Alan Robert’s Monster Chompers

Menacing the Metaverse this October 31

Published in

WHALE Members

10 min readOct 26, 2021

“I grew up on old school, tangible collections like comic books and baseball cards, so I understood the rarity aspect and authenticity, like most of my generation. It was wrapping my head around cryptocurrency and how the blockchain works that was more of a learning curve.” — Alan Robert

Before we get into the NFT nitty-gritty, come closer, young ones. Let me spin you a tale of eons past, almost 30 years ago.

Once upon a time, Brooklyn, New York was a far cry from the hipster haven of today. It was a grittier Brooklyn of pavement and perseverance. It was the Brooklyn that birthed a metal scene still lauded and imitated around the world today.

This Brooklyn boasted L’amour Rocks, one of the most iconic metal bars on United States soil ever to exist.

International acts like Metallica and Iron Maiden took historical steps on their journey to stardom playing this metal mecca. And forged in the flames (or smoke machines) of L’amour’s stage were Brooklyn’s own bands like Type O Negative, Biohazard, and the hero of our story, Alan Robert’s own Life of Agony.

Life of Agony was a frothing sea of furious angst bursting through the music industry floodgates in the early 1990s. Mental health wasn’t a hot topic when their first official release “River Runs Red” dropped in 1993. This Roadrunner Records debut was a soundscape depicting a depressed teenager whose constant failures impel him to commit suicide. Sound clips of answering machine messages (1993, hellOOoo? ) an abusive mother and the actual sounds of him killing himself made this album into an audial gut punch that actually became therapeutic to no small amount of fans. It recognized and validated their pain, making them feel less alone.

Respect

And musically? Fuhgettaboutit. The blend of brutality, groove, and Keith (now Mina’s) tortured yowls was nothing like any other music out at the time. “River Runs Red” was named by Rolling Stone as being one of the “100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time”.

River Runs Red at Coney Island

Life Of Agony went on hiatus for quite some time, but came back strong with 2019’s “The Sound of Scars”, named Album of the Year by The Aquarian. LOA has released six studio albums to date and sold over one million records worldwide. The band is still touring today with shows in Australia and Europe scheduled for 2022.

Brooklyn has changed a lot since LOA first hit the scene. This entertaining article posted on Tyranny of Tradition in 2014 succinctly reflects the situation.

But Alan Robert didn’t have to change who he was to go above and beyond his rock star roots. Robert holds a BFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts (one of his teachers at SVA was definitive Thor artist Walt Simonson). Robert never stopped creating visual art when he was in the band. He designed Life of Agony’s logo, merch, and album jackets, as well as art for others, including the movie poster art for the #1 box office smash hit The Nun.

So when things were on the back burner with LOA, Robert became a best-selling coloring book 🖍 author on Amazon with his critically acclaimed “Beauty of Horror” series released by IDW Publishing.

IDW also released Alan Robert’s “Killogy”, “Wire Hangers,” “The Shunned One” and “Crawl To Me” titles, also to critical acclaim.

Rodney Barnes (The Boondocks, Everybody Hates Chris) partnered with Alan Robert to develop an animated TV series for “Killogy.”

Killogy brought back the old Brooklyn with a host of celebrity cameos, native Brooklyn wit… and zombies! NSFW

After creating and publishing art in so many different media and venues, it was only a matter of time for Alan Robert to delve into the NFT scene.

Alan Robert’s old-school comic book skills are now coming to the Metaverse as the Monster Chompers NFT collection.

Robert partnered with software agency Way Too Digital to build a platform and market the Monster Chomper NFTs. Way Too Digital is the same group behind several high-profile projects for Gary Vee, NTWRK, and Cardano.

The $WHALE Community catches up with Alan Robert in this exclusive interview.

You’re a creative legend. You had some qualms about NFTs at first because of IP rights. What made you decide to finally get into NFTs?

I’ve been interested in NFTs for a while now, but I was a little hesitant to jump in at first, because I was a bit concerned on how it all worked in terms of intellectual property rights. It seemed like a gray area, because it was so new, and there wasn’t a lot of solid information about that. So, I felt more comfortable dipping my toe in the water with a brand new title, instead of jumping right in with something already established like “The Beauty of Horror.” The cool thing is that Monster Chompers is specifically designed to be a NFT collection, and it’s been so much fun to develop.

How did you hook up with Way Too Digital and why did you choose them to do it?

I originally started chatting with Way Too Digital’s CEO Agustin Rodriguez 6–8 months ago about the idea of creating a Beauty of Horror coloring app. We had lengthy discussions about how we could collaborate with art and technology to bring that concept to life, and we seemed to really hit it off. He’s a bass player too, so we constantly share bass pix (laughs). That coloring app project is very involved and would take a long time to develop, so we pushed it off to next year, possibly.

When I had the idea for the Monster Chompers NFT collection, Agustin was the first one I reached out to. He and the Way Too Digital team loved the artwork right away. It came together very quickly and organically. We’ve been having a blast together ever since, with a lot of Zoom meetings and collaborative efforts. They are a fun bunch of people over there. It’s been great working with them on this.

