Actual Pain Summer 2011 Collection Now Available!

Goody goody gumdrops! We’ve just received the Summer/Fall 2011 line of Actual Pain swag and it’s no joke. The exceedingly evil collection has already gone up in the webstore complete with more inverted crucifixes and clandestine triangles than you can shake a stake (hehe) at. New tees, tanks, snapbacks, and jewelry is available now for you to adorn at your neighborhood animal sacrifice, bloodletting circle, or graveyard orgy.

The bringer of pain, T.J. Cowgill, has gone off the deep end this season, in the best way possible that is. Immortal Mouse and King of Pugs are just a couple of the demented designs that have perverted our store and brought a sadistic grin to our faces. I, like you, shall now make haste so that I may have the fairest outfit of them all.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
—
Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

Though the lookbook and collection for Fall 2011 will not be here for a few more weeks, today we’re dropping this awesome teaser video to help you get amped up for all our latest gear. The clip was shot entirely in and around London, which provided the perfect backdrop in which to highlight our latest creations, and was directed by the ever-talented Laurence Dean and shot and edited by Joseph Rodrigues Marsh.

We got in touch with a whole cadre of talented Londoners for this video, and filmed them sauntering about town while dressed in the new Fall collection. As the clip progresses, it becomes clear this thing is a literal who’s who of British music staples and up-and-comers. We may have exhausted our DJ/producer Grime, Dubstep and House rolodex for this one, as the clip boasts appearances by the living legend, Plastician, as well as Bok Bok, one half of Night Slugs — one of the most exciting labels in the world — and if that wasn’t enough, brought out some other big guns in Redlight, Darq E. Freaker, Subscape, Tomb Crew, Roska, Peigh, Spooky (of Oil Gang), Alix Perez and Doorly. If we were to tap all these guys to throw a single party together, I’m not sure you’d walk out of the event alive. We also got emcee extraordinaire for Subscape and Dub Police mate Caspa… the one and only Rod Azlan. In addition to all of these bass heavy dancefloor demons, we recruited two of our favorite dark-tinged UK artists to round out our UK invasion: the Witch House duo Story of Isaac and nouveau Death Rockers O. Children.

Summer will be over before you know it, and you’ll inevitably want to get your hands all over the latest Autumn fashions. Keep your eyes glued to this site for the impending release of our new lookbook, which will feature clothes so tasty you may need to wear a little bib under your chin to catch all the drool. (Hmm…maybe, we’ll produce some of those for the Winter.)

Guess what I’m doing? I’m flipping through a collection of photos of some dudes mobbing through the dusky streets of Hungary on bicycles. That in itself rules, but what really puts a smile on my face is that these guys have compiled a Mишка lookbook out of it, paying tribute to our Summer 2011 line. The posse got some great b&w and color candids while galavanting about in a changing lineup of our tees from this season giving us that fuzzy, proud-father feeling inside.

mashKULTURE is down with what we do here and they set out to prove it one debaucherous night in Budapest as the ruffians biked around the city pissing in nature, checking out girls, and occasionally stopping into a convenient store to refuel on beer and fuck around in the aisles. The photographer, named simply Barnie, caught some beautifully uninhibited moments with his lens, enough to bring a tear to our glazed and bloodshot-from-the-night-before, Keep Watch eye.

If their style of photography tickles your fancy, you may want to check out the lookbook they did for Rebel8 last month, shit’s baller. Hey, who knows, at this rate we may hire these mopsters to do some real-deal professional work for us one day. See the rest of the lookbook here.

How did this get by me!? I’ve been taken with the wacky ways people get off, not letting a fetish or sickeningly offensive video evade my grasp, since first seeing shock sites like the coprophilic Tubgirl or the much-talked-about BME Pain Olympics, a contest held by the Body Modification E-Zine, inquiring readers to send in video submissions of their most extreme body alterations. From that wretched challenge, we received some pretty serious penile decimation and all-around genital disfigurement. A tough watch for myself and many others including Joe Rogan and his pal who began with a screening of the wet n’ wild, piss-shit-puke soirée known internationally as 2girls1cup.

