Furious as the Black Flames of Hell…
CVLT Nation Interviews Daniel Desecrator

CVLT Nation had the pleasure to talk to the infamous black metal artist, Daniel Desecrator, and today we are sharing that interview with you. We have also been lucky enough to work with him on designs for our clothing line, and he has created some seriously amazing pieces for CVLT Nation. Daniel hails from Chile, where he works full-time on his artwork and as a tattoo artist, breathing life into the disturbing imagery of death. His artwork takes you to a place where your soul screams in terror while your heart leaps with a dark and disgusting joy. He has worked with bands like Hooded Menace, Demonic Rage, Morbid Insulter and Chronic Torment, just to name a few. He is also a member of the killer black metal band, Slaughtbbath, and a very talented self-taught tattoo artist. He is basically an extremely busy guy, and we are really happy he was able to take the time to let us into his world just for a moment. So after the jump, enter the slaughterhouse and the world of Daniel Desecrator…

What uppers Daniel…how are you doing? 


I’m fine, thanks. A lot of things to do here as usual, but that’s ok with me.


At what age did realize you had a passion for art? Did your artwork have a dark vibe even as a child? 


Well, with no intention to exaggerate I’ve probably been drawing since I was able to pick up a pen. It was just natural for me and it has been almost a daily activity for many years. When I was around 7 years old, I started to collect comic books, so I think I drew a lot of inspiration from the stuff that I was reading/watching back then. My favorite was the Savage Sword of Conan. I loved those cruel stories, the bloody images and the sexual content on it. Probably not the kind of thing most kids of that age like, but I was totally into it. I also remember reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the same age. I felt very attracted to the dark or macabre histories and images but I don’t know if my early drawings had a “dark vibe” as you say. I think that has to do with the interpreter, as they can put what suits their moral concept in the things they absolve to take as “dark” or whatever if you know what I mean. I guess that when you’re younger you don’t try to make something for the sake of being good or evil. Anyway, I remember some people being shocked by the things I liked to draw. I recall a lot of black humor and sarcasm in my early stuff. I had some brief studies of naked human figure when I was around 11 years old when I was meeting my father in Ecuador (who’s actually a more or less known painter) and at the moment I thought it was boring as fuck ‘cause all I wanted to draw were monsters and stuff like that. Same history with the stuff I had to do in school or the typical things that people want you to do.


Did your parents nurture your artistic side? 


Yes my mother always have supported what I do and never judged or criticized my tastes, as most adults were doing when I was a kid. Unluckily, she never had enough money to send me to art classes or anything like that. She also used to paint a lot when I was younger so maybe I was inspired by her at the beginning. My father is also an artist as I said above but I don’t consider him like some sort of influence since I never had much contact with him.


What artists inspired you most when you were younger?


The artists of the comics and cartoons I was reading and watching of course. I never have been good at remembering people’s names, so I can’t say who they are actually. I’m ok if no one remembers mine anyway; I guess the important thing is to remember what an artist did.


Do you have an interest in ancient histories? If so, does this interest impact what you create?


Sure, I’m interested in history, mythology, religion, among many other things that could be seen in my work, but I think that anything that my senses can capture could have an impact in what I create, not necessarily what clearly interests me.











When you are creating, is there always music playing in the background or do you prefer silence?


Yes, I’m listening to music most of the time and I’ve been collecting it for many years, but I try to be closer to silence as well, in distant places, whenever I can. The city where I live is quite noisy, so not listening to my records means hearing fucking cars and yelling people with their stupid music all day long.


When you started illustrating for the black metal world, did you start with your band or with other bands first? 


It was more or less at the same time that we released our first demo that I started to illustrate for other bands. It was by 2005. We released a shitty rehearsal some time before, but it didn’t have any artwork. I always wanted to make artwork for bands I liked, I used to make evil covers and logos for my dubbed tapes when I was younger, I preferred that to Xeroxing the real covers as my friends did.


