Ink Master season 9 episode 13 preview: Unkindness Art stands alone

Ink Master season 9 episode 13 is airing in just one week’s time as of this writing, and in this episode, Unkindness Art is in a tough spot. They are the last newbie shop surrounded by veterans, and with very little in terms of an alliance to help them. Old Town Ink is there, but they were added to that crew late in the game and don’t really have that much invested in an alliance.

Can they handle the competition, especially given that some of the other shops may be targeting them just so that the veterans can take over the game? They’ve got their work cut out for them, but we’ve seen Erin Chance and Doom Kitten do some really good stuff. Our suggestion to them is to just keep doing the great work they’ve been producing and try to lay low, given that some of these other artists are going to target and take each other out if you let them. This is an ego game, and the big egos often attack other people with big egos. That’s just a big part of what this competition is.

Speaking of egos, there does seem to be one brewing (based on the preview that we saw for this episode) between Tommy Helm and Cleen Rock One, especially since the former seems to think that Golden Skull Tattoo is being carried by Cleen. To be fair, he’s been far stronger than Aaron Is so far this season, but Aaron’s not a bad artist by any means and he did fairly well his first time on the show. Still, Tommy may just be trying to get under Aaron’s skin, given that Golden Skull has been incredibly strong from the moment that they entered the competition.

One other interesting moment seems to be a battle that is slowly brewing with Matt O’Baugh on one side and DJ Tambe on the other. Is this typical Ink Master smack-talk as seen in the preview? That’s certainly possible, but it makes sense for the two artists to go after each other: They’ve consistently been two of the stronger artists on the show this season, and they should be worried about each other. For the record, we do still think that Old Town Ink is a favorite to win this season, even with some bumps in the road this week — they’ve been there most of the season. Cleen of course also has to be taken pretty seriously, just because he’s Cleen and a two-time finalist in his own right.

Want to get our most-recent Ink Master episode review?

If you head over to the link here, you can check that out now. Hopefully, we’ll have some additional content pertaining to Ink Master over the coming days. With just six teams left on the season, we’re absolutely now in the home stretch. (Photo: Spike.)