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Andrei Bouzikov's T-shirts

Andrei Bouzikov

is known for his metal cover art, as well as the awesome T-shirts that feature it. Bouzikov was born and raised in

Belarus

, the former Soviet state widely labeled Europe's last dictatorship. At the age of 16 he moved to the US and combined his taste for blood and rotting corpses with studying art. Andrei designs dark imagery for bands like

Cannabis Corpse

, who maybe aren't all that great, but Andrei's work is pretty brutal.

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So Andrei, you paint your T-shirts?

Yeah, they're depictions of my early childhood frustrations and my obsession with metal culture. I'm actually quite optimistic and cheerful, even though my illustrations and T-shirt prints are meant to scare you to death.

Do you only draw spooky stuff, or do you draw wacky cartoons on your days off?

Well, recently I've been drawing the new album cover for

Municipal Waste

. They insisted they wanted something radically different, kind of Misfits

Earth A.D

cover stuff. Finding the perfect balance took almost 40 sketches. Giving up my traditional thrash metal approach was painful, and I ended up spending a week hiding in bed, but eventually we had a result.

People say the USSR influenced your paintings. Do you think growing up in a dictatorship--stuck-in-the-past Belarus--gave you a dark outlook?

As children we constantly heard stories about Nazi atrocities, the people's struggle, and the brave partisans. I remember when the local council decided to build a new stadium and during the dig discovered a mass grave from the war. Me and my friends would go down there and look for skulls to take home. I guess being reminded of death as a child made a big impact on my psyche. Now drawing guts and skulls is a normal thing. I have to put that stuff on paper, that way I can stash it away, so I don't have to look at it again.

You've worked with a heap of bands, how'd you get into that?

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Drawing Municipal Waste's

The Art of Partying

cover changed it all for me. I still get emails with the opening line, "Dude,

Art of Partying

was awesome." Now I get to do what I love and pay the bills.

You're obsessed with death.

I have to portray the right mood and feeling of a character. Sometimes I'll get sad because I have to paint a dead body. Most of my images depict the dead, dying, or someone that will die in the near future.

Do you see what you're doing becoming more accepted by the mainstream fashion guys?

It's already happening in a mild form--it happens to every subculture at some point. Fashion is always searching for something shocking and provocative. There will definitely be black metal-looking shirts at Topshop soon. But the catwalks probably won't feature models that look like gargoyles in bloody shirts, or half-eaten girls on upside-down crosses.

So what's the most terrifying thing that's actually happened to you?

Back in the late 80s, my mom once lent 2000 rubles to her friend. When she eventually demanded the money back, the lady sent some tough looking guys in Adidas sportswear to our apartment to threat us. I thought we were going to die or get crippled. They heated an iron to torture my mom with, while one guy held a knife to my eye and threaten to take it out. Luckily, my mom had trained as a singer--she had this really high-pitched voice, and the neighbors called the cops and the mafia guys had to flee. We had to leave town and live in fear until the cops caught those guys. IGOR ZINATULIN