So, the thing about art is… it’s weird, right? Music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, yodeling, all of it. A human urge to express the inarticulable? Sure, grandpa. A desperate attempt to wrest some sort of permanence out of the face of mortality? Go back to bed, Great-Aunt Mildred. Can’t it just be enough for people to make cool shit because it’s cool?
Welcome, friends. The thing about art for music is… well, you know. Double weird! Imagine being an alien, visiting Earth, spending years trying – and then finally managing – to understand the utterly foreign concept of music. Miraculous! But then, these puny humans are also doing some different form or “a…r .t?” to place on top of the music? Do their eyeballs also hear? What are these absurd creatures doing down there?
Pipe down, Great-Tentacle-Mother Snargolorxx. A great piece of album artwork can do so many things. It can help establish expectations, or it can confound them. It can connect to the themes of the music, thereby deepening the listener’s enmeshment. It can offer a unique window into what the band intends to convey. But gosh darn it, sometimes all an album cover needs to do is to be cool as shit.
As a bunch of insufferable chumps and powerfully sexual beings, we here at Last Rites spent an impressive assload of time listening to music this year, and an uncomfortably large amount of that same time thinking about all the pretty pictures what went with it. Here are some of our favorites. If you find something that speaks to you, be sure to check out more of the artist’s work, and as always, let us know what caught YOUR gimlet eye this year. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
BRAD MOORE
Sometimes, you just know an album is going to be a straight-up killer. When I saw the album art for Slimelord’s Chytridiomycosis Relinquished, I knew that we were in for a treat. And I was right! But what else is new?
From the mind of Brad Moore—who happened to be a sweetheart of a person when I met him this past summer while attending the Tomb Mold tour—slithers a cornucopia of beautiful oranges, yellows, blues, purples, and a seemingly Lovecraftian-squid-spider-sea-urchin-Dog-the-Bounty-Hunter-looking creature slabbed right there on the middle of the canvas. Brad, who at this point may as well be the resident artist for 20 Buck Spin (understandably so!), has made quite the name for himself over the years because of his ability to paint the vibes and emotions of the sonic waves entering our earholes. We even featured him in last year’s edition of our album art favorites for his work on that Coffin Mulch record.
I mean this as complimentary as possible: Chytridiomycosis Relinquished is grotesque, and the art demonstrates just that. An album of death-doom beauty, combined with the sounds of geese honking (you read that right), it’s like an evil shaman guiding you on a sinister ayahuasca trip. If this hasn’t piqued your interest yet, I don’t know what will.
Brad is a cosmic horror and surrealism expert, and the dudes in Slimelord are pretty darn good at this heavy music thing, so it’s a match made in Heaven (or Hell?). So, as I was saying, this is a killer record with equally killer art. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
SUBHUMAN BEING
First of all, if you can create artwork like this you should not refer to yourself as “subhuman.” Maybe it’s a childhood that brought you down or maybe it’s an experience train-hopping through the dark fields of Belarus and into Pripyat that made you feel so poorly about yourself. We might never know the true origins of this person’s either lack of confidence or perhaps over-indulgent humility. But we do know that they made some ass-kicking artwork for the ass-kickingest of ass-kicking bands Angel Sword.
The atmosphere that Angel Sword is apt at creating is always one of community – just check out the gang vocals across any of their three rocking LPs. It’s togetherness in a metal community that can span time, universe, and political milieu. You, dear metal warrior, are righteous and free and you can succeed in your mission to head towards this green planet, survive the noxious gases and rescue the fair maiden trapped in a tower in some sort of World War I meets Starship Troopers battle for the galaxy we have only ever seen in our greatest drunken stooper as our friend cruises down the highway in his convertible cargo van with the top rolled down and the radio blasting Angel Sword. Do not fear the boiling red sun or the multiple moons that harbor your enemy. With Angel Sword’s boisterous metal and this incredible artwork to accompany you there is nothing you can’t accomplish. Especially if you are acommpanied by me and Ryan who wield the timeless and epocriphal swords Baneshield (formerly Baneshielder) and Crutchwielder. [LIN MANUEL DE GUERRA]
SKAÐVALDUR
Listen, it’s pretty easy to go on and on about the more obviously cool things happening on the cover of Sovereign’s Altered Realities, so let’s start with those! Artist Skaðvaldur (Þorvaldur Guðni Sævarsson) puts on a bright sci-fi clinic here, masterfully rendering a Giger-esque techno-organic scene in which there are pods (for… something), a mysterious mist (of what, exactly?), and a glow coming out of the background that you just know means you no good. It’s like a technicolor Alien, as if Dorothy Gale woke up on LV-426 instead of Oz, with Toto sniffing eggs you know aren’t holding cute little chicks. Seriously though, his use of color is wicked cool here.
