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On June 11th, Deafheaven will be releasing their sophomore album, Sunbather. And while it was apparent from their first album, 2011′s Roads to Judah, that the San Francisco quartet isn’t your average black metal band, the album art for their sophomore album, Sunbather, confirms it. Yeah, it’s pink. The cover was designed by Touche Amore’s Nick Steinhardt. Sunbather is, about “the profound sadness found in the quest for one’s personal perfection, serving as an artistic lucid dream of warmth despite the stinging pain of life’s cruel idealism,” according to the press release I copied that sentence from.
The track listing is as follows:
1. Dream House
2. Irresistible
3. Sunbather
4. Please Remember
5. Vertigo
6. Windows
7. The Pecan Tree
Sunbather will be released on Deathwish Records on June 11th
It’s been a five years since Bad Brains had a new album out (the Adam Yauch-produced Build A Nation), and on November 20, they’ll remedy that with Into the Future. It will be only their third release in 17 years, and will feature the band’s core lineup of H.R., Dr. Know, Daryl Jenifer and Earl Hudson.
While the title track is the only song out there so far, it sounds like signature Bad Brains. The band have, however, unveiled the album cover, and it’s a pretty great one. Shepard Fairy (who’s best known for his Barack Obama portrait) did the illustration, and it’s retro and futuristic at the same time. Done with rasta colors (yellow, green, red) instead of the red and blue of the Obama poster, it features the iconic lightning strike that was on the first album, but it’s striking a lion (another rasta symbol) instead of the Capitol Building. Check it out, and listen to the title track below.
[via Blabbermouth]
Earlier this week New York progressive rockers Coheed And Cambria unleashed their video for lead single “Domino The Destitute”. Now the band have released a short video explanation of the cover artwork for their October release, The Afterman: Ascension. Ascension is the first half of two albums with Descension coming out in February 2013.
A deluxe version of The Afterman will also be available featuring a hardcover coffee table book with artwork from Heidi Taillefer and Nathan Spoor with written work from singer/creator Claudio Sanchez. New York Times bestselling author Peter David will also assist in writing duties again, this time penning a song-by-song experience for the record.
The concept records will continue to take place in the band’s alternate universe of “Heaven’s Fence,” which are part of Sanchez’s series titled “The Amory Wars.” The series follows the story of superhuman tyrant Wilhelm Ryan, and a family that might be able to undermine his control and free the world from his dictatorship. “The Amory Wars” has also been slated to become a live-action feature film currently under development by Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson of Leverage Productions.
The Afterman albums highlight one of Sanchez’s many characters, Sirius Amory, a scientist, who discovers a force of energy that has the possibility to connect the universe’s 78 planets together. The double album is a follow-up to 2010’s Year Of The Black Rainbow, and will feature returning drummer Josh Eppard and new bassist Zach Cooper, who have replaced Michael Todd and Chris Pennie.
The first volume, The Afterman: Ascension will be available October 9 via Hundred Handed/Everything Evil and fans can expect to get it on both physical and digital platforms. The subsequent volume, The Afterman: Descension, is expected in February 2013. Check out the album art and track listing after the jump. Read more »
Last month, Edvard Munch’s famous expressionist painting The Scream sold for $119.9 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for a painting at a public auction. In two months (August 21), The Darkness will release their third album, Hot Cakes. How are the two related? Well, in this Funny or Die clip, the UK band are revealed to be the buyers of the piece – to shit all over it in the name of art. It’s very British, but if you’re watching at work, be careful, since there is plenty of shit.
Bunny Bissoux is a Tokyo-based artist. She’s also apparently a metal fan, as a three year-old piece of hers, “Corpsepaint Creatures,” is making its way around the interwebz today. With both logos and drawings of some of the artists, the black and white piece basically looks like a large version of the inside cover of a burnout’s school textbook. Acts that pre-dated the term corpsepaint, are included, with progenitors like KISS and Alice Cooper represented. It also includes the standard-bearers, like King Diamond, Immortal, Celtic Frost and Behemoth. Even Slayer (yeah, that happened) Insane Clown Posse, The Crow and, um, pandas are represented. Unfortunately, the print, which was limited to 40, has long since sold out. Maybe her newfound fame will convince her to make a second run.
[via Dangerous Minds]
Comic book artist Augie Pagan’s “Animal Unleashed” canvas painting pays homage to two of our favorite things: Iron Maiden and The Muppets. In this piece for his and Dave MacDowell’s Lowbrow Candy Store, Pagan drew Animal (the out of control drummer for the Muppets house band, Electric Mayhem) depicting Eddie on the cover of 1990’s No Prayer For The Dying. This actually isn’t the first time Pagan paid tribute to artist Derek Riggs’ Eddie, having Animal portrayed as Eddie on the Piece Of Mind cover. Both pieces, though, are pretty damn awesome.
