At age five, Gery Nible knew what he wanted to be when he grew up - an artist. But it was thanks to his rock-'n-roll-lovin mother - who exposed him to horror movies and Alice Cooper - that he wanted to be a Metal artist. When he was old enough at the end of the Eighties to make some moves as an illustrator, Nible made a beeline for his ultimate inspiration - Slayer. What Nible thought would be the highlight of his career all went horribly wrong, and as a result, he turned away from the world of t-shirt design for a number of years. Because of this, early Nible designs - including his "Dead Skin Mask" Slayer shirt - are now some of the rarest in the Metal lexicon.

It was only the lure of working with Overkill that convinced Nible to
give Metal designs another chance, and since then has worked almost
exclusively with them and Overkill bassist D.D. Vernis side project The Bronx Casket Company on their tshirts, CDs, logos, videos and stage design. He speaks exclusively with Tshirt Slayer about meeting Gwar, schmoozing with the Ramones, designing for Testament and what really happened with Slayer.

Continue reading for the full interview..

Tshirtslayer peels the flesh back and has an indepth talk with Gery about his career..

TSS: When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?

GN: I knew what I “wanted to be when I grew up” when i was about 7 years old: I wanted to be an artist.  Throughout high school and college my focus was on learning to be an illustrator.

TSS: And where did your interest in Metal come from?

GN:  I was always a music fan, from early on.  I heard Little Richard for the first time through my mother.  She sat me down when I was 5 years old and had me watch Alice Cooper on TV.  My mom is a big music fan, and I became one too.  At the same age, I was allowed to watch the horror soap opera “Dark Shadows”… so when you're a fan of music and horror... well my interest in heavy metal bloomed from there.  It just got more extreme.

TSS:  How did you get started in the industry?

GN: I used to do some journalism work for a local fanzine in Kansas City. It was the area's only metal oriented magazine, and I was a writer for them, but also did a lot of logo work.  The editor was also a promoter for a lot of local shows so I ended up doing flyers, which led to band logos.  From there I was a music journalist and  had backstage access at shows, VIP Passes, so I'd get to go to the  meet and greets.  

There, I would see bands signing stuff:  albums people had brought from home, posters people had bought at shows etc. I wanted to find a way to give back to the bands and to have a unique souvenir, so I started doing caricatures of bands I liked and would show up at their shows, and go backstage with them.  I printed out a copy to give each member of of band, so they had the artwork as a gift and got their signatures on a copy for myself.

TSS: Who was the first band you gave a drawing to?

GN: The first band I made one for was Death Angel.  They played Kansas City with Rigor Mortis in 1988, and I made them a pen and ink black and white drawing and they flipped out over it!  Not long after that, I went and

saw Exodus and did the same thing: I made a cartoon of the band based on the song “Piranha” and it got a great reaction from the band. Later on Testament

were in town on the Practice What You Preach tour, and I  took my drawings to their show and their response was bonkers. They said that the design would look great on a tshirt and up to that point it had  never entered my mind as a possibility!  Their merch was done by Brockum Merchandising from New York,

and a month after I  gave Testament that art,  Brockum called and asked if they could license my art for a tshirt for the next leg of the “Preach” tour.  

Of course I said yes - I wasn't thinking of the money at all, I think they paid me $350 for the design?  It came out originally on a white tshirt and then later on  a black one.   Anyway, I kept doing caricatures for bands, and along the way Brockum found out about the one I had drawn for Exodus and contacted me about that for a tshirt.  Since I had drawn the original piece, the band had switched drummers,  so I had to redo the artwork with the new drummer’s face on it.  They bought that, and were then happy working with me, so they said  if  I was interested in designing for any particular band to let them know.

TSS: Is that how you got to do the Slayer shirt?

GN: Their big meat and potatoes at that time were Metallica, Guns and Roses and Slayer… and Slayer was the top band I’d want to draw for. So I said “I want to do a Slayer shirt” and they were like.. “Yeahhh no one gets to do a Slayer shirt so early on”. I was like “I really wanna do this!” and it turns out that they said they had a shirt they needed designing for a Whoopi Goldberg tour,  and they needed it right away.  So they said that if I could do it in two days I would get the Slayer shirt job. So I did it in two days: I offered them a few sketches and they couldn’t decide on which sketch they liked best, so they had to turn over them to Whoopi to handpick one - that was pretty cool, actually. From that, I got the Slayer account.

