Art Assistant: Andie Preuss Krampus: Sean Forrester There is a chill in the air as the goat-headed figure of Krampus looms from the shadows and Eric Whitney’s icy stare sharpens, his skin daubed the colour of dirty snow. Much as the neo-Gothic aesthetic of our cover shoot is on-point for his murky alter-ego Ghostemane, however, we can’t help think the mythic anti-Santa would struggle to pin the real Eric down. Even as darkness falls and the deep freeze sets in, he simply will not stand still. A lost year for most of us has thrown up untold opportunity for the alt.metal trailblazer. Time off tour meant redoubled focus on the triumphant self-release of the eighth Ghostemane LP ANTI-ICON. A (quarantine safeguarded) summer sojourn in Prague – where Kerrang! last caught up with him – elevated that album’s skintight, black-clad aesthetic. Aggressive inroads were made on the exclusive world of high fashion. Hell, he even found time to get engaged to girlfriend Moriah Rose Pereira – AKA Poppy, to you, us and the world – whose January K! cover, he laughs, is framed and mounted a couple of feet from his own.