Castevet

Sigh

Sigh sound like a black metal demon that fell out of a box of Fruit Loops. Listen to their latest album, Scenes from Hell, while watching the Olympics. You won’t regret it. [Listen to a Sigh song now]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Alexander Binder

Alexander Binder’s affinity for the black metal aesthetic permeates his photos, but beyond being just fan worship, Binder’s work reflects how the the membrane between the kvlt and other areas of contemporary culture has become. Binder’s images have a dark and ethereally sinister quality about them, obfuscating reality rather than merely re-interpreting or altering it as other photographers often aim to do.

Nokturnal Mortum’s Voice of Steel

I listen to a lot of bands that espouse questionable ideologies to put it mildly. With the assimilation of black metal into the mainstream, typically left-leaning music fans like me have had to grapple with the fact that some of our favorite bands have at least expressed sympathy for Nationalist Socialism – you know, Nazism – if not fully embracing it. My rationale, however, for continuing to enjoy this music is that if I only listened to music made by people I agree with, there would be very little I could listen to – no GG Allin, no Merle Haggard, no NWA, no Slayer. Come to think of it, 90 percent of the musicians I admire express rather extreme viewpoints, and that’s precisely what I find so fascinating about them. Read more

Hooded Menace

I had to put up with some seriously obnoxious jocks and drunken highschool kids at a recent show featuring flavor-of-the-moment acts that did the whole ecstatic, 80s electro thing that’s so popular these days. Lots of fluorescent colors. I had to blast some death freaking metal when I got home, and Hooded Menace fit the bill perfectly with their doom-leaning, aural assault. Nothing pisses me off more than tepid, uninspired music, and nothing makes me feel more alive than real, gut-wrenching, skull-pounding, giddily sinister heavy metal.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Anthony Lister

The bad boy persona in the art world is still alive and well in Australian-born painter and installation artist Anthony Lister. Posing for most photos slumped below his work, cigarette dangling from his lips, Lister is the latest in a long line of somewhat deviant figures in the art world. His work, which generally features superheroes — ‘misguided role models,’ as Lister puts it — has a jerky geometry to them, yet simultaneously a gestural quality reminiscent of 80s art deco, fitting with Lister’s ‘impulsive genius’ image and suggesting a bit of a nod to the cocaine-dusted, heroin-soaked downtown New York scene of 30 years ago. Read more

Hipsters on Food Stamps

Heeb magazine founder Jennifer Bleyer recently interviewed me for an article about young creative types on food stamps. The editors at Salon.com decided that I am a hipster. I don’t really know what that means. Judging by the comments that the article generated, I’m some sort of lazy bum who can’t give up my artisinal chevre. I don’t need to go into detail defending my food choices, but all I’d like to say is that I try to buy healthy foods at the lowest prices. I never eat out. I love to cook, and I really need to control what goes into my food, so I cook every meal for myself. I often share with friends. I want to be healthy and I want my friends to be healthy because none of us have health care. Read more