TSS: How was it working with Slayer?

GN:  Getting to work on a Slayer shirt - that was the peak, for me.  But the Slayer experience wasn't as great as I wish it would have been - it was quite anticlimactic, to be honest.  I lost interest in doing shirts after that.  I wasn't happy with way they wanted me to do the shirt, and lost heart after that:  when it was done, they offered me the  Faith No More tour shirt,  and I turned it down. I didn’t do tshirts for a few years, after that.

TSS: If it’s not a stupid question, why was Slayer the peak, for you?

GN: I’ve always loved Slayer! It was the aggression, the..... this is the part where I yell 'SSSLAYYYERRRRRR!!!' and every other Slayer fan will know what I mean. Reign In Blood is the greatest thrash album ever, and nobody's going to touch that and never will -  and nobody tries anymore, I suppose.  I’d done shirts for

Megadeth, Testament...  but for me it was just about Slayer, I mean, I thought that if I could do a Slayer shirt that would be the pinnacle of my career.

TSS: So what happened?  

GN: I don’t remember how we settled on doing a drawing for the song “Dead Skin Mask”, whether I had a concept for that or they contacted me.  I think the big problem was that everything went through the merch company - all my contact with Slayer over the shirts was through a middle person. They'd talk to Slayer and get back to me and vice versa, and all of the negotiation was done over the phone.  All the art sketches I sent in were sent via fax machines, too, so it  didn't look that great. This was long before you could send a pic through via email...

I did a design for “Dead Skin Mask” based on Ed Gein, the serial killer who wore the skin of his victims.  My idea was Ed Gien opening a kitchen cabinet completely stocked with skin masks, faces, almost like a wardrobe of faces.  Ed is looking over his shoulder - my father posed for the reference photos when I was getting the sketch down pat - and in the centre of where your focus would be Slayer's faces, skinned and hanging.  My inspiration for that was from growing up with horror movies - I knew who Ed Geine was from the movies, particularly a film called Deranged about  him that was great. I’m pretty well read on him as well from true crime books, so I was very familiar with the subject matter and coming up with a concept didn't take long.  I took a few Polaroids, and then to sketch it out took about two hours to get down what I wanted to do.

I sent a black and white copy through the fax machine to Brockum.  They showed it to Slayer and got back to me, saying that Tom Araya from Slayer liked the idea of Slayer skinned,  but on poles instead of hanging in the cupboard. I said ‘that’s great, but W.A.S.P. did that on The Last Command album: on the inner cover there’s a full colour illustration of the band on four stakes each having the head of a member of W.A.S.P.  They also did it as a set on stage so anyone into metal would have seen it already. But,  that was what they insisted Tom wanted, so I redid the sketch with those guidelines. It’s supposed to be skinned faces but it really looks like severed heads.  

For the logo I did the Slayer eagle logo, which they were using at the time,  with their old school pentagram made out of swords. It was very dramatic looking -  where the swords pierced the  pentagram there was blood spraying out, it goes over the back of the shirt and keeps running down.   The merch guys said  ‘No, Tom does't like it with that logo, he just wants it to look like you  dipped your finger in blood and wrote ‘Slayer’ on a wall.   So I changed that,  they said ‘great’.  We did up the artwork again by hand, a colour sample not  full colour separations like now,  and sent it off,  they made the tshirt, sent a cheque.  I got about 750 dollars,  and it was a done deal.  I think the shirt looks terrible! I hate it! They made the blood this hot magenta colour - it looks like melted crayon or candy - it doesn’t look scary at all.  

