everything up and running again. Check back in the next couple of hours for all the news that you might have missed."

Feeeeeeeds :D

Lost souls in endless time - vol II

Now J tells me that marchives is down.

And because bbmouth isn't working, all the other metal blogs are suspiciously quiet of late...

FUCKING LAME!!

Lost souls in endless time

Seriously, what the fuck is up with Blabbermouth?

It's been down for fucking TYME.

;_______;

Bill's Ink Honors Generations Past and Future

I met Bill in mid-September on the 34th Street train platform while waiting for a downtown A train.

You may have heard of the scent known as a "new car smell". Bill had whatis known as a "new tattoo sheen," which occurs when one anoints a fresh tattoo with a healing ointment used to protect the ink.


The tattoo depicts himself, seen from the back, standing in reverence at the graves of his grandfather "Giff" and his uncle Giff Jr.


It's a nice way to memorialize his family. This was inked by Aaron at Red Rocket Tattoo East, in Levittown on Long Island.

Bill has a great tattoo on his outer right forearm, as well. Whereas his left arm is a memorial to those in his family that passed before him, his other piece pays tribute to a newer generation:


In this piece, two traditional swallows hold aloft a banner bearing the name of his daughter, Allana.

This tattoo, his first, was done by Greg Fly at The Tattoo Shop on Rte 112 in Medford, L.I.

Thanks to Bill for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Two for Tattoosday: Hawai'i Calling and a Pin-Up Boy

I met Joakim and Marina last month on the sidewalk, just outside of the 34th Street Penn Station entrance.

The couple were visiting from Sweden and it was Joakim's sleeves that jumped out at me.

He shared this one segment on his lower right arm:


He asked me if it looked familiar. It did, but I couldn't quite place it. He smiled, and told me it's a variation on the cover of The Clash's quintessential album, London Calling,


Joakim loves the Clash and loves Hawaiian culture, so he designed had the tattoo artist design the piece to merge both elements for a great tattoo.

The piece was inked by Big Fat Joe at a shop called Art by Fafnir in Stockholm.


I turned to Marina and asked if she had any tattoos. She smiled and said she did, removing her jacket to reveal this piece, also by Joe:


"It's my pin-up boy," she laughed. Her variation on the traditional pin-up girl is going to tie in with a sleeve she is working on, as well.

She remarked that the artist was "thrilled" to do this tattoo, because it was not the typical pin-up tattoo.

Thanks to Joakim and Marina for sharing their great tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Into infinite obscurity

M: SATURDAY MORNING DOUBLE FEATURE: THE EXCEPTION THAT PROVES THE RULE - .....Quite simply, The Somberlain and Storm of the Light's Bane are two of the best fucking black metal albums ever made, packed with equal amounts of both demonic hatred and epic, Wagnerian bombast.
these 2 albums DO rule (was listening to one the other day when you came over i think) but i don't like black metal :/ i always forget that these are, they're quite melodic in bits. you know the kind of crap i like ;D

J: yeah, you were listening to them :)
i always think they're a DM band :3

M: me too! always so surprised when people say they're bm :O

J: their name isn't really BM :)

M: yeah, even that's more dm :) and they're from sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeden i think :?

J: they obviously got death threats from euronymous at some point :3

M: the dude in it is a murderer or something anyways :/

J: srsly :/
LOL, that always helps album sales, unless you're in emperor, it just makes you look like a poser fag because you only burned a church or two and the only killer in your band fagged out when arrested :D

M: ooooops :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_N%C3%B6dtveidt
ohh, he was accessory to murder, then formed the band, then killed himself :/

J: > self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a circle of lit candles
what a way to go ;O

M: :O
wow thats pretty fucking mental :/
no wonder people assocate them with bm ;D

J: wiki says they're blackened death, dunno what marchives say :)

M: >Melodic Black/Death Metal (early), Melodic Death Metal (later)
yeah not really black metal then :)))

J: it didn't sound like DM when i heard them at yours :)

M: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZZq37WRKyg
here tis. umm no, not so much death.....i guess blackened death (maybe more black than death tho?) more along the lines of....i dunno

J: i think the DM comes into the fact it sounds kinda clean. my idea of BM differs to most, but this is pretty polished BM if anything... with melodic bits :)

M: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvQMmh3BHqc
stuff like this one is 100% melodicy stuff - yeah, it's clean and singy and...yeah, doesn't fit with the death metal sound (although if you changed the vocals it would) but doesn't fit with black either

That was as far as we got in figuring out exactly where Dissection fit into the metal world. What do you guys think? Black metal? Death metal? Blackened death? Deathened black isn't a category, but should we invent it (or one to that effect but with a better name) for this? All of the above?

Whole Lotta Ink

I spotted Dina's runic tattoos outside of Borders on Penn Plaza, late one Friday afternoon:


Dina is a big fan of Led Zeppelin and, as most fans know, these runes represent the four members of the band.


The four symbols represent, from left to right, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and Robert Plant. These symbols appeared on the band's untitled fourth album and, for many people, represented the name of the record (i.e. "Zoso" or "Runes"). There's more on the naming of "IV" here.

This is one of three tattoos Dina has and, in case you were wondering, "Since I've Been Loving You" is her favorite Zeppelin tune.

Thanks to Dina for sharing her runes with us here on Tattoosday!

A little bonus, in honor of Dina:

Shadows Fail

M: ALL THAT REMAINS Singer Accuses SHADOWS FALL Frontman Of Hitting On His Girl - :D

J: LOL @ arguing in the internet.
take a note from axl, izzy and vince, and just fucking have a fight, no BS

M: internet arguing will only make you look like twats = FACT

J: yeah, they just need to fight IRL :)

M: is that shadows fall dude that wanky dreadlocked dude?

J: i think so, it's all i know about them :)

M: he always wears that green basketball vest thing :)
and they froze my computer once.
i too have now exhausted my knowledge of them :)
oh actually, didn't they play when we went to iron maiden at twickenham? we went to get sweets :D

J: eh, maybe - that proves that they suck :D

M: i kinda think so, to be fair i've never listened to them - i just judge them on that stupid fucking vest :D

J: but i would be willing to put money on the fact that i think they suck

M: me too :)

He's sure it's a chick?

M: Tommy Lee Dating Topless Italian Model Chiara Salvade - :D

J: now, he's sure it's a chick this time? ;)

M: haha :D
have you read the article?
>She told The Sun: "Tommy Lee has always been my idol, a real sex symbol according with my tastes and I really couldn't believe that I was just talking to him when he added me as a friend. "He told me he was impressed by the photograph I had on my profile and wanted to get to know each other. "He asked where I was from and what my occupation was."
LOOOOOOOL asl? :)

J: i never read it, but that's joke :D
LOL @ ASL :D :D :D

M: i know :)))))) brilliant. i bet she likes him more than he likes her, i reckon he just thinks of her as a cheap fuck.
i heart tommy lee and pamela anderson*, to me it'll always be them two :D

*I had to put in the link - I was afraid people might not see the picture and think I meant Pamela Anderson the philosopher