Our Metal Biographies

Meet the authors and learn more about their metal credentials!

If you are looking for something to listen to while reading our paper or browsing our website, why not try out our playlist? It features five favorite song picks per author! Enjoy!

Gerrit Rijken

Gerrit never dreamed of becoming a metal designer. He only got into it after being snubbed by a local band from the Netherlands who felt his work was not symmetrical enough to be labeled ‘trve’. Once got the opportunity to redesign Deicide’s logo, which got printed on two shirts before they went back to their old logo! Now listening to Darkthrone’s Natassja in Eternal Sleep. Not because he likes lo-fi black metal all that much; it’s just that the D follows the C of Chvrches in his sorted playlist. He is so metal, he’s only happy when it rains.

Michael Correll

Michael is extremely bad at playing the bass guitar, and mostly likes to go to doom and sludge shows where there is no expectation of any sort of rhythmic movement beyond an occasional head nod. It has been an increasing journey to slower and slower bands from Black Sabbath to Electric Wizard to Sleep and eventually he will just be listening to somebody play a single open chord for an hour or so and then go to bed.

Rene Cutura

Rene learned to play the recorder when he was 4 or 5 years old. He started listening to metal with the band Finntroll. Since then, he has been switching between atmospheric black metal like Karg, folk black metal like Windir, and everything in between. Occasionally he likes excursions to dark metal bands like Eisregen, or crazy bands like Igorrr.

Jason Dykes

Jason has no musical talent, but was Head of Heavy Metal & Audio Cassettes at Our Price Records, Bristol (now defunct) in the late 1980s. He was alive during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, saw Saxon at full blast, once made the guest list at a Motörhead gig and appears briefly, blurrily but gloriously in Faith No More’s You Fat Bastards: Live at the Brixton Academy. He looks marginally more metal now than he did at the start of lockdown and is currently, continually listening to Mike Patton’s crooning on Mondo cane with occasional inexcusable lapses towards Lizzo.

Frank Heyen

Frank started listening to metal at the age of 16 after learning that some bands only start to sound good after you listen to them for a while. Among the first favorites were mostly folk and viking metal bands such as Ensiferum and Eluveitie. To this day he still prefers metal that features some melodic elements or non-metal instruments such as flutes or violins (e.g. in Månegarm). Since he began working on metal visualizations as Michael Sedlmair’s minion, Frank also finally started to produce metal himself as a guitarist, although still a bloody beginner.

Michael Sedl\m/air

Michael’s first favorite band as a kid was AC/DC. So he started to play the guitar at the age of seven and joined his first metal band at twelve. While playing in several different bands over the years, he also worked for seven years at a music school in Munich, Germany, teaching guitar to the next generation of metalheads (and classical guitar – it’s good for your technique!). On the side, he nowadays also is doing some research in related areas such as data metalization, human-metal interaction, and augmented and virtual metal. His all-time favorite bands include Entombed, Pantera, Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies, Motörhead, The Hellacopters, and of course … good old AC/DC!

Noeska ‘Natassja’ Smit

Noeska tried to learn to play the guitar as a teenager, but was only interested in playing Norwegian Black Metal and had no interest in practicing the basics nor talent of any kind. She can be seen dancing to metal in several YouTube videos, notably at Anaal Nathrakh, Sólstafir, and Junius shows. In the metal scene, her main role is “fangirling,” e.g., being star-struck when encountering black metal legends in the wild in Bergen, Norway, and serving as arm candy for Gerrit Rijken. Current favorite bands include Dool, Funeral Void, and Paradise Lost.