Time went on, and the Clash Of The Titans -  Slayer/Megadeth/Anthrax - tour, and I had a VIP pass as a music journolist.  So I decided to make four prints of my original artwork for the tshirt - it had blood all over it, a nasty pentagram.... I printed one for me to get autographed, as well.  I went backstage and Tom walked by.  I recognised him - Slayer are all very short by the way - Tom and Kerry King are both little guys. Anyway I went up to Tom and showed him the original design and said ‘I want you to sign it please’. He was a bit rude, like 'Yeah where did you get this' I said I drew it - I was the guy who did the design for this tshirt. He said ‘No you didn't,  we had our shirt done by Brockum, and this doesn't look like our shirt at all’. I explained that I really was the guy who did the design and said ‘this is what I sent in to be your shirt but the merch company said you didn’t like it and it got changed.’  He looked really surprised and said ‘I have never seen this before!  Why would I have Slayer written in sloppy writing in the background instead of this?’ And then he brought Kerry King over and he said ‘Look at this! This is what our shirt should have looked like!’  They had obviously never shown Slayer the shirt, and instead had made decisions based on what they thought the market would want.

So when I saw Slayer, and they were so excited, and they loved it more than the shirt that we were all stuck with at the end,  well that showed me it was a all just a business in the end:  all about money and someone wanting to look good.   If someone had given me Tom’s number, or he had mine, and we had been able to hash this out between us we could have had a shirt every bit as  good as Slayer has ever had. 

TSS: So you took a break for a while - what got you back into doing tshirts?

GN: There was a few years lag and then I started doing shirts with Overkill.  I hit it off with them pretty quickly and consider them good friends. We’re always ballbusting back and forth.  Working with them has gone on well over a decade now, and I’m content doing that:  it’s “metal” enough for me. I never tried to get other work or put up a website to generate more work.  These days I'll do anything Overkill contacts me about, and that’s about it.

TSS: Did you never regret not trying to follow up your meeting with Tom from Slayer?  Could more have come from that?

GN: When I started doing these  drawings I would fix a business card to the back of the piece when I gave it to people so they could contact me later.  I’m not sure if I did that when I gave my piece to Tom but to be honest I never gave it another thought.  That was the last Slayer album I thought was fantastic anyway.  I can't see myself getting excited about the Skeletons Of Christ, and God

Hates Us All is a terrible Slayer record.  When you look at their tshirt work, they keep using the screaming rotting skeleton guy.  But Wes Benscoter, who did the art for the Divine Intervention album cover,  he did a load of shirts for Slayer and they are great shirts. He does great work and I don't know if my shirts could have been as good.  But in the end I’m not disappointed that they didn’t call me.

TSS: Although you didn’t keep doing shirts, did you keep going to gigs and doing the drawings?

GN: Right about the same time the Slayer thing happened, I started working full time as product designer work in the gift industry - I do lots of Halloween designs, things like that.  I started doing that in 1989 full-time: tshirts had always been a side thing, not how I put food on the table.  But I kept up the cartoons: I did Anthrax, Overkill, Flotsam and Jetsam... I did one for Gwar which was a great experience!   They’re all cartoonists as well, and they were all bashing my art saying how bad it was, and that I should take up plumbing!   It was great.

I did one for The Ramones - that was a fantastic experience.  When I gave the caricature to the  Ramones, they stood in a circle together and autographed each other’s pictures so they each had their own autographed edition of their own. That was really unusual, they got each others autograph... it was amazing. You know, I’d heard that Johnny Ramone was an arsehole to deal with but he was wonderful to me and it was a great experience.

I did a caricature for Motorhead as well: I went to a show in Oklahoma - I had tried to see Motorhead a few times, and even even flew to different cities but for some reason they had always canceled their shows and I had never seen them live.  So I drove from Kansas to Oklahoma, and went to give them the artwork.  When we got to the club, I told the guys at the door “I was late” and they took me straight through the club and out to the tour bus (laughs).  I banged on the bus door, said I was there to see Lemmy and they told me to go to through to the back door and knock.  It was bizarre walking past Mikkey Dee and Phil Campbell – “Hi, guys!” – and straight back to Lemmy’s private quarters. It was Lemmyland back there! It was great, he didn’t just take the cartoon, he  went right through my portfolio!  He even looked at my toy designs and gave his opinions on that.  It was hysterical the comments he gave me! He said said he liked my black and whites better than my colour work which was interesting.  I told him I really wanted to do a Motorhead shirt, but just got the vague “we’ll see” response.  He's Lemmy! The last thing that is going to enter his mind is what goes on a Motorhead shirt, every shirt is warpig anyway... if it’s not then it’s not a Motorhead shirt! The artist Joe Petagno designed the Warpig shirt and does their cover art and all that anyway. I'd still love to have a shot at it, but that will probably never happen.

