Loudblast, III Decades Live Ceremony
Do you have any formal art training?
"I am mainly self-taught. I did take a bi-weekly junior art course at about age 12 for a year. It covered the very basics of perspective, composition and handling various mediums. You had to enrol into two different classes, so I took animation as well, but I didn’t really like drawing the same thing 24 times per second, so I did claymation instead. Visual art was always something I did since I was a kid, while music was something I really cared to read, learn and obsess about, but never create – apart from a few bedroom demos in my teen years."
Which metal bands did you grow up listening to?
"King Diamond and Mercyful Fate, Type O Negative, Voivod, Nevermore, Anacrusis, Maiden, Priest, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Megadeth, Metallica, Death, Pantera, Arcturus, Psychotic Waltz, Celtic Frost: they are all still my favourites to this day."
After getting into metal, we understand you chose albums by Iron Maiden, Megadeth and Metallica solely by their album artwork. Which albums were these and what was it about the art that drew you to them?
"Those were actually my introduction to metal, because I got into Deep Purple because of my dad, and inside the album there was this catalogue, and I saw there a few names I remembered from Beavis & Butthead. Those were the three bands you’ve mentioned, and I just went out and bought Killers, Master Of Puppets and Youthanasia, all based on the covers. Each one was so iconic; the characters, composition, the colour pallet… I can’t say exactly what was it that grabbed me, and that’s part of the magic. If you could say exactly what a song or a painting needs to have in it in order to excite you, it would be easy to replicate. But there’s something amazing about that unexplained connection."