People's first impression of an artist's music can come from the album cover. Whether sublimely pretty, shockingly gory, or just plain ugly in a pleasing way, visual art has an impact not to be underestimated. Over here at The Goat Review we care about the visual side of metal and metal culture. We are also something of a small art collective of musicians and visual artists on top of being writers. Thus, we would like take some time to celebrate some of the best visual art of the past year, in no particular order, as well as the artists that have worked hard to produce it. Join us!
Eliran Kantor
Featured on Feldwärts by Scalpture
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W20
Let's start with two of the obvious artists and mainstays of metal art from the last few years. First, the ever creative Eliran Kantor: his output is often as high as the quality of his work. It is hard to see Kantor's work and avoid and being taken with it, still true in 2022. While his work on the equally fantastic (and fantastical) covers for Immolation, Malevolence and Psycroptic is stunning, I feel particularly drawn to Feldwärts' album cover because of how intimate and unusual it is for Kantor's album art style.
This a subtle piece. The composition tries to draw your attention into the picture but hides the real focus in the right-hand edge of the cover: the reflection of the portrait. Just look to the opposite side of the reflection to see how artists usually try to make the edges uninteresting to draw focus in the middle, especially in a portrait. This subversion creates a sense mystery and took me aback the first time I saw it, as I noticed the reflection much later. Learning that the album is about war, one of the most horrible wars in recent history (World War I), makes the image all the more powerful in meaning. And this is one of Kantor's best skills, producing art that presents you with an album's essence before you even hear it.
Adam Burke
Featured on Ascetic Reflection by Altars
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W27&28
The second of my obvious picks goes to Adam Burke, an equally prolific Metal cover artist that deserves the praise he is getting. And again, while many impressive covers came from Burke camp last year (Tchornobog/Abyssal Split, Fit for an Autopsy, Incandescence and Artificial Brain come to mind), the cover for Ascetic Reflection is the one that stuck hardest with me. Altars play a kind of occasionally dissonant Death Metal that operates on mystery, unpredictability and cold dread. The album cover follows suit.
Compositionally, this piece impresses me in how it follows a spiral to the center of attention, both ours as well as the hooded figures'. There is a clear path that leads from the logo, down to the figure in the distance, and into the light surrounded by the crowd. Much in the way someone becomes absorbed in trying to see something far away, that light teases your gaze until you yourself cannot tear your attention away from it. I know Burke does not always produce his work on order, licensing out a lot of his paintings. This one, a licensed piece, found its way to where it belongs.
Amendment: This piece was incorrectly labeled as being licensed but the band has reached out to us to confirm that it actually was a commissioned piece. We would like to apologise for the oversight.
Rio Oka
Featured on Life's Wishes to Tears by Homeskin
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Looking through Rio Oka's work on Instagram I learned two facts: apart from being a talented Indonesian artist, Oka is also a Hardcore Punk vocalist. Second, he has a thing for skulls and melting faces. And I am happy that he does, as the album cover for one of Homeskin's 2022 albums jumped out at me instantly with its "romance novel gone horribly wrong" look.
Looking at the cover, I cannot quite discern what the original medium is. The overall look is pastel (unusual for Metal, but welcome!) but the hair also looks like it could be done in a digital painting application. Whichever it may be, the fluidity of the piece, and the mix of beauty and the uncannily macabre scene lands it squarely in my favorite spots for this year.
Ion Carchelan
Featured on Blood and Bonemeal by Reeking Aura
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W38
Speaking of picking art that is unusual for the Metal genre, I am glad to see water color starting to pop up as a technique in more and more covers. Reeking Aura is a Death Metal band that explores unique territory within the genre, as our Goat Overlord pointed out in his review, and they made a great decision to signal this in the album cover as well. They did not just pick any kind of water color art either, as the work of Ion Carchelan contains an impressionistic beauty that is a great fit for warped Death Metal, its unusual nature included.
I love this painting's use of color contrast, as the fleeting nature of what is visible on the ground is offset by the sharp red of the sunrise. Logo placement is also stupidly hard and often the logo will land in a spot that is desperately reserved for it. Not so here, as the logo itself is integrated just right so that the colors work to enhance it as a focal point without sacrificing the painting's impression. Mastery of flowing water as a painting technique takes some serious chops, and so does playing great Death Metal.