Yes, the obvious things are super neato, but there’s also a tantalizing mystery afoot, and it involves the scale. Because of that mist, we can’t see the floor, so we don’t know if this is some small room or a massive cargo hold. Do human-sized things walk out of that oppressive yellow glow in the background, or is that big enough for ships to traverse? I’m betting the latter, which makes the whole scene even more potentially terrifying. And beyond that, what exactly is in those pods? Where is this ship headed, and should we be worried? Why is one pod already open?! Do we need to go on a bug hunt? Does Skaðvaldur even have the answers, or is it game over, man? [ZACH DUVALL]
PAWEL STREIT
Plenty of genres have tropes for their album covers – common styles or modes of presentation. Black and white photos of nerds with torches in the snow. Seagrave-like vistas of demons and crumbling edifices. Grindcore is no exception – whether taking monochrome war photography cues from Discharge and crust, or the cut-up comic style of Scum or World Downfall, or the gross-out morgue collage approach of Carcass and their goregrinding disciples.
On their ferocious debut LP For a Limited Time, however, the Swiss grinders in Exorbitant Prices Must Diminish have broken the mold with this brilliantly cheeky yet still subtly discomfiting cover. The cover is a photograph by friend of the band Pawel Streit, and the band reports that “there’s been very little messing with it.” The imposing upward angle increases the ominous weight of the weathered Brutalist structure, seemingly empty or abandoned.
But then… the balloons! You might think of the allegorical Cold War hit “99 Luftballons,” but the visual here works wonderfully on its own terms. At first blush it’s playful, slightly anarchic, and full of sass, which aligns perfectly with EPMD’s (yes, same acronym, deal with it) snarky, chunky whip-tight hardcore-flecked grind. But look a little longer and the blue becomes slightly nauseating, the tight grape-clusters of balloons like a blossom of decay, a foaming of the mouth, a split-tooth grin dripping rabid spittle. It’s a perfect marriage of art and music: an elbow to the wobbly bits, a sneering joke, an inescapable sense of unknown dread. Good, great, gruesome, grand. Get on it! [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
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WYRMWALK
When I see a cover that looks like skinless Sam Neill at the end of Event Horizon with his head exploding into the hellish void, you have my attention. It’s as if a listener had turned their head at the sound of that steel-cord thick bass that begins the aptly-titled “Skullcrushing Defilement,” and then as the full song kicked in, every bit of flesh and muscle blew backward off of their bones. The squiggly blue blob flying off in the corner like a now useless and quickly dying brain. The blue veins and remaining bits of muscle that seem to simultaneously crawl up and pour down the dissipating skull give Thomas Westphal’s piece the perfect pop of color.
One of the most nit-picked things our little crew will do with artwork is complain about logo and title placement on an album cover. I vote no one did it better than Noxis having Violence Inherent In The System bleed out at the bottom of the piece. A perfect title that is an apt description of how the human body works and the needed aggression to create death metal that stands out this strongly in 2024. [SPENCER HOTZ]
JONATAN JOHANNSON
Right off the bat you know that when a member of the band (in this case the guitarist/screamer person) creates the artwork around an album it’s going to stick to a theme. All too frequently in metal we see album covers littered with tropes (e.g. monsters, naked women, wolves, swords, etc.). I’m not knocking that because heavy metal is serious business and not everyone has the artistic talent of Sleepwalker to adorn their albums into a complete and total experience. Another unfortunate-yet-new practice in metal seems to be the lazy use of artwork created by artificial intelligence. Not saying we should all be against artificial intelligence as it’s clearly allowing some wonderful artists to push boundaries but the lazy, slapped together castle/space/evil covers are rote (to say the least).
