Barrier Kult, founded by Deer Man of the Black Woods, is a collective of skaters discontent with the direction skateboarding is currently heading, specifically since the mid-90s. It was established in Vancouver in early 2003.
Their main source of inspiration and veneration has been two specific articles from industry magazines; one is “Aggro Zone” written by Neil Blender and another, “Street Sheet,” written by Mark Gonzales and Garry S. Davis for Transworld Skateboarding magazine.
They decided to skate only “barriers,” initially focusing solely on one in Jersey City, though they gradually expanded their frontiers to other “barriers” in their neighboring country.
Adorned with black balaclavas, fingerless leather gloves, and denim vests more than two decades old, they defy unimaginable tricks on these rough and steep transitions that the urban mother provides them. Tricks like slappy, slash, tailblock, 50/50 stall, boneless one, and lap-over grind define their style and religion.
They use skateboards with almost no “nose” to navigate such degrees of incline in mere centimeters. They are sponsored by Skull Skateboards, Heroin, Emerica, and Gullwing (specifically the Super Pro III).
Their entire aesthetic is drawn from mid-80s skateboarding, mixed with imagery of evil worship, using both their graphics and images from classic pagan ritual films. We also add black war metal as their accompanying soundtrack. All these ingredients give rise to BARRIER KULT. They go beyond simple aesthetic differentiation; it is something more spiritual and philosophical, using the barrier as an authentic object of worship and altar of their religion. Militancy and the dissemination of their cult are their main premise.
They claim to use Black Metal to keep the militancy of their members pure, seeing a true relationship between skateboarding culture and the worship and ritual cultures of occultism.
In the 80s, skateboarding adopted a punk attitude against all norms, rules, and systems, but by the mid-90s, that attitude was lost, and it became a mere sport with athletes, featuring extremely complex and creativity-lacking tricks. This attitude leads them to reclaim lost values.
Currently, there are 12 active and titled members. Some of them go by the following names: Crusade Templar Horse Skeleton in San Francisco, Moss-Covered Witchmaker Candlemas in San Diego, and Beast of Gevaudan in Vancouver.
All this craziness we are telling you about is compiled in a book by Anthony Tafuro, unfortunately currently out of stock.
Photography by Anthony Tafuro.
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