Head Tatts For Sure

Dan Renal, 27, sells expensive salon shoes at Stanford Shopping Center. At work, he wears hand-tailored suits and exotic leather oxfords. A pressed shirt and tie accentuate his dapper look, but the 11 tattoos underneath them do not.

Graveyard scenes, demons, pentagrams and upside-down crosses span across Renal’s arms, shoulders, back and chest. He says there’s more to come.

“Tattoos are the way that I express my inner demon,” says Renal, who likes to get drunk and listen to death metal when he’s not on the job. “I just like them because they’re sick.”

After getting his first tattoo 10 years ago, Renal became addicted to them. Now they are part of who he is.

“If it were up to me, I’d be completely covered, but I can’t because I have to work,” Renal says. “I’d have head tatts for sure.”

Ali and the iPOD

Ali Thanawalla goes to bed with his iPod, literally.

One morning, he woke up with the headphones wrapped around his neck.

Unlike any of his friends and family, Ali likes heavy metal, even while he is trying to sleep.
“Music helped me realize that there are other people in the world who have similar problems,” says Thanawalla. “Then, I didn’t feel so alone.”

On September 13th 1996, Thanawalla’s mother passed away, shortly after having a stroke at the age of 47. Thanawalla says that he was devastated, but within a few years he began to find some solace in his favorite heavy metal lyrics.

“I think about my mom everyday, and having to deal with the stress of not having a girlfriend, and just everyday life,” says Thanawalla. “When I get into fights with people, and arguments, I listen to music when I go to bed. Otherwise, I’ll be up all night thinking about it.”

As a full-time journalism student with intense passion for sports, travel and photography, Thanawalla has plenty of things to keep his mind occupied, but none of them really quench his thirst for transposition, nor put him to sleep, like heavy metal.

“It just sooths me, and it keeps my mind from wandering to things I don’t want to think about,” says Thanawalla. “Now it is something I do every night, whether I am stressed out or not.”

Thanawalla went online and found the lyrics to his favorite song. “Jade,” from Cleveland-based metal group Chimaira’s 2001 release, “Pass Out Of Existence”, ends with these four lines:

“Can I find a way out besides this?
I need it
I want to be where you are
I miss you”

“Ali finds these obscure metal bands from Norway and Eastern Europe, says best friend Ben Enos, 22. “He is really into it.”

There are eight albums on Thanawalla’s iPod which are set to play on heavy rotation. Heaven Shall Burn, Deadlock, All That Remains, Unearth, Killswitch Engage, Diecast, Hatebreed and Lamb of God are at the top of the hard-core artists on his list.

“His choice in music is totally different then mine, says Thanawalla’s father Hussain, 63. “I don’t like Metallica.”

Hussain Thanawalla, who enjoys listening to Elton John and The Beatles, says that he is used to seeing his son with his headphones on, especially when he picks him up at the North Berkeley Bart Station, near their home in Kensington, CA.

Out of respect, Thanawalla always takes off his headphones before entering his father’s car.

“I don’t get to see him on a daily basis, but wherever he is, I am 100% sure that he has his ipod with him,” says Thanawalla’s cousin Sarah Ruzanov, 26. “I really don’t understand his musical taste, but then he doesn’t understand mine either.”

Recently, Ruzanov offered to go to a heavy metal concert with Thanawalla for his birthday, but only if he would go with her to see Third Eye Blind, first.

Thanawalla agreed.