So that brings us to Concrete Winds. As our own indentured concubine-slash-servant Spencer Hotz accurately pointed out (while being threatened by all of the top brass of course) it’s akin to a tornado touching down and unleashing all of its power upon the proletariat workers of a cement factory. Their bodies would clearly be ripped to shreds as machines and elixirs whirl wildly and dismember asphyxiated corpses. You are but a child laborer eager to earn your two pence per day looking through a window at the future you dream of when you witness this. It’s probable that the window through which you look (because in this imaginary scenario the tornado only affects those inside the factory) would be splatters with something akin to this cover artwork. It’s overwhelming, disorienting, flabbergasting, horrifying, and downright evil. And that my friends is the overall package that this brilliant album and its brilliant accompanying artwork deliver. [LIN MANUEL DE GUERRA]
MARALD VAN HAASTEREN
You’ve seen Marald van Haasteren’s artwork even if you didn’t know it. In addition to the wonderful piece featured here, he’s created art for a number of other albums, including by Necrot, Black Pyramid, and Living Gate this year, as well as Metallica, Kvelertak, and Mortuous less recently. His work is typically fairly low contrast, but texturally deep and detailed, making the most of light in reflection and shadow. On Transit Method’s Othervoid, the subject is relatively simple: a small band of interstellar explorers are confronted by the mammoth figures of… alien skeletons? Deities maybe. Lovecraftian horrors awaiting some ceremonial rebirth. We don’t know and that’s half the fun. Van Haasteren’s combination of light and color is impactful in its simplicity here, as usual, and really adds to the sense of scale and depth; this place is huge and its implications even moreso. It’s a terrifically irresistible invitation to the adventures that await in Othervoid. [LONE WATIE]
SAPROPHIAL
If you hop on over to Saprophrial’s instagram or portfolio page, you will be treated to a wonderful array of work that’s largely done with either ink or graphite on various forms of paper or claybord. If you’re like me—first of all, congratulations—you will be blown away by what you see, as their comprehensive style is one that fully embraces the fantastical in a way that underscores a tremendous amount of dark, exquisite detail. The amount of patience and precision required to render one’s imagination this way must be incredible, and the first time I stumbled across it occurred when I first caught wind of the unexpected return from Hammers of Misfortune and their seventh album Overtaker, which uses one of Saprophrial’s more otherworldly creations as its centerpiece. I did not, however, make an immediate connection to Saprophrial when Iotunn’s Kinship first landed in my lap. I think that’s good—artists by and large appreciate being known for having a unique style that’s their own, but they also never want to become stagnant or tossed into some restrictive box, so to admit surprise in discovering someone you respect has just done the unexpected is, I would hope, a considerable compliment for an artist.
The artwork for Kinship is epic, even without the knowledge of how it might connect to the album’s overarching theme. Clearly we’re dealing with a legendary creature that claims significant power in its limbs and in those tendrils that suspend beacons amidst all that swallowing black. It’s dramatic looking—eerie and not without a sense of menace, but the creature’s stance and the way it appears to tend the flowers calms the scene. It’s very much like the music that stirs behind the artwork: A suitable balance between light and dark / serenity and tension, and you really don’t know what might happen from one moment to the next. The fact that it magically happens to map the record’s underlying themes that deal with mythology, anthropology, journeys of self-discovery and our connection to nature just deepens the appeal. Did the members of Iotunn come across this beast whilst “trekking Galdhøpiggen?” That might depend on how much Southlinch pipe-weed was involved. Regardless, they found a perfect piece of art to represent their leveling sophomore album, and I tip my hat to Saprophrial for adding to the album’s overall magic. [CAPTAIN]
WILLIAM HAY
When my vinyl copy of Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis arrived I was thrilled to find that William Hay’s cover art looked as wonderful on that 12×12 jacket as I’d hoped it would and that it was actually a full 12×24 spread. Then I noticed it was the wrong way round, so that the cover faced left on the shelf and the backside to the right.
Well I didn’t care for that at all.
How dare you, Mr. Hay. How dare you invert the natural order of things. So, what, left is right now? Front is back? What’s next? Simon is Garfunkel? Kendrick is Drake?
Preposterous.
My favorite part of the experience, though, was reading Hay’s thoughts on that unthinkable design and his observation that, “I’m sure that’s annoying to someone out there, but I can’t imagine why someone like that would buy this music.”
Someone… like that.
Ouch.
Of course, it got me thinking and, of course, he has a point. I don’t mean it’s abnormal or dumb or lame to want things to be the way they’re supposed to be, just that how the heck does one blindly conform and also love Beaten To Death, a band known best for refusing to play even by the rules of grindcore, a subgenre built on subverting the rules of rock and roll (or music at all, for that matter). Frankly, if artists only ever followed the rules, our world would suck infinitely more ass. William Hays knows this. He knows this is what makes BIID so great and he knows that people who buy their albums also know this, even if we’re sometimes too silly-minded to get it right away.