TSS: Have you used your artistic talents on any other music related projects?

GN:  I did my own fanzine in the nineties: it was very metal, and had metal oriented art work. I did most of the art and the layout, but I had a guy who did a comic strip for me. From that, I freelanced for other people for a while - I used to write for a few magazines, including a magazine called Huh.  Through that, I got hooked up with the Misfits to do a three day tour with them and do some artwork for the piece. So I went out on the road with them for three days and based on that experience we became friends.

I got into music journalism to get into shows and get free cds,  and of course to force my opinon on others.  As I stopped going out to gigs so much I then thought I should do something similar for horror movies.  So I  started a website in 2003 which lasted for a couple of years called HorrorwoodBabbleOn.com and we covered horror films new and old and music with a scarier edge. After three years I got tired of it  - overnight - and haven’t written since.

TSS: Who are your favourite metal bands now? Do you still go to shows?

GN:  To some extent as I grew older I - I don’t want to say ‘outgrew’ metal, but my tastes changed. I've always liked punk rock and I've always loved the Misfits, and now I lean much more towards punk.  Especially the horrorpunk genre – Blitzkid, The Crimson Ghosts, The Other, Balzac, Nim Vind… all that.   But I still go to occasional metal things - if Motorhead comes to town I’ll go to that.  Around the same time I got into thrash metal I got into hardcore punk – Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front - and  it seemed as time went on with metal I was less interested in how it changed: grunge came along and screwed up metal, but punk stays punk.  I like bands where every album sounds the same - Motorhead, the Ramones, AC/DC... I don't want to hear Lemmy’s industrial music phase, I want Motorhead to bash my head in with their first note! I can't say I have gotten that big into the recent resurgence of thrash metal, I think its’ cool that kids are getting the same kind of experience I had,  but having been there the first time… well, it’s a little like seeing KISS on a reunion tour - what’s the point when you  saw the real thing like I did in 1977, you know?

TSS: So how did you get involved with Overkill?

GN: Overkill:  it was through DD  Verni -  he is hysterical!  I took my artwork to an Overkill show, and  gave the artwork to the band and DD was a complete arsehole - a  typical New York Italian tough guy.  I mean he wasn’t necessarily rude but he didn't care.  The other guys – Blitz and Bobby Gustafson, especially – were really cool, but D.D….   I was  like ‘Ok whatever..’. About four years later I came home from work and there was a message from the D.D. on my answering machine, and they were interested in working with me.  Overkill were and still are one of my favourite bands so that was great!  I would show up with some art, we’d hang out, have dinner talk, watch movies on the bus... it started with business but a friendship blossomed.

I think the reason I thought DD was an arsehole is that we're almost too alike - we have the same taste in so many things, and we both love throwing insults back and forth - we insult each other at least once a month via email! Through that, since 1994 I can't tell you how many shirts Iv'e done, but I’ve also done stage backdrops and scrims, I’ve done their DVD cover...  I haven’t done an

album cover for them though.  I asked DD ‘When can I do an album cover?’ DD  said ‘Relax, you’re the tshirt guy not the album cover guy’.  But then he started his side band, The Bronx Casket Company,  and said ‘you can do an album cover for THIS band’.  I’d like to think he always held me aside or “kept me to himself” for the BCC instead of Overkill, but you never know with him. I have done the art for all three albums and art direction on the albums, logos and illustration and that’s fantastic. It’s great to do their stuff, I’m really into it.

TSS: What’s your process for doing a tshirt? How do you get your ideas?

