The Brutal Black Project: when pain is the protagonist

The Brutal Black Project is a total experience.

When you think of Blackwork, the first thing that comes to mind is black surfaces. But there are several ways to reach them, and their reasons as well.

The "Brutal Black Project" has as its motto "no pain, no gain"

A bit too much, right? Some people really think that getting tattooed is about feeling pain to really live the experience to the fullest. We’ll tell you what it is about and why it has become both so controversial and demanded.

What is the Brutal Black Project?

It is a project whose fundamental bases are pain, blood, and brutality in tattoos.

Nice, right?

Its creators, Valerio Cancellier, Cammy Stewart and Phillip 3Kreuze, a Scot, an Italian, and a German, aim to reaffirm the foundations of ritual and the revival of tattooing.

According to them, the fundamental value is to take the tattoo as a ritual experience.

For them, classic tattoos are only aesthetic, they don’t consider them real tattoos. For them, puncture means pain, and the more extreme, the better.

The project has nothing to do with the result, but with the process and with going back to the primitive and to the initiation rite.

Tattoos are not planned, they are felt. Some sessions can last long hours, but the goal is always to cover as much as possible and in the fastest and most painful way.

Here there is no empathy, there is no compassion, there is no protection, it is just the opposite. The process that the Brutal Black Project entails has to do with going through all the limits and testing the person.

If you want something, earn it with your sweat and blood

It needs to be consensual, though. Those who are going to get tattooed know what they are going to face and everything is previously agreed upon… Except for the design.

When it comes to “choosing” tattoos, lucky clients can actually decide where to have them. It is more about the implementation of the freehand technique and a release of excitement by the procedure than a preconceived design or tattoo.

For them, the design does not exist, and to talk about it would be to address something merely aesthetic that would have nothing to do with tattoos.

According to Cammy “Sometimes it's good to go beyond the limit, both for the artist and the client in terms of resilience and determination. There is no final goal, life is a series of events, and this is just one of them. A tattoo can help you find your roots and learn that pain, like pleasure, can be processed as you wish. It is nothing more than an intense moment in a life full of easily forgotten feelings.

If we went back to the tribe, you would be a warrior. Keep that in mind. It is easy to become a slave in this world we live in.”

This movement represents a community or a specific group of people, who think that physical pain is very positive, without which life does not exist.

Tattoos, but at what cost

When tattooing, the procedure is freehand. Only the area is chosen and then everything is left in the hands of the tattoo artists.

The cover-up tattoo is much more hurtful and invasive than normal. The idea is to cover large areas with black and for this, they use many grouped needles, so many that you never thought it was possible.

Regular cups can’t be used with those grouped needles. Therefore, they use gigantic cups so that the machines can take the amount of ink they need.

Well, now think about the damage they can do to your skin. The clients' bodies change completely at the end of the session, covered in extremely thick and violently tattooed lines.

The sessions are carried out together, sometimes it's the three founders, or sometimes it's just two, but they all work together in each session, increasing the levels of pain, since the person is tattooed, or rather injured, in several areas of their body at the same time.

People who decide to get their faces tattooed have their faces completely swollen and disfigured. Tattoos like these end up oozing and bleeding during and after the session.

It is also normal to take small breaks in the middle of the day to rest, breathe, cry and even vomit…

Nothing is free: "no pain, no gain”

This procedure or experience, as they prefer to call it, is not for everyone. It is for those who have the courage to endure long sessions of total pain, brutality, savagery and zero empathy.

If you want something in life, you have to earn it. That is what tattoo artists and clients of this style think. Just like goals and results are achieved with effort, here the equivalent is a couple of hours of pure suffering for the sake of it.

People who get tattooed in this style do not go for the final result, but rather to go through this experience and become stronger when it’s finished. After all, there are many very painful situations in life, so a session of brutality is nothing.

And you, would you embark on a similar project?

If you need a hand to expand your knowledge and learn new techniques to help you achieve your goals, you might be interested in taking a look at our catalog of professional tattoo courses.