Look at the art now. The palette and style Hay chose are perfect as the soft colors and gentle lines allude to the post- and alt- sounds and textures that have laced BIID grindcore from the beginning and that represent the lighter side that slows the advance of the dark by ostensibly embracing it.
You might wonder why Hay didn’t just flip the image so the front would align to the right on the shelf. Well, then the river would be flowing West to East in the foreground, which is to say, counterclockwise. This would not do. The river represents the relentless flow of Time, which flows that way around the clock and is the central theme of Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis, the title itself a pithy encapsulation of brief existence and the cycle of life.
Consider the toads afloat on the river with candles on their heads, wicks at various stages of burning. The bow of the ferry is sunlit and yet one toad there is ladling from the river to better light the way, apparently oblivious to the journey itself. The toads in the stern are faltering in darkness, their candles spent, hungry crabs clamoring for the delicious dead and dying. Only the ferryman separates them, single-mindedly ferrying.
Like all great cover artwork, Hay’s Sunrise tableau enriches its album’s experience with a thoughtful and original representation of its musical and lyrical themes. Thank goodness for amazing artists. I’m so glad we have people like that. [LONE WATIE]
FILTH EFFIGY
Hemorrhoid’s Raw Materials of Decay really ripped us all a new one this year, didn’t it? And if you haven’t listened to it, feel free to dive in, but be sure to have an extra round of Preparation H on standby.
With a name like Hemorrhoid, I’m sure you were able to gather that there’s some death and goregrind going on there, right? If the Carcass-y riffage doesn’t hit the spot—and while it should—just gaze upon the glory of Filth Effigy’s hideous masterpiece on the cover. A melting human body, in extremely gruesome detail , encompasses the album’s nauseating, guttural production and nods to the greats of yesteryear. The blast beats are likely to pop the unfortunate soul’s yellow, pus-filled sores and the riffs are capable of shredding the ligaments and veins falling from the bone like a perfectly-smoked rack of ribs smothered in BBQ sauce.
Filth Effigy’s work will catch the eye of anyone scrolling through Bandcamp or flipping through the LPs at their local record store, and that’s what great art does. Not to mention, it highlights the ironically fun, campy nature of hemorrhoid-themed tunes. And despite the name, it’s not a pain in the rear to listen to—it’s bloody great! [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
CAROLINE HARRISON
“I don’t get it. It’s just a dead animal, Chewie,” said a rather beefheaded Han Solo as he gazed upon Caroline Harrison’s spectacular cover art for Pyrrhon’s latest album, Exhaust. And clearly he didn’t get it, because the piece is about far more than just its main subject, that pigeon that had a no good, very bad week. It’s about beauty in decay, and beauty in corruption. The pigeon is already being taken over by molds (and spores and funguses), but what stands out is just how bright all that avian viscera appears on the page. Those are innards, yes, but in this piece, they are things of beauty. The same can be said for the oil slick that is polluting the street, creating a gorgeous rainbow across the pavement while giving the whole thing a sense of flow and direction.
Which is important, because between the direction of the pollution and the splashes in the top of the piece, there is a feeling that this is merely a complex snapshot. Much or all of this will soon be washed away or will give way to renewed life. New flesh grows on the rotting bird corpse. Small plants brave the inhospitable terrain and sprout from cracks in the pavement. Life (uh) finds a way.
So yes, it’s definitely a dead animal, but it’s also a stunning depiction of nature’s defiance against what appears to be a very violent death (why is the head pulled off?!) and against mankind’s corrupting presence. Fitting that Harrison would deliver her most complex and beautiful Pyrrhon cover yet for the band’s best album to date. [ZACH DUVALL]
JESSE DRAXLER
Praise be to our lord and savior, H.R. Giger! Fine, there’s far less of a fleshy or phallic nature to Jesse Draxler’s sexy industrial collage style, but surely he’s a fan. Dissimulator’s sci-fi and tech themes make this cover feel like a glimpse into a future where beauty is mired in machinery. But really, is that not fitting for the world of today? Are we not all Tetsuo: The Iron Man wired to screens, phones and technologies we can’t even really see, raging through every day, becoming a bit colder and a bit crazier? Despite the clinically precise nature of the tunes within, the music produced remains deeply human and that makes this black-and-white machinery all the more fascinating to stare at while you listen. Just try not to get yourself too tangled up in all your speaker wire and headphone cords while you do. [SPENCER HOTZ]
