Belgian Band Turns Tattoo Machines Into Instruments

Photo Gallery Follows Video and Text

By now we pretty much expect most musicians to be covered in tattoos. Hell, we don’t even bat an eye when some guys from bands spend their days not touring working in a tattoo shop. But seeing the way that Belgian band Tat2NoisAct integrates their love of body art into their music will leave you speechless.

Almost every time that the band takes the stage, usually in front of very intimate audiences, some of the members end up getting tattooed. Yes, you heard that correctly, they are tattooed as they perform. But that’s not it, they have actually modified the tattoo machines in a manner that allows them to become part of the music. By amplifying the sound of the machine’s natural buzz members of the band tattoo in rhythm with the music being played around them, thus turning what is usually a purely visual art into something much more.

In an interview with VICE Netherlands the members of the group explained how tattooing on stage went from being a bit of a joke to becoming an integral part of their performances. In the video below you can see the band’s singer, Fyl, performs with multiple needles piercing through his skin while a man in a luchador mask tattoos his backside.

“Singing and getting inked is a great combination,” Fyl explained to VICE. “You don’t notice the pain. I actually think I am a better vocalist when I am being tattooed.”

In case you are worried about the possibilities of this all going poorly there is some reassurance to be found in the day job of band member Kostek—he’s a tattoo artist. Thanks to his training as an artist the band still follows every sanitary requirement that you would expect during their performances. So while the show might get rowdy, and the lines on the tattoos are a little bit crooked (you try tattooing in a luchador mask in the middle of a punk concert), no one is walking away from a Tat2NoisAct show with an infection.

Anyone who has ever been in a band or gone to an especially raucous concert knows the sort of aches and pains that arrive the next morning, the members of Tat2NoisAct know that experience well, and they have the permanent reminders inked into their skin. “Sometimes I tattoo my face, sometimes I don’t,” Fyl told VICE. “Looking in the mirror always takes some getting used to the day after a show. But I don’t do it because I hate myself, or anything like that—I’m a pretty happy guy.”

In the gallery below you can see some pictures of the band performing as well as some of the tattoos Kostek has done in the relative comfort of his Brussels tattoo studio.