I see you have vampires, werewolves, zombies etc. How many features did you draw for each element? Like 10 eyes, 10 mouths, etc?

The rarity traits were top of mind when creating the Monster Chompers NFTs. The whole collection is rarity-based and we’ll have those traits on display broken out by percentages. There are 11 different characters, including vampires, werewolves, zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghosts, etc. and something like 60 sets of eyes, a dozen different teeth, 10 noses, backgrounds and multiple color variations.

To top that off, each monster is chowing down on hilariously bizarre food items from the All-Nite Eatery menu, including specialties such as Spaghetti & Eyeballs, Barbecued Bat, and Unicorn Poppers (made with real unicorn meat!) to name a few. There are some super rare foods, too, like the much sought-after Electric Eel and Fire Eel, which include some very cool visual effects.

I think of the Monster Chompers All-Nite Eatery like a pop-up restaurant for monsters that serves exotic delicacies. This project is so unique and so much fun. It has a lot of potential to expand into other media as well, because there’s a real story behind it.

What’s your vision for the community you want to build?

The Monster Chompers community is all about our love for horror, monsters, and dark comedy, while building awareness to help feed the hungry by donating to charity. That’s all part of our roadmap, and the details will be up on the MonsterChompers.com website once we start pre-sales on 10/31.

Do you have any concrete plans to kind of woo fans down the NFT rabbit hole?

Oh yes! We have a lot of cool perks and unique rewards setup for fans to get in on this, including special NFT airdrops, early access to exclusive merch items and much more. I realize that there will be a lot of Life of Agony fans and Beauty of Horror fans that want to be a part of this, but have never even heard of NFTs before, so we will have easy step-by-step instructions on how to set up a crypto wallet and all that.

“Through NFTs, artists get to control their own destiny again.” — Alan Robert

As the founder of an iconic rock band, where do you see your involvement with music-based NFTs going, if anywhere?

I think it’s all very interesting and I think it gives the power back to the artists in a lot of ways. Through NFTs, artists get to control their own destiny again. I’ve watched the music industry change so much over the last 30 years with technology. Fans consume music so differently now as compared to when I was growing up. I think this might be the next step in the evolution.

As a best-selling horror author/artist, do you see interest from people who have purchased your book more than from the metal scene?

I think the interest for Monster Chompers strikes a good balance between the Life of Agony crowd, Beauty of Horror fans, as well as NFT collectors. It’s funny because a lot of Beauty of Horror fans are not into metal at all, so they’re not interested in LOA, but they love monsters (laughs)!

The coloring books are much more mainstream than the band and are not only found on Amazon’s bestseller lists anymore. You can find them on the shelves in everyday stores like Walmart, Target and Barnes & Noble, and translated in multiple languages around the world. The Beauty of Horror is its own beast in a way. Life of Agony fans have been with me all the way and have supported everything I’ve done over the years, including side projects like my punk band Spoiler NYC, comic series such as Killogy, Crawl to Me, and Wire Hangers, you name it. I am so very grateful that they’re coming along for the ride with this new Monster Chompers NFT project.

Do you think you’ll ever get into the whole 1/1 NFT gig?

Absolutely. All of it interests me very much. I think it’s a lot like doing 1/1 custom sketches for fans at Comic-Con. Very similar!

Do you have any favorite NFT artists now? Do you own any NFTs yourself?

I admit, I am still such a newbie and I do not even own any NFTs yet, but I plan to mint a bunch of these Monster Chompers for myself as soon as they’re ready. I love the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Sneaky Vampire Syndicate. The artist is fantastic. His style kinda reminds me of Gorillaz, which is a favorite of mine. I can definitely understand why they are so popular. Other cool collections are Sup Ducks, DeadFellaz, DeadHeads, and VeeFriends.

I always thought the metal fanbase 🤘 was a great place to sell NFTs because when people are fans they want the merch. Have you seen interest from people who weren’t into NFTs before because of what you’re doing now?

I agree. Yes, fans who weren’t aware of this whole NFT thing are suddenly very interested and asking questions on how it all works. I’m still learning a lot myself. I’m definitely no expert, by any means, but I’m very excited about the possibilities and trying something new and different. I grew up on old-school, tangible collections like comic books and baseball cards, so I understood the rarity aspect and authenticity, like most of my generation. It was wrapping my head around cryptocurrency and how the blockchain works that was more of a learning curve.

Do you think there are any barriers to crossover that can be addressed?

I do think that there are still some gray areas with the IP aspect of it. For instance, as far as I know, you cannot trademark a brand solely as an NFT. The IP needs to be established and used in other formats in order to be protected. So, I think it is a bit difficult at this early stage to prevent piracy of brands in that space. I also see a ton of NFT copycats, which I guess is common in every industry, but it is even more apparent with NFTs because no one is really regulating it. It seems a bit like the Wild West. Either way, it’s exciting to see it grow so quickly and I’m sure all of this will be figured out sooner than later.