Do you draw differently for Slaughtbbath than you do for other bands because of your personal connection to the music?


I don’t think that I draw in a different way for Slaughtbbath…maybe I do more simple stuff, I don’t know…a wooden knife in the house of a blacksmith, hehe. Other artists have also done or are doing artwork for Slaughtbbath besides me. I’m not alone in the band, so there are not only my concepts and ideas in it. I think the obvious difference of doing stuff for my own band and working with commissions is that if I manage to have a clear concept of what I want I can do, it way more similar to the image I have in mind, versus what I can do with someone else’s concept, since I will never have the same picture in my mind as the one of the person who’s requesting me to do his idea. That is something some people that ask me for artwork seem to not understand, by the way. In the other hand, when someone asks you for something, you can surpass the original idea and come up with something better, but it would be very rare if I’m able to materialize my own ideas beyond my own expectations and feel more than satisfied once I finish what I’m doing.











Was it easy for you to make the transition to become a tattoo artist? What do you enjoy about your work?


Easy? Hell no. It took me years to understand a bit how things work, and I still have a lot to learn. No one ever taught me the slightest thing, like how to basically use a machine or what kind of needles I should use when I started, so I passed through a hell of headaches not knowing why things didn’t work out as I intended. It’s a completely different form of art, from the very tools you use to the fact that you’re drawing on living beings that move and complain (well, not all of them, but it’s damn annoying when that happens haha). It has been quite a stressful journey until now, but it also has given me the chance of meeting people who really enjoy and respect my work and give me enough freedom to do it, and also fellow artists with similar thoughts about it. I like the fact that tattooing is a very ritualistic experience, you have to deal with pain and blood and leave an important mark on people’s body, but a lot of them don’t see it that way and think that it’s just like buying a product, like any other stupid and disposable crap you can buy in a mall. I fucking hate to see it as a damn business where you have to do exactly what any person wants with average rates for sizes and such and having to act like a salesman, ‘cause for me it’s something really more important that should go beyond that. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I do my stuff for free, but a lot of people are just concerned about the price and choose the guy who charges less or try to convince you to charge them cheaper with stupid arguments, thinking that all tattooists are the same. If you want something, pay the price for it, it’s as simple as that. I really don’t like the tattoo subculture – a lot of competition, envy, superficiality and greed.











Tell us about your fanzine.


It is called Ponzoña. I have released just 2 issues so far. The first one was written in Spanish, completely done in on typewriting machine (because I didn’t have a computer, not because I wanted to make it “old school” as some idiots do), and in black & white Xeroxed cut/paste style. I released 99 copies of it. The primal necessity was to fulfill my desire to write about metal and to make something that differed from the mediocre and ignorant printed or (even worse) webzines that started to pop out as mushrooms on cow shit in this fucking country during those years. And in a way, a lesson for all those idiots who thought that doing a crappy zine or “label” was the easiest way to enter into some sort of “scene”. For the second issue, that first necessity became the pressure to release it soon and to improve it of course. I kept the same cut and paste design, but this time I used a computer and a friend of mine who runs a record label called Proselytism printed around 400 copies of it. I really want to keep on doing Ponzoña, but I haven’t found enough time to write during the last year. Most of the people outside the underground publications don’t understand the purpose of doing something like this when you have all that you want to know for free in the fucking internet. It’s obvious that zines don’t have the same utility now as they did in the past, and that now you don’t need to buy one in order to know the news of a band or label, but there are still a lot of things that you only can get with paper zines and many of them show such a huge amount of work with interviews, info, design and artwork, that there’s no way that a webzine could beat a traditional zine. Besides, reading them in the place you want is way better than staying for hours in front of a computer.





Any closing thoughts for the CVLT Nation readers?


Just thank you for the support and the space with CVLT Nation. Beware the debut album of Slaughtbbath, Hail to Fire!


CVLT Nation would like to thank Daniel for the rad interview! This will be the first interview we publish in the real, hard copy CVLT Nation zine!