Bram and I have received a lot of crap from our New York City friends over our home state of New Jersey. Well we’d now like to challenge all the Jerz haters to name us another state that has a public piece of art immortalizing the forefathers of punk rock (including Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins)!
While visiting Asbury Park, NJ for the I’ll Be Your Mirror ATP Fest, artist Shepard Fairey (who created the famous “Hope” image in President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, as well as the OBEY sticker campaign) has been creating a series of original art pieces along the beach town’s older brick facades. Among the pieces is a 900-square-foot wheat paste project that immortalizes punk icons like Joey Ramone, Johnny Rotten, Joe Strummer, and Ian MacKaye in addition to Danzig and Rollins. The monument, being referred to as “Mount Rush-core,” can be seen adjacent to Asbury Lanes.
It may not be a shrine to metal, but we at Metal Insider are proud that the shores of our home state is being showcased for something that doesn’t include Snooki’s cooch. You can find out more about Fairey’s recent work in Asbury Park in a profile written by Eastern Surf.
[picture taken from gallery featured in Eastern Surf]
Of all the places you’d expect to hear about the new Mastodon album, The New York Times isn’t necessarily one of them. But the band’s new album, The Hunter, was one of the focal points of an article in the paper yesterday about how album covers are becoming more and more simple. The culprit? As sales of physical albums decline, album artwork will increasingly be viewed on smartphones and iPads as less people buy physical product. As a result, many labels are making artwork knowing that many people will primarily be viewing it at about the size of a postage stamp.
[Donny] Phillips of Warner Brothers, who designed the Mastodon cover, was instructed to work with a sculpture by the artist A. J. Fosik, who creates striking wood sculptures looking like three-dimensional folk art. Mr. Phillips created different mock-ups, including one using multiple versions of Mr. Fosik’s work. But in the end Mastodon went with a single image. “They have a history of intricate album covers,” Mr. Phillips said. “But the feedback from the band was, ‘This will stand out digitally.’ ” Mr. Phillips added that the band’s decision is “not a dumbing down, but an aesthetic shift.”
Having grown up scrutinizing album covers and liner notes, it’s definitely a bit of a bummer to have seen album artwork continually shrink. The 12 inches that vinyl records had were almost a canvas, and when it shrank to the 4.9″ by 5/6″ specs of a CD case, it still wasn’t quite as jarring as to the presumed one or so square inches of a photo on the iTunes Music Store. While we were somewhat surprised that Mastodon decided, for the first time in their career, not to work with Paul Romano, you can’t fault the band for trying something different, and it makes sense in the context of what labels are saying about making art that’s eye catching regardless of what size it is. Also, it wouldn’t be surprising to Mastodon continue to work with Romano on bigger mediums, like the inevitable vinyl release of The Hunter. The new album will be out on September 27.
So the Devin Townsend Project today unveiled the cover artwork for Deconstruction, the last album of Devy’s four-album cycle. And while our buddies from around the internet are freaking out about how awesome it is, it has a bit of a retro vibe to it. Not quite sure what it is about it – maybe the kinda street-looking disillusioned-looking kid in a hoodie? Oh yeah, the kid definitely reminds us of something we’ve seen before. Oh well, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover and if the album (which comes out the same day as the third album, Ghost – June 20) is anywhere as near as awesomely epic as the first two, it’ll be amazing. Because there’s no way it’ll sound like what we’re reminded of…
Read more »
So this is the cover to The Sword’s third album, Warp Riders. It’s awesome, futuristically retro, and should fit in well with the “psychedelic space opera that explores the temporal themes of death and rebirth,” as the band describes the album, which will come out on August 24.
The album will be preceded by “Tres Brujas,” a song that will be made available online and at radio on July 6. That song will be part of a video trilogy consisting of two other songs from the album called “Lawless Lands” and “Night City.”
Maybe because I’m old school, or just old, but the album cover reminded me a lot of something from my childhood. Click through to see what I’m thinking of. Read more »
On June 11th, Deafheaven will be releasing their sophomore album, Sunbather. And while it was apparent from their first album, 2011′s Roads to Judah, that the San Francisco quartet isn’t your average black metal band, the album art for their sophomore album, Sunbather, confirms it. Yeah, it’s pink. The cover was designed by Touche Amore’s Nick Steinhardt. Sunbather is, about “the profound sadness found in the quest for one’s personal perfection, serving as an artistic lucid dream of warmth despite the stinging pain of life’s cruel idealism,” according to the press release I copied that sentence from.
Posted by Bram Teitelman on Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 12:43 pm
Art