Maxwell Solomon Brand was born in March of 1979 at Albert Einstein Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. At the age of two, he and his sister and parents moved to the Florida Keys, and after hopping around for a bit, settled on Marathon Key. At the age of 8, his parents ended their marriage, and Max moved to the Tampa/Clearwater area with his mother. While in sixth grade he took playing the trombone, and started showing a serious interest in music.

After four years, Max was too much for his mother to handle, and at the age of 12, he moved back to Marathon in the Florida Keys to live with his father. After a year of middle-school in the keys Max joined the marching band, and began playing other instruments. A two stringed guitar caught his attention, and he spent many nights learning Nirvana songs, even though he never really liked Nirvana. By the end of eighth grade it was all Metallica all the time. Also after middle school, at the age of 14, Max and his father moved back to Pennsylvania to live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Immediately joining the marching band, and switching to the tuba, Max also added listening to Les Claypool and Primus as a constant past-time.

It was only a few months into his freshman year in a new town that Max was asked to play bass guitar in a band called "CROME" that rocked Bensalem High School to it's knees for three years straight. Giving up marching band after 10th grade, Max wanted to create something independently, but was worthless with paper and pencil. Taking up photography and graphic arts, and eventually audio/video in his senior year, Max saw the direction he was headed.

In December of 1996, Max and a few friends had gotten a few piercings, and it clicked in Max's head that this was something he could do. He acquired piercing equipment from a friend in an underground shop, and he started bringing home classmates after school. Max and his friends were amazed that even the first piercings he did came out flawless. The procedure was unrefined, and the knowledge was lacking, but the final product was more than worth taking a picture of. After 6 months of guess work, doing a few piercings a week, Max was at The InkWell Tattoo in Southampton, PA. While a friend was getting tattooed, Max asked the owner if they were looking for a piercer, and he started the following week. Working under piercer Michelle Pristula for 6 months, Max refined his techniques and became familiar with all aspects of body piercing and customer service, not to mention setting his own high standard in cleanliness and sterilization. For almost eight years Max spent five days a week piercing full time, and building a strong and faithful clientele. At the same time, he spawned a serious interest for audio recording, and set up a fully functional home recording studio.

Unfortunately, after many years, the excitement and glory of The InkWell faded, and at the same time Max yearned for new scenery. On April 20th of 2004 Max headed to Atlanta to crash on his sisters couch, and try something new. For a year he tried the 9 to 5 lifestyle and held the position of Marketing Manager and Assistant Sales Manager at an Atlanta based advertising and publishing company. At the same time he interned at Berkeley Park Recording Studio in all of his spare time. It took six months to get out of his sisters house and into his new life, and it was only another six months before Max realized he wanted to get back to piercing, or at least back into the tattoo scene he had walked away from. Max checked out All or Nothing Tattoo, and soon had a half sleeve from Brandon Bond. At the same time, Max met the editor of PRICK magazine, and was offered a position photographing at tattoo conventions and writing articles for the magazine, along with distribution and sales duties. Max was easing back into the scene without having to spend every day in a tattoo studio. Another six months passed, and at the same time that Max was getting the bug to pierce again, Brandon Bond offered him the piercing position at All or Nothing. It has been another long year since then that Max has spent piercing full time, and traveling around the country about once a month to cover tattoo conventions, and representing the finest that Atlanta has to offer.

Oh....I forgot to mention....Max is pretty much obsessed with Frank Zappa, and to date, has 5 Zappa tattoos.....