Grotesque mutilation and fluid swapping is all fine and dandy but sometimes it’s the subtle things that make web-surfing worthwhile. That’s where ‘woolies’ come in. This branch of huggable submissives have joined warm and fuzzy knit outfits, covering every square inch of the body of course, with the traditional dresscodes of shiny, black leather and clear plastic bags as in the S&M community as acceptable, kinky fodder. Are these enthusiasts merely adults that couldn’t bear the postpartum depression that comes with giving up your childhood blanket or are they instinctively stimulated and aroused by the around-the-clock sensation of wool touching skin. Either way these people look like an alien race of bundled-up wanderers, a soft to the touch Tusken Raider if you will.

Made of wool and mohair, these stifling suits of armor gained popularity among the sexual underground when a French designer and fetishist began knitting full-size costumes for bedroom play. It seems that from their inception, the hand-crafted bodysuits were enough to rouse the more damaged deviants that floated to the surface. Images of the clothing and people wearing the clothing circulated around message boards acting as skimmers do, stirring up debris that had laid dormant on the bottom of a pool.

You might be thinking “Tactile obsession is nothing new to BDSM or fetish culture” and you’d be right. I realize we’ve got people dressed as stuffed animals plugging each other and more with nipple clamps and clothes pins attached to their vagina lips. I, somehow, find that to be more or less understandable, in the face of people walking around in modified granny sweaters that run from head to toe. Maybe skin-tight leather is on it’s way out and pretty soon you’ll be seeing ‘woolies’ taking over with the whole bound and cozy look.

Ever wondered how gimps stay warm during cold months in addition to the winter holidays? Yeah, neither have I but this sexualization of wool sure is fun to talk about. Some of them even have separate holsters for your dick, cool!

This past February, I went to sunny Los Angeles to record vocals and mix down my new album, Thee Physical with my friend, Jupiter Keyes, from the band HEALTH. While there, i spent a week in Jupiter’s bedroom studio, so it was natural that the rest of the dudes in the band were also around hanging out, which also meant their girlfriends. Among them, the lovely Renee Barton, who happens to be a part of a really cool experimental design collective, along with fellow LA based designers, Erin Christovale, Kaitlyn Darby, and Savannah Wood called The Coven.

They call what they do “wearable art”, and it is an accurate claim, because it is hard to describe exactly what The Coven does because there is a little bit of everything. But with their goat hair necklaces, witchy velvet capes, gold chain crowns, and pyramid hologram necklaces, The Coven mostly works within a sort of mystical and fantasy aesthetic, which they nail right on the head. The designs are mostly very feminine, but can transverse gender like any good fantasy clothing can. I have been known to wear their “Long Reptilian Cape” when I want to look really spooky for certain DJ sets, along with their black leather knuckle rings which i find extremely sexy and empowering.

The Coven is always looking for new ways to collaborate with other artists and designers, and regularily update their website with new pieces that are of a limited run or one of a kind works of art. So, grab your broadsword, hop on your trusty white stallion, and gallop in to the fantastical world of The Coven.

Over the Independence Day weekend earlier this month, my girlfriend and I added a furry little addition to our Brooklyn apartment. The handsome little devil is still young, but he already has style and can be spotted wearing Mishka’s classic Keep Watch keychain hat. His names Indy and he’s seriously the dopest cat ever, how dope? Dude already has a tumblr and we’ll be updating that and the flickr with pics and video of him, so if you’re like me and occasionally need to take a break from the porn and memes I recommend checking up on this little guy.

The keychain is available to make your very own, here. An ideal means of tricking out animals, babies, and other microcephalic beings in need of some swagger.

