Ok. Fine. I give in.

Lust wins out every time with me. Which should not come as a great crashing surprise to anyone.

I have a ring on order from Deadringer. Mark and Steve, the main men behind Deadringer, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

They don’t have a pic of exactly what I’m getting up on their site yet, but it’s basically a combination of the two rings pictured below. The ring itself is the classic skull (the one on the left), but with the ‘shadow finish’ from the super-high-end armageddon (The one on the right).

These rings are made custom, so the lead time was quoted at about two weeks for production, plus whatever it takes for shipping. These guys are way the fuck down in New Zealand, so this will have the distinction of being the best-traveled of my skull rings, at least until I myself get south of the equator again. My other two rings are made in the USA.

The thing I love about this particular ring is that it’s the most realistic skull ring I’ve ever seen, beating out even my clapton skull from Serious Silver. Steve Gillespie, the jeweler behind Deadringer, clearly sat down with a real skull, or at least an anatomically correct replica, and made a ring that re-created the shape almost exactly. I don’t think you’re ever going to find a better, more exact, real skull ring than this.

It’s wholly different animal than your classic rock ‘n roll skull ring, of which my favorite in the universe is the one made by my friend Tony Creed – my Elvis Lives skull. That’s a creature of rock n’ roll and horror comics, bikers and pirates, a thing born of artistic imagination.

The rock n’ roll skull ring has a vast range – most of it ugly, much of it stupid. The standouts though, Creed’s work and Crazy Pig, some of Bill Wall’s work, are a distillation of a Motorhead/biker aesthetic.

Different things. Different ends of an artistic spectrum. I love them both, the realistic skull and the rock ‘n roll skull. And I can’t wait to see this Deadringer piece.