Black Metal Valentines

Our sister paper LA Weekly has an excellent story up this week about photographer Peter Beste's work with the gruesome, scary and highly theatrical leading figures of Norwegian black metal. Accompanying the story is an entertaining, and very, very NSFW slide show of selected photographs from Beste's book. These photos cast their subjects in an honest, open-minded light that isn't exactly flattering but always avoids the cheap, easy characterization in favor of something complex and genuine. Plus, there's a naked girl covered in cow's blood and a pig's head on a stake. -- Cory Casciato