Here he is again, Sean Reveron, harbinger of the awesomely vile clothing line CVLT Nation, returns to the Bloglin, not in the form of a brutal Blackened Everything mixtape, this time in the flesh. Sean is an entrepreneur, underground music enthusiast, and purveyor of all that is heavy. Fortunately, he was able to answer five big ones on the intent of his new brand, the creative process that brought him to this point, and the state of metal in general. Escorting the public into a new epoch of foulness, this guy is on the cutting edge of fringe culture. Listen up.

Is Cvlt Nation something you do all on your own? You put out a lot of material outside of the design stuff such as mixtapes, album reviews, and all-around media articles, I can’t imagine you do that all by yourself?

Sean Reveron: No way…I couldn’t do it all on my own! My wife, Meghan, and I spearhead the project and do the majority of the blogging, like 60% of it. But we also have contributors from all over the world who are a part of the metal and punk scenes in their own areas, like in Ireland, Germany, Indonesia, England, New York, Texas, Cali – so we get a wide variety of coverage.

We don’t micromanage our bloggers at all, so they bring a lot of different perspectives and opinions to the blog. It’s really amazing that we have been able to connect with so many awesome and talented people from around the world, whether in music or art. The metal communities worldwide have been so supportive of what we are doing, and we see the site as a way to support creative people in the communities as well.

So I know you were working previously with Rockers. What happened with that? Was Cvlt something you’ve always wanted to do or a new concept that rose from the ashes of Knights of The Vampire Killers?

Sean Reveron: Working with Rockers NYC made up some awesome years of my life, but it was time to move on, and it was just natural for me to gravitate towards punk and metal imagery and music because of my background as a part of those scenes in the 80s. CVLT Nation is a culmination of ideas I have had for years, all wrapped into one brand, and the first season we paid tribute to KVK with one of our shirts, Legion. KVK will always have a special place in my heart, but it was more of an art project than a real clothing brand.

Yeah, I’ve heard you’re a veteran of sorts in the early L.A. punk/hardcore scene. Did you grow up listening to the SST guys like Black Flag and The Minutemen or skate punk type stuff like Suicidal Tendencies or The Adolescents? Had any interesting experiences with the bands themselves or at the shows? I mean you must’ve seen some shit.

Sean Reveron: I was into all those bands as a youth…it wasn’t either or for me. Being that I’m a Venice local, when we all got into punk in the 80′s it was natural that I became a Suicidal Boy. They were our local band, so we had to rep our hood. More than that, everyone in Suicidal Tendencies were our homies. Some of my favorite moments happened hanging out at Suicidal Park (Mar Vista Park) before shows, plus all of the leagues we had, like the Suicidal Golf Club, Suicidal Softball League & Suicidal Bowling League. One of my favorite memories was New Year’s Eve, 1983 – Suicidal played a house party in Santa Monica & played all Sabbath covers. It was a huge kegger, and the cops came & tried to smash our heads in, but we escaped, jumping over fences, running wild in the streets!

I saw Black Flag play mad times in all sort of places. I remember seeing them at their reunion show at the Santa Monica Civic, that was rad…everyone who was ever in the band performed that night, it was pretty epic, & The Misfits opened up. The next day, The Misfits went into the studio in Los Angeles & recorded their last album, Earth A.D.. Another gnarly Black Flag gig was seeing them perform outside the federal building in Westwood. What made this gig extra special is that for once the L.A.P.D. could not fuck with us because we were on federal property, so we could do whatever the fuck we wanted to do. I was super lucky to have grown up in the LA punk scene, but one thing I want to stress is that we were the outsiders, the weirdos, the freaks – & we were one huge punk rock family.

I’m a hardcore punk and metal nerd myself and love the fact that you post reviews of underground releases that a lot of so called “headbangers” would have no clue about otherwise. Is extreme music just as much a part of the brand as the t-shirt designs and diy items you sell? What do you think about those who don’t listen to the music but embrace spikes, leather, and satanic imagery as a fashion statement?

