For the past fifteen years, Jan Utecht has toured North America, Europe, the UK and Scandinavia with his black metal band Occvlta. During this time he started taking photos with a small format camera, inspired by analogue and point-and-shoot photography. This gave him the opportunity to portray more than a hundred metalheads, friends and musicians.

Some of the people you see in this book are pictured on posters that have hung on the walls of rehearsal rooms for decades, including his own. These band photos had a strong influence on Utecht’s initial experiences with heavy metal music, particularly black metal. Genuine Leather is a reflection of all this – how he perceived this music as a teenager and how he perceives it now as an adult.

With a foreword by renowned journalist and author Jörg Scheller.