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Vice/VBS.tv - Doin' It Baja: The Arto Saari Interview

For those into skateboarding, Finland’s Arto Saari is known for his big, aggressive skating style…and his iron-man ability to recovery from some seriously brutal spills. What you might not know is that Saari is also an avid motorcyclist. He’s been riding around Helsinki for years, and, more recently, he’s been rolling through his new home turf of Southern California.

When we started kicking around the idea of partnering with Vice’s VBS.TV to document a crew of skaters as they rode from San Diego to Baja, Mexico, we knew we had to invite Arto. Dude is not only sick as hell on his board, but he’s also a total good vibe. (Plus he can chop wood and build fires, too, which we knew would come in handy.)

Awesomely, he was up for the adventure. So we outfitted him with a new Nightster Sporty, pointed him in the direction of the rest of the boys—including Heath Kirchart, Keegan Sauder and Patrick O’Dell, friends Harvey Foster, Kynan Tait and Hime Hu, and guide Bill Bryant—and sent a film crew along to document the journey. Check out the epic results that make up Doin’ It Baja here.

Since we’ve been posting the videos, the response has been crazy. People have been writing us wanting to get the story behind the story. What couldn’t be shown in the clips? How can I do this ride? How pissed were the locals at you for skating their town square? So we decided to catch up with Arto to dig in deeper about his experience taking part in Doin’ it Baja. Read on to find out why Arto’s gun-buying idea got nixed, how a Sporty performs off-road and how this trip rekindled Arto’s desire to ride from Northern Europe to Africa.

Click here to read the rest of the interview on the VBS blog.

INKED MAGAZINE - Antonio Ballatore

Picture an interior designer and chances are you’re not envisioning a bearded, burly, tattooed ex–punk musician from New York City—unless, of course, you tuned in to season four of Home & Garden Television’s reality show competition Design Star. Devoted watchers are already well familiar with season winner Antonio Ballatore, the man the judges deemed their “bad boy of design.”

“I’m definitely shocking to the traditional HGTV crowd,” says Ballatore. “I build houses and 1920s-themed sets, create live special-effect explosions, design over-the-top kids’ rooms, and modify old hot rods. There’s no limitation to where I can take my creativity.”

It’s exactly this brazen enthusiasm that helped Ballatore advance past the 10 other finalists throughout the show’s weekly interior design challenges. In one episode, his unorthodox decision to ornament a wall with fluorescent-pink geese was a surprising hit with the judges.

Click here to read the rest of the piece, which appeared in Inked Magazine January 2010.

INKED MAGAZINE - 69 Eyes

“The late ’80s were a very magical time in New York,” says Jyrki 69, the singer for Finnish gothic rock-and-rollers 69 Eyes. “There were clubs like the Limelight, the Ritz, and CBGB, and I’d see my idols like The Ramones and Johnny Thunders on the streets.” For a period of six years, the then-wide-eyed glam rock teenager would save enough money to make pilgrimages from Helsinki to the Big Apple and soak up as much of the Reagan-era rock scene as he could. These experiences not only inspired him to form 69 Eyes, but also helped establish the band’s aesthetic and lyrical themes, the latter thanks in no small part to Jyrki 69’s dabbling in NYC’s goth underground.

“People were always telling me, ‘You look like a vampire, with your blue eyes and white skin.’ I was even a member of the Count Dracula Society of New York,” Jyrki 69 recalls with a laugh. “So when we started the band we naturally explored vampires and horror movie themes.”

Since forming in 1989, 69 Eyes’ sound has evolved from the gritty street glam of Hanoi Rocks and Guns N’ Roses to the Sisters of Mercy meets ’80s hard rock style for which they’re now known. But Jyrki’s fascination with the undead remains a focal point of their lyrics, as heard on 69 Eyes’ latest record, Back in Blood. “With this record I decided to bravely go where no goth-and-roll guy had gone before, and make a concept record about vampires,” says Jyrki with another laugh.

And his timing couldn’t be better....

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this profile, which originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Inked Magazine.

GUITAR WORLD - SUNN O)))

They may make the densest-sounding tones in the universe, but Sunn O))) manage to fit orchestral instruments, choirs and a whole lot more into Monoliths & Dimensions, their latest adventure into music’s darkest territory.