Guang Yang
Featured on Dolor by Autosarcophagy
More art here: Instagram (find a great time-lapse video of the warmup for this cover here)
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W6
Autosarcophagy self describes as "Naturalistic Death Metal", and the multifaceted artist Guang Yang manages to capture their murky and moldy sound perfectly in paint. Aside from the contrast of the knotted thorns that make the band's logo, there lies a serene calm over this painting that depicts rot as a natural phenomenon. The corpse rests faceless as to make a more general statement rather than an intimate, horrific one, and the color palette is muted yet not bleak. On the contrary, strong highlights lift up the beauty of nature in all its gory detail.
Yet there is still a sense of unease as being an observer coming upon this hidden scene, which expands the more you take the situation in. Details like the perspective, if you focus on the foot near the tree, reveal that the body depicted in the cover is actually pretty damn big. Subtle yet brutal, the art echoes the music. I remembered this one clearly as the year came to a close, despite the album releasing as far back as January.
Jon Chan
Featured on Hiss by Wormrot
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W27&28, Scuttlegoat's AotY, Metalligatorrr's AotY
Blue. Hidden. Coming back after a long silence. A coiled snake laying dormant and waiting. A face that speaks the violence of revenge. These are some of the thoughts that were on Wormrot's collective minds when arguing over what to pick for their cover, after being absent for eight years from the Grindcore scene. Do I need to tell you that Jon Chan delivered? Taking some inspiration from Meiko Kaji's work in the Lady Snowblood movies from the 70s, the art of Hiss (the whole package) captures all of the above in a simple yet deadly composition.
The colors are cold but not obscuring, working in tandem with the ripples and reflection to place all of the focus on the avengers eyes. This is a piece of digital art that is so naturalistic as to catch the expression but tweaked just enough in stylization as to make everything pop out at you instantly. That takes some serious skill, and is perfect fit for Wormrot's Hiss.
Santiago Caruso
Featured on Zoetrope by Qrixkuor
More art here: Instagram
It is a common trope for many Black Metal bands (and occasionally Death Metal bands, like here) to want to present their music as spiritual, cryptic and otherworldly. The result is often album art that leans into visual metaphors heavily and it is often of mixed quality or unintentionally silly. At its worst this can make it look (sometimes accurately) like the musician do not know what they want to say. However, one artist that has the chops to actually produce imagery in this style that works is Santiago Caruso, and I encourage you to explore his work as he is really good at it. His technique appears to involve a lot of ink as well as paint but I have also seen some pics of his that look like etching—a seriously impressive technique and not all that often used because it takes a lot of grueling work.
This piece of art caught my eye because it looks to me like a darker version of a religious painting depicting the different stages of life. But more interestingly, there is an element of movement in the picture as you can almost feel the body floating upwards and passing through death into disintegration. It is a powerful image that reminds me of how we work in the comics medium, of which I have some experience. Amazing work.
Margarita Makletsova
Featured on Reborn by Olhava
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Already looking a bit harsher than what is usual for Blackgaze bands, MarGoat's cover for Reborn is striking in its imagery. But technique-wise, she is also experienced as it takes a LOT of practice to cram in as much detail as you can see this album cover. As ink is the main medium I work in myself, I know this piece of art took a long time to produce. The choice of depicting a macabre ritual taking place in the woods goes well with the ethereal feel of the music and it is suitably harsh for the dynamic of the Black Metal included.
Two things impress here, apart from the amount of detail. First, the composition is tight but simple enough for focusing on one object, while leaving room for detail. The moon in the background serves as to fit well in space above the figure as a symbol but also provides a bit of perspective. Secondly, pure white space and balance is of great importance in colorless images and MarGoat masters this well as the most important parts are left white for contrast and the Birch trees in the background makes sure your eyes stay on what is important.
Saprophial
Featured on Overtaker by Hammers of Misfortune
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W48, Metalligatorrr's AotY
My infatuation with Overtaker is one I probably do not share with many, but one look at that album cover and you should agree with me that Saprophial is a great artist. If there is one piece of art that needs to be seen up close on this list, it is this one. Depicting things in large scale is often hard and takes that you scale back details as not to confuse the viewer's eyes. Saprophial says "screw that!" and crams in a boatload of detail at the same time as tweaking it all to