Sean Reveron: I have always been into underground music; I think it stems from supporting my local bands and artists as a kid. Plus, one of my favorite things to do is to look for and listen to new or obscure music on the internet, and I am so happy I’ve been able to incorporate that into my blogging. CVLT Nation is all about heavy music, art, clothing & cultures, so heavy is pretty much integral to the brand.

For the CVLT Nation clothing brand, we work with artists who have ties to the music community through their artwork on albums and band merch, so the clothing itself is inextricably tied to the music. It’s really important to us to make clothing that speaks to people who are into the blog and the music and art we cover. As far as the “fashion” of looking dark, I try not to judge people for it, but I think maybe they should give the music a try so people don’t mistake them for posers.

Fair enough. If you could name one artist/band, or even a few, that are currently performing and putting out new material as an inspiration for the work you do now and how your musical tastes have evolved over time, who would it be and why?

Sean Reveron: The rad thing about CVLT Nation is that through our blogging, we are finding so many inspiring bands and artists. The underground is literally teeming with creative people, so it’s hard to point to just one or two. With music, we have some projects we are working on with bands that we find inspiring, like our Sonic Cathedrals mixtape series, where a band curates a mix of the music they find inspiring. We put one out last week with Altar of Plagues, and we have some in the works with bands like The Secret, Young And In The Way and Coffinworm.

As far as art goes, when we find artists that inspire us, we find a way to work with them on graphics for the CVLT Nation clothing brand. There are so many talented artists out there in the world, and we are trying to provide another platform for showing their work through the clothing and the blog. The great thing is that we have gotten so much good feedback from artists who want to be a part of what we’re doing.

How have my musical tastes evolved? I’ve always listened to dark music, I am just allowing more of it into my life than I used to. I still like a huge variety of music, but I am exploring heavy music and finding out how many different layers and textures there are.

—–

Thanks again Sean! Go on over to CVLT Nation, you can get the apparel right here as well, and get a fistful of blackness punched into your mind’s eye, you’ll be grateful you did.

As of late the public has borne witness to some really fucking tasteless wardrobe monstrosities, take for example the pepperoni pizza crewneck sweater with enough hi-res grease to give your entire upper body acne. That cheesy pullover makes me hungry and queasy at the same time, it makes the impossible possible. But pizza sweater is so two weeks ago, the newest offense in the fashion world comes in the form of the world’s most recognizable fish-faced actor. You guessed it, Steve Buscemi’s ugly mug is digitally blown up and plastered on the front and back of some designer dress.

The aptly titled Steve Dress, an ode to the bug-eyed Mr. Pink, panders to those brave enough to rock it. This piece seems to have the same nauseating effect on me as the pizza crew and as I stare into those bulbous, inflamed eye sockets I feel my gut weakening. Don’t get me wrong, I like Buscemi just as much as the next guy but he’s so goddamn hideous to begin with and turning him into a giant full-color, high-resolution print makes it all worse for wear. At this rate I’m predicting: Elvis Presley, James Dean, Steve Buscemi.

Australian designer, James Lillis, is selling the bizarre dress he made for online clothing company Black Milk for 100 bucks a piece. A small price to pay to have Donny Kerabatsos pasted on your body.

If you hadn’t noticed, Adidas has been running some bizarre-o cross promotional campaign with the Star Wars franchise for a little while now. Basically, the sneaker company has been pumping out apparel that either literally resembles characters and props from the original Star Wars trilogy, or at least captures their essence. While I’m fairly confident that I’ll never feel the need to step out of the house wearing a pair of Millenium Falcon shaped kicks, the experiment between the two entities has produced some pretty interesting results over time. I suppose it is reassuring in some ways to know that if ever happen to awake with the urge to pick up some sneakers with a Stormtrooper helmet printed on the tongue, the opportunity is on the table.