"Inducing altered states is one of my main focal points,” says Sunn O))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley. “From the ritual of putting on the robes and drinking wine before going onstage to what’s happening with the smoke and lights, the slow tempos, sound pressure, low frequencies and oscillations—everything is set up to shift your brain 20 degrees. I believe real, passionate music can induce other states of mind.”

Monoliths & Dimensions, Sunn O)))’s latest release on taste-making indie Southern Lord Recordings, ranks as the most expansive and orchestral of the band’s seven mind-shifting records, which began back in 1998 with The Grimmrobe Demos. While Sunn O))) initially formed as a tribute to drone/doom pioneers Earth, O’Malley and co-guitarist/bassist Greg Anderson’s restless creativity quickly led them into distinctly new sonic territories, which has allowed the band to continuously evade genre classifications. Attendance at a Sunn O))) show proves the point: hesher stoners, indie hipsters, bookish intellectuals and bizarre artists all gather before Sunn O)))’s waves of sublime subsonics and occult theatrics. To aid in their sonic expansion, over the years Sunn O))) have enlisted a veritable who’s who of cult-star musicians, from black metallers Xasthur and Leviathan to eclectic Japanese rockers Boris to noise pioneers John Wiese and Merzbow.

Sunn O)))’s artistic tides keep shifting, but one thing hasn’t changed in the past 10 years: the core of the group’s sound is still firmly rooted in the classic tube amps after which they’re named, the Sunn Model-T.

“At first we got into them because they were inexpensive,” O’Malley says. “For $300 you could go to a pawn shop and get a 100-watt tube amp. The climate around Sunn amps has changed over the years, and now they’re like $1,500. But all that is secondary. Sunn amps are the engine for what we do.”


Click HERE to read the rest of this feature, which originally appeared in the Guitar World December 2009 issue.

GUITAR WORLD - SLAYER - Cover Story

"HAVE YOU EVER SEEN SOMEONE AND THE THOUGHT COMES IN YOUR HEAD THAT YOU JUST WANT TO…KILL ’EM?”

Coming from most any other human, this line of questioning might be surprising. But when the human in question is Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman, it’s par for the course. He is, after all, the dark-spirited counterpart to Kerry King, his co-guitarist in Slayer.

“But why would you do it? Why would I do it?” Hanneman continues, as he cracks open a second Corona. “I think about that more than I should.”



To read the rest of this cover story, which originally appeared in Guitar World November 2009, click HERE.

GUITAR WORLD: Ihsahn

His influential black metal band may have reached the end of its line, but with his new solo album,angL, former Emperor guitarist Ihsahn continues his reign as Norway's progressive metal monarch.

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"The drive from Oslo to the rural town of Notodden, Norway, is about one hour into the heart of rugged Telemark County. On a bright, cold day in March, Guitar World is making the trek to visit former Emperor guitarist/vocalist Ihsahn in his hometown, where he has just finished recording his second solo album, the forceful and progressively black metal effort angL (Candlelight/Mnemosyne).

"It was here in this town of 2,000 people, nearly 20 years ago, that Ihsahn and a few friends—guitarist Samoth, drummer Trym and bassist Mortiis—founded Emperor and effectively launched the symphonic black metal sound that influenced scores of extreme bands, from Dimmu Borgir to Children of Bodom. As we navigate through the myriad winding mountain roads, snow-capped peaks and ominous evergreen forests, under the sweeping maneuvers of the ever-present black birds, it becomes crystal clear how the epic, grim qualities inherent in Norwegian black metal could be born out of such a dramatic, beautiful and utterly brutal landscape.

"Upon arriving in Notodden, we check into our provincial hotel and call Ihsahn. He says he’ll meet us in the lobby in 10 minutes. As we walk into the old hotel’s foyer at the appointed time, we see the six-foot-plus guitarist dressed head to toe in black, his hair slicked back, wearing reflective sunglasses and sitting cross-legged on a leather couch. He rises, smiling, to meet us and offers a firm handshake, seemingly unaware—or unconcerned—about the sideways glances of the hotel guests and exceedingly non-metal townsfolk.

"'Welcome to Notodden,' he says. 'Shall we start with a tour of my studio?' And off we go to Symphonique Studios, Ihsahn’s private recording facility. In many respects, Notodden is not unlike the countless small towns in the States that are isolated from the thriving musical and artistic scenes of large cities. In such out-of-the-way places, when musically minded adolescent boys get restless, they tend to start bands. And sometimes that leads to trouble."

To read the rest of this feature, which originally appeared in Guitar World August 2008, click HERE.