On the Members page of the Black-Ambient site, the picture pertaining to the user NerveGas is titled josh2a.gif – why isn’t NerveGas the same Josh as the other usernames?
If we go to the user bands page of the site – we can see that the second band down is credited to the user NerveGas, and when the image is clicked through it leads to this page – owned by a Joshua Bowens. We can see from the portrait at the top of the page that this is clearly the same person as NerveGas. There are no references on this page to God_Haunt or ArcaneBow, so we can assume that the only thing in common between the two are a shared first name. However, the connection to Velvet Cacoon is more intricate.
At the bottom of his homepage is a link to Cold Burial System, a label and design company. Quoting from Bowen’s page:
Cold.Burial.System is a domain that Dan Marvin and I are working on together. It will feature an art gallery, a webzine, the homepage to Fossil Dungeon Design and the Cold.Burial.Design team. Cold.Burial.Design is dedicated to creating professional, artistic webpages for bands, companies, or persons wanting a unique look and feel to their w3 page. You may contact me or Dan for more information, or simply visit the site.
There is a link to the website on Bowen’s page , but it has not been well-preserved by the Wayback Machine. Even so, we can see directories for Nocturath and Veinke here. This is the first reference to a Daniel Marvin, whom Bowens describes as:
A very creative artist. Talented and intelligent musician, creating the art that of which is Veinke. I am proud to be working with Dan on the cold.burial.system design team.
Both Nocturath and Veinke are also featured on this compilation .
Josh Bowens would later go on play in various black metal bands, including Kult ov Azazel, and to be a graphic artist (also see his credits on discogs ) involved with Profane Productions , which released Xasthur’s first demo A Gate Through Bloodstained Mirrors on CDR in 2001. The Myspace page for Profane Productions is attributed to ‘Mike Lovernios’ who organised at least two compilations, the first featuring Veinke and the other being a tribute compilation to the USBM artist Judas Iscariot, featuring ‘Birkenau’, a moniker of Steve Holliman of the band ‘I Shalt Become’, who was also a member of the Black-Ambient channel and geocities page.