I think my first great love was and always will be the works of JRR Tolkien. I've read the Silmarillion 12-13 times at this point. It might even be more. Of all the fantasy novels I've read over all the years, everything goes back to Tolkien. Outside of that, Japanese RPGs, manga, and anime from the 80's and 90's played a big role in my youth. Specifically the Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire series. The Japanese really have a romantically cryptic way of story telling that I always find incredibly gripping.

As for characters, the story of Túrin Turambar in Tolkien's legendarium is far and away my favorite. I'm a sucker for a tragic hero, and Túrin is the epitome of one. I've even got his name, and the name of his sword tattooed on my fingers.

I think the first design that I remember seeing and being really drawn to when I was young was Amund Dietzel's masked woman. It's a very classic traditional design, but at the time I had never seen any quite like it.

I remember an older kid showing me Amebix when I was in my first year of high school. He was one of the few, if not the only actual punks that I knew then. We went to school out in the rural suburbs or Portland, so it was mainly shit head red necks that made up our classmates. I remember he wore a bleached-stained Amebix shirt pretty regularly. I asked him about it, and he showed me them. I definitely did not understand or appreciate it. Thankfully I revisited as I got older. Narrowing down bands I love is a hard thing to do haha. I think bands that have had the most influence over me are bands like Axegrinder, Amebix, SDS, Effigy, Framtid, and Anti-Cimex. I grew up in Portland, so there was never a shortage of great crust bands. Hellshock has been and will probably always be my favorite band from our local scene. We've always been really spoiled here.

The new self-titled Hellshock record that came out this year is a top-notch release. Another Portland band Rigorous Institution put out the LP "Cainsmarsh" earlier this year on Blackwater records that is a breath of fresh air among crust. Super atmospheric and dark songs with a nice dash of amebix worship. The Lousy out of Boston are on some wild shit. They sound like early maiden/Metallica in the guise of crust. Also, Warkrusher out of Montreal are another killer stench band, on some seriously crushing bolt thrower/axegrinder worship. We've been fortunate enough to play with both of those bands on this east coast tour we're on.

As for my top crust records, I'd say:
Axegrinder — "Rise of the Serpent Men"
Framtid — "Under the Ashes"
SDS — "Never Arise"
Effigy —"Evil Fragments"

Traditional tattooing is what made me want to start taking art seriously. When I was 18 I was getting tattooed at a spot in Portland called Sea Tramp. It was opened by the legendary Bert Grimm, and is Portland's oldest shop. There were a bunch of his original flash sheets on the wall, and that was really inspiring to see all these timeless and classic designs when I was just a kid. So I started painting.

There weren't a ton of people doing any sort of dark imagery in traditional tattooing at that time, and as much as I loved the classic stuff, I wanted to see tattoos of fantasy/punk shit that was actually done well and didn't look like some weirdo garbage out of the 90's. I got super inspired by tattooers like Simon Erl, Derek Noble, and Tim Lehi. Dude's that obviously love and respected the fundamental properties of tattooing but were tattooing occult/metal/fantasy type shit.

I really just tried to apply all my love and interests of crust and fantasy in the way that those guys did to tattooing. My goal is to just have my designs read as traditionally as possible, even though it may not be the conventional traditional imagery.

Mostly the traditional fantasy tropes, character classes, monsters, and a fuck ton of dragons haha.

I take so much inspiration from the old DND and Warhammer manuals, as well as the Heavy Metal and White Dwarf magazines. My book/magazine collection is pretty out of control these days.

I also love doing characters from series, books, and video games as well. It's always fun to try and translate characters people are familiar with in my style, but mostly I love to create my own original characters for my clients and for paintings.

I have a couple reoccurring characters in my work that I never get sick of. There's the Wild Warrior Woman, she's usually got unruly charged hair that's two-toned and sports a chainmail bikini. Then there's her counter-part the Conan-esque charged hair barbarian. All hulking muscle and marred axes, that one. And finally the Sad Knight. He's probably my favorite of them all. My boy can never catch a break haha.

I feel like my creative approach isn't anything too special. I usually just throw on some music or an audiobook and start rifling through reference material like a mad man. There's usually a gigantic mess of books around my crafting table as I'm drawing or painting. Like Gandalf in the libraries of Minas Tirith looking for clues about the ring haha.

I try to keep my flash sets as tattooable as possible. So that they can translate as a tattoo just as they do on paper. Sometimes it's fun to break outside the box and do something wild for a painting, but I probably don't do it enough.

I feel very fortunate to have met so many cool people through tattooing. My clientele is very eclectic. I tattoo many like-minded individuals that all have similar interests to another or me in one way. Punks, metalheads, nerds, etc.

I end up becoming friends with a lot of my clients outside of work. We always get some long-winded talk about books or something then it just spitballs from there. I actually have a current DND campaign going, and our DM was originally a client of mine. He's now my good friend and personal trainer haha.

I love tattooing. It's introduced me to so many awesome people.

Inspiration is a hard thing to come by. I find myself in ruts a lot. Wether it's music or art, you can't be pumping out creative gold 100% of the time. I get real down on myself for not producing as many designs or as many riffs as I possibly can. I just try to take a step back and remember it's about quality and integrity and not just as much material as possible. When I'm really feeling lost, I'll just go back to the basics and start drawing either real traditional stuff, or stuff I've drawn a thousand times. Just to exercise my brain/skill.

This might sound corny, but I just find so much inspiration from my friends and peers. Watching my friends make killer music, art, or tattoos just pushes me to want to be better and create on some sort of elevated level. Productivity and committed work ethics haha. God I feel like that sounds so dumb, but I just love when I see people pushing constantly to succeed in creative endeavors. Especially when it's a labor of love that you know you're not going to see much financial payoff for. Pouring your heart into your passions is extremely important to me.

Books mainly haha. Novels, comics, manga, coffee table books, art books, you name it haha. Other than that I collect a lot of art from friends, bands, and other tattooers. It's important to me to keep myself surrounded by that sort of stuff. Swords and other weaponry of course...

Oh... but my real addiction is music gear. I think I have something like 11 guitars and basses, quite a few different vintage tube amps, and thousands of pedals. The quest for the perfect tone is an endless, but fruitful one.

Haha thanks! I got so many emails and DM's telling me Bolt Thrower was going to sue me, but I think I'm protected under the laws of parody.

I actually used to do a ton of cover art and commission work for punk/metal bands. It looks nothing like the work I do with tattooing. It was all black pen and ink illustration. I still do it from time to time, and mostly just for my own bands, but I don't really have an interest in doing commission work anymore. It was exhausting. I also took all that work off of my page because people kept asking me to tattoo like that and it was just stuff that would not work well as tattoos.

Other than that, I'd really love to get into acrylic or oil painting. Making traditional fantasy art like Whelan, Frazetta, Beasley, and Elmore is really the dream. To just be a charged old crust wizard toiling over canvas is where I hope to be when I'm old.

Writing too. Writing is a passion of mine that I don't feel like I've ever fully devoted enough time and energy into. A life goal is to write a novel. Maybe once im not doing 3 bands, and tattooing/painting full time, I'll figure it out.

CRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSST!

THE KNIGHT IN SHINING DENIM: INTERVIEW WITH MIKE MARION

Mike's page

Also Mike play in:
Decomp — gutar
Genogeist — bass and back up vocals
Siege Fire — vocals