Here's Why This Hairstylist Is Being Called The "Siberian Sweeney Todd"

As if getting a standard-issue celebrity-inspired haircut at an established salon didn’t have enough nerve-wracking potential already (what if there’s a miscommunication and your new stylist uses a razor on your frizz-prone ends instead of proper shears?), there’s a hairdresser in Russia whose cuts will make you fear for your life — and not in a self-pitying “my bangs are too short” kind of way.

Just call Daniil Istomin the Siberian Sweeney Todd. The stylist, who works in the city of Novosibirsk, apparently has a bit of a reputation around town — not because he’s left a mysterious rash of murders and meat pies in his wake, thankfully, but because he eschews traditional haircutting scissors in favor of a hatchet. Clients lie down on a table, or sit upright in a chair, and Istomin casually hacks away at their lengths and ends with a hand axe. (It’s a dry cut, in case you were wondering.)

It might seem like little more than a party trick (and a terrifying one, at that), but according to the New York Post, Istomin claims that his technique is easier than using scissors. Reportedly, the barber took “some basics of geometry, combined it with his profession, and shifted the angles into slightly different variations to cut hair.”

When you look at it that way, Istomin seems less like a deranged Demon Barber of Novosibirsk and more like an artiste — but he’s also just a sudden twitch of the hand away from becoming an accidental murderer. Just something to keep in mind.