One of the greatest skateboarders of his generation—a back-to-back gold medalist at the X Games and the innovator of tricks like the cab front blunt on a handrail—Chris Cole is a longtime metalhead, who does his utmost to spread the good word when he steps out in a major contest. "I'll, every time, try to pick the heaviest thing that I can think of," he says of selecting his musical accompaniment when he competes, "because I think it's really funny that everybody has to, for the next one minute, listen to what I listen to. So I'll just think, like, All right, yeah, Arsis. And I'll be like, 'Arsis, "Dust and Guilt."' Then everybody in the stands has to listen to it—and it's awesome."
Last year, instead of forcing skating fans to listen to metal, the Pennsylvania native made metal fans watch him skate, when he and a few other pro riders appeared in the music video for "Was it Worth it?", the lead single off his favorite band Children of Bodom's latest album, Relentless Reckless Forever. "They were psyched because apparently video shoots aren't very fun normally, but they were like, 'This is the most fun video shoot ever,'" he recalls. "And we were like, 'Really?' And they're like, 'Yeah they usually suck.' And we were just skating around."
Cole has been friends with the Finnish metallers ever since he attended a Bodom show and meet-and-greet a few years back. "I gave Alexi [Laiho, Bodom frontman] one of my graphic shirts, through [skateboard company and Cole endorsers] Zero," says the skateboarder, who was initially too modest to reveal his identity at the signing. "It had this grim reaper on it and I thought that it matched their stuff and that he would like it. That night Alexi came out onstage wearing that shirt! Just to be cool. It was pretty awesome."
Cole, who recently launched his own metal-influenced clothing line, Omit Apparel, attests to a mutual respect between him and the band. "I don't understand how they do what they do and they don't understand how we do what we do," he says, "but we both think the other one is so cool. It's a great thing." However, while Cole may not possess the shredding prowess of Laiho, he has played guitar since the age of 10 and has quite the ax collection, including a few prized Laiho signatures. "I think there's like 28," Cole admits. "It's pretty ridiculous when Alexi has, like, 8. It's excessive. Instead of learning how to properly play them, I just got new ones, and I was like, This is so exciting to hold!"
