Tattoo master Paul Booth isn't exactly known for his upbeat ink work. That's why we're a little concerned about something he wrote about here in his second Headbangers Ball Blog Guest column. You'll know what we're talking about when you get to it, and afterwards we'll have a little audience participation survey so you can help us figure out just how depraved the guy really is. Read carefully and enjoy:

I believe it happened on the first Family Values tour with Korn and Limp Bizkit. We had stopped in San Francisco and while I was there I rented a car, went and bought this collection of babies off this guy and went back to the venue.

I wanted to show off the kids, so I brought them up to the main dressing area where everyone congregated. I started showing them to friends and the next thing you know, there’s a little museum going on. I had all these babies lined up on the table in a room that was full of people. Half of them were into it and the other half of were totally freaked out. Of all people, the person that was most interested in the babies was Hed from Korn. We spent a bit of time together holding them up to the light and looking at the little fingernails and the little hairs on their head -- creepy stuff like that. When I heard recently that he'd found God, I thought, "That’s not the Hed I remember!"

The other thing I remember from that night was how freaked out Primus frontman Les Claypool was. Every time I glanced over at him, it seemed like he would always be facing me no matter where I was in the room. I think the babies got to him. It was almost like he was afraid I’d get behind him or something. I don’t know if that’s what it was or not, but it was funny because, from my point of view, it looked like I scared the guy so much he wouldn’t turn his back to me. We kind of played this game of run-around-the-room for about an hour. I thought that was pretty funny.

Okay, now here's the audience participation part of our post. In the end of the first paragraph when Booth writes that he "bought this collection of babies off this guy and went back to the venue," is he talking about:

a) scary dolls b) abducted children c) dead fetuses d) preserved baby pigs

Remember, you can help make a difference.... Ooop, sorry, for a minute we thought we were Nikki Sixx talking about getting kids off drugs. We gotta lay off the lattes.

Since we're driven by metal and fascinated with tattoos, we figured it was high time to reach out to heavy metal tattoo genius Paul Booth and ask him to toss us a guest blog. Well, it turns out Booth is as prolific with a pen as he is with a tattoo needle. He sent us numerous anecdotes about his misadventures with metal legends, all of which are well worth the ink (get it, ink?) they're printed on. So, we decided to give Booth a weekly outlet for tattoo tales that'll continue until he runs out of stories or suffers repetitive stress injury from writing and can no longer tattoo rock stars. Here's the first edition of Paul Booth's Thrashin' Ink.

I met Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera at a tattoo convention out in either Arizona or California. I can’t recall which, but I remember the meeting clear as day. Igor had a mutual friend introduce us because he felt weird coming up and approaching me. The funny thing was I was a huge Sepultura fan and, had I known he was there, I probably would’ve bugged the s--- out of him. Read more...