GN: I would normally tap into something recent from the band: for example, when I did Megadeth I wanted to tie in something strong with their Rattlehead mascot,  so I did a caricature of the guys in the band and put hooks in their mouths and gave them ear caps with the chains on them.  I did for each member of band:: I thought it was something they would relate to. Testament had just put  out their Practice What You Preach album, so I put them all wearing priest garb had them on an altar, with Chuck Billy as the main priest giving a message from the pulpit and the other band  members praying.  I’ll always do something that ties in with the band’s record, but makes a clever reference to it.

TSS: How long does it take you to put a piece together?

GN:  To do a sketch takes anywhere from half an hour to an hour, maybe.  If I want to present something more tight, maybe two hours?  For actual finished art, two decades ago it would take 3 to 4 hours to colour something, I’d draw it, then laserprint in black and white,  hand colour that.  It depends on how elaborate it was - sometimes a full colour piece when all was said and done too 8 to 10 hours for a shirt.  It’s different now, of course, almost everything save the first thumbnail sketches are done digitally on a Mac.

TSS: What is your favourite tshirt you’ve ever done?

GN: My favourite would probably be the “20 Years Of Decay” shirt I did for Overkill. The ideas for that shirt and what the band wanted just clicked and it came together really fast and had a real Motorhead look.  My instructions were to lean towards a Motorhead look, but something harder… which it is, only crueler. I just feel like I hit it right on the head with that one: I'd gotten good at Photoshop so I used lots of metallic effects and glowing eyes... that kind of stuff. It’s still one I take out of the closet and put on: most of my shirts are in a box somewhere. There are very few I wear.

TSS: What do you think makes a good metal tshirt?

GN: Something that gets a reaction, you know - not just in Metal but with art, generally.  It can be very simple,  it can be a beautiful or ugly, a complex or simple piece - as long as gets a reaction. Like Alice Cooper’s Goes To Hell cover:  a close up of Alice’s grinning face, no makeup, but he’s GREEN. Alice Cooper Goes To Hell:  that's all you need to know.  Parents flipped.  They  wouldn't be pleased to see that record on a kid's turntable... Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks cover… “BOLLOCKS” in big letters…  pissed people off and got a reaction. I think you've gotta upset somebody:  that's the whole point. You’ve got to make your parents mad.  (laughs)

TSS: So what’s your favourite shirt of all time?

GN: My favourite tshirt isn’t a band tshirt - it’s a shirt I bought in Los Angeles with a rotting Mona Lisa on it. The Mona Lisa’s arms are crossed and her jaw’s come off.  There’s a guy who works for JSR Direct Merchandising who does the Overkill merch – his name’s Brett Weiss – and I deal with him all the time when I send in art for Overkill.  Somehow we got to discussing favorite shirts and it turns out he is the artist that did the Mona Lisa shirt!  Oh my God… I felt like a total fanboy!   It’s a shirt I will wear until it rots and falls apart… and then I’ll just get it made into a back patch. (laughs)  As far as bands go I’m going to be totally generic and say Motorhead’s  War pig  shirt.

TSS: What is your favorite album cover?

It’s not metal, but probably Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell.  It’s awesome.  The motorbike is roaring out of the grave with enough force that the rider’s nearly snapped in half.  I love the colors on that.  Richard Corben – also from Kansas city – is one of my all-time favorite artists.  I like Pushead’s covers too – particularly the one he did for Kinghorse.That’s an amazing album cover -  just black ink and watercolour, nothing extravagant,  just this little image that works well.

TSS: Would a bad cover or shirt stop you from listening to a band?

GN: A bad piece of art could prevent me from buying an album if I just saw  it on a shelf, sure. There are things I haven't bought because the art was so bad.  But, that said, Reign In Blood is the all time greatest thrash album, but it has one of the wors album covesr of all time (laughs). However,  I can't  see another album cover on that record - it is an iconic piece.  I’ve bought an album where it has absolutely amazing cover art and the band was crap, so it works both ways. The first CD I ever bought was Prong’s Beg To Differ, another Pushead cover.  I didn’t even have a CD player but bought it because I thought the cover art was just so good, I had to have it. A month after I bought a CD player and really liked  the music as well (laughs)!

Gery has kindly given us some examples of his work..

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