At first glance, it is the visuals that bring us closer to an album. How much of the album can we find in the art on the cover, what does it want to reflect and make the listener feel? They usually want us to get the message “Look, this is what I have, get ready!”. The seemingly simple lines and colors have a very important place in reinforcing what we feel while listening to that album. Simplicity can carry so many emotions in itself. The philosophical and symbolic meanings reinforce these feelings. Therefore, I think that the cover design has as important a place in the integrity of an album as its musicality.

Today we are going to talk about the covers and artists I have chosen among the bands and albums I have enjoyed listening to recently.

If I were to make a general comment, I find the covers of concept albums more appealing. These cover designs that carry pieces of the story feel like getting to know the work “through the eyes of the artist”. In addition to that, I think the diversification of the artwork in each genre and the fact that it makes us feel the breeze of the genre we will listen to from the front provides an incredible visual pleasure.

Paul Romano

Crack The Skye is one of the albums that I’ve enjoyed listening to a lot lately (with a nod to the person who introduced me to this album). Paul Romano’s artwork is an integral part of the album. Under the black hole in the center of the album cover, we see a golden yellow tear, which we can think of as a representation of Brann Dailor’s great sadness and depression over his loss. The wide color palette used makes it easy for us to capture the fine details. The surreal lines of the bear on the lower part of the cover can be perceived as a reference to the astral travel mentioned in the album. The cover actually gives us more information about the story of the album than we can imagine.

Travis Smith

Sorceress… Aside from the chills I get while listening to it, I really like the chaotic atmosphere that increases when we examine the album cover from top to bottom. When I listen to the song with the same title, I visualize the album cover and I can’t get rid of that feeling of tension for a while. Travis Smith is a name we are familiar with from Death, Katatonia, Anathema, Bloodbath, Overkill and many more bands and he is one of the artists who really does his job incredibly well. We would like to talk about the album covers of each of these bands, but the lines may not be enough for that.

Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt says the following about this lovely peacock in an interview with Billboard:

“It’s beautiful and disgusting at the same time, which is what we wanted… I like weird covers as long as they’re clever. I wouldn’t say the Sorceress cover is the smartest cover I’ve ever seen, but it’s very nice.”

Joe Duplantier

Since last month’s From Mars to Sirius album review received a lot of attention, I couldn’t not talk about the Duplantier brothers’ talent for painting and art. I am always amazed by this versatility in the artists!

My personal favorites are definitely The Way of All Flesh and From Mars to Sirius. The Fortitude cover was also well received by fans, with the horrific fires in the Amazon Jungle in 2019 and the serious problems faced by the indigenous people living there, Fortitute was an enjoyable album that brought attention to this issue and at the same time brought the truth to our faces. Fortitute and FMTS have covers that clearly reflect the environmental activist spirit of the Duplantier brothers. In an interview with Metal Hammer magazine, they had this to say about the Fortitude album cover:

“It represents the spirit of the album,” adds Mario, who also paints. “Joe asked me, ‘Do you want to draw something?’ And I said, ‘No, no, that’s your role, because you’re the one who put the lyrics together. The lyrics and the visuals fit together very well.”

In another interview, for the FMTS album cover, Joe says these words, which I felt very happy reading:

“For Gojira, we used a whale to represent something mighty but peaceful. Whales could crush people after what we did to them, but no, they come, wink and swim away. They teach us compassion. This is just me talking to my poetic self, but yes. We like to use symbols on our covers.

Mariusz Lewandowski

The cover of Lorna Shore’s … And I Return to Nothingness EP by Lorna Shore, one of the best Deathcore bands I’ve ever heard, is really interesting and pleasing to the eye. I think it reflects the voice of Will Ramos, the “animalistic” vocalist of the band I discovered with the song Of The Abbys. Lewandowski, the painter of this painting called “Queen of Patience”, passed away last year. He left behind artworks that, despite using vibrant color tones, are reminiscent of death and feature characters with a catastrophic air.

Rickard Westman

Swedish progressive metal band Vildhjarta’s Måsstaden album cover, which is inspired by Meshuggah, was illustrated by Westman. When you first look at the cover, you get a fairy tale-like feeling, but when you look at the fine details, you see a darker composition. You can also come across unique characters in the artist’s other works. The use of color is quite animated and you can discover different things in the fine details.

Joachim Luetke

obZen, perhaps one of Meshuggah’s most popular albums, has a cover design that carries quite marginal and symbolic meanings. In an interview with Nuclear Blast USA, Haake and Hagström explained that the artwork features a male model in a “zen lotus position”, while the lower half of the photo belongs to a female model. They thought that the male model could not do this position, so they illustrated the character as androgynous. Our character, covered in blood, metaphorically represents human beings finding peace through obscenity. Each of the three blood-soaked hands is posed as the number six, symbolizing the inherently evil nature of man.

There is never a limit to what art can make you feel and what tools it can use to make you feel. It is impossible not to get lost in this eternal pool of imagination!

If you have any album covers that you particularly like, please leave a comment!

Stay metal!