Est. 1997 · horror-punk
Monster Squad
Started in a Bay Area garage in high school. Twenty-eight years on, still touring, still recording, still the loudest reason to drive to a club on a Tuesday.
[7" coming, fall '26]
Tattoo · Paint · Sculpt · Bands
PHIL GECK
Davis, California. Bay Area kid who never quit.
Twenty-six years of needles. Thirty years of band practice. One guy, four mediums, all of it serious.
This isn't a tattoo shop site — that's over here. This is the rest of the story.
01.
INK
Real animals. Honest skulls. Faces of people you love.Twenty-six years deep. Phil tattoos full-time at Death or Glory in Davis — a shop he's co-owned with Chelsea Daskalos for fourteen years and counting.
The work runs realism: animals you actually believed when you saw them, skulls drawn from the bone, portraits where the eyes have weight. He doesn't chase trends. He picks up a needle and works it until it's right.
02.
PAINT
Specimens. Static animals. Things that don't move but should.Phil's current series, Specimens, treats animal forms like museum cards: studied, posed, mounted — then painted with the violence of remembering them alive.
Most are oil and house enamel on found wood. A few have escaped to private collections in the Bay. Prints, smaller works, and wearable runs go through Destroy Art Inc.
"the painting is where i'm honest with myself" — pg
03.
SCULPT
Slower. Heavier. Made with both hands.The sculpture practice runs quieter and slower. Most pieces start as cast plaster, then live in plaster or get cast again into bronze and weathered steel.
The current run — Holdfast — is a series of small reliquary forms: containers for things you outlived. They show up in group exhibitions in Sacramento and the Bay; the rest sit in the studio, getting heavier.
04.
PLAY LOUD
Three projects. One drummer. Loud either way.
05.
ABOUT
Short version. The long one is in the work.Phil grew up between the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. He started Monster Squad in 1997, in high school, and never really stopped.
He's been tattooing for twenty-six years. Fourteen of those, he and Chelsea Daskalos have run Death or Glory in downtown Davis — a shop that's outlasted most of the city's bars.
He paints in his garage. He sculpts in his garage. He writes songs at the kitchen table. The whole practice is one practice.
Press & mentions
- The California Aggie — profile, 2023
- Davis Enterprise — shop feature
- Sac News & Review — gallery night
Find him
- Instagram · @phil_geck_dis
- Merch / prints · destroyartinc.com
- Shop · deathorglorydavis.com