Anyway, although it was ultimately pretty unnecessary, the revamped Cantina scene commercial pumped out last year by the folks at Adidas was certainly entertaining in most respects. You show me a Star Wars fan that wasn’t interested in watching The Doggfather take a few lightsaber hacks at a pair of Mos Eisley trouble makers, and I’ll show you a bold-faced liar. I couldn’t help feeling the ad was totally erroneous, but still couldn’t stop myself from watching the thing on a continuous loop the day it hit youtube.

Following in suit, Adidas just released this series of promo shots from their latest Fall/Winter 2011 lookbook, which I’m sure will have internet fanboys sprouting chubs for days to come. The photographs feature the slew of new Empire Strikes Back/Hoth-oriented products the company is putting out within the forthcoming season, but more interestingly present a number of characters performing menial day-to-day tasks in full ice planet regalia. I’ve personally always been partial to Empire, when referring to the first three films, so I immediately took note of this stuff.

Again, I’m not sure why I find this nostalgia-tinged commercial material so enthralling, but I eat the shit right up! Really though, I suspect that there is some magical quality that has to do with a Wampa pushing a lawn mower which could be to blame… a quality which we may never truly be able to identify.

Have you ever wondered how fashionable aristocrats and oligarchs on the opposite side of the prime meridian tend to dress their children? Well, we’re here to alleviate your quandary. Photographer Anna Skladmann took a hike across much of Russia in an attempt to document the most stylish and privileged pre-teens this region had to offer, and came away with some shots that are genuinely startling… startlingly awesome that is. Not only do these tykes look right at home in the collection of threads they’re presented in, but they basically just own it. From the set of  Blue Steel’s and Magnum’s these kids have wiped across their mugs, I’d be willing to bet the term “Cheese” wasn’t uttered all that often.

The youngster set in front of the metro backdrop, perched atop the corner of a building is evidently named Vadim, and appears to gather most of his gear from Robber Barons R’ Us. Just look his that oversized bow tie, and, if you’ll allow me to speak in Tom Haverford parlance for a moment, dope pea coat. Peering at Vadim, you’d assume somebody thought it would be funny to zap Tucker Carlson with Ray Zalinsky’s shrink ray, and send him over to Russia just for kicks. From the looks of it, tiny Tucker Carlson has been flourishing within his new millieu, and is prepared to run whichever town he’s already turned his back to.

The pair of siblings crouched on top of the ornate table are called Nikita and Alina respectively, and were presumably en route to a ball room of some sort, before they realized that one of the little brats wasn’t wearing any pants. If you direct you’re attention over to the male half of the bro and sis pairing, you’ll notice that he’s already got that disheveled Dudley Moore, devil-may-cry attitude down pat. Imagine the havoc this guy is going to wreak once he starts slamming shots of expensive, home-brewed Russian Vodka. Then again, who’s to say the young man hasn’t already started hitting the bottle.

As if young Jacob didn’t already look like he was about ready to plan some elementary school sting operation of the cafeteria in his two-tone wing tips, and tailored blazer, Skladmann threw one of the kid’s functioning Kalashnikov machine guns into the mix for good measure. Apparently this was just one of the many battle ready firearms which comprises young  Jacob’s extensive collection. For those of you youngsters who are simply content to get your hands on some plastic NERF rifle, you really don’t know what you’re missing. Jacob has seen the light, and he’s done so looking as if he were plucked from the pages of GQ.

While all the shots in this collection may not necessarily be as dynamic or theatrical as the machine gun picture, they’re all wonderfully photographed, and definitely worth checking out. I’ll leave you with this image of toe-headed twins Ilona and Ella, and let you decide whether they strike you as adorable or just downright creepy. If you stare at the image long enough, I’m convinced that flashes of The Shining twins are bound to start dancing through your head. Find the full gallery at Spiegel Online and look on in astonishment at these ultra-hip and over dressed Russian kids. And if you still can’t get enough of this Skladmann’s has a book called Little Adults releasing in September which you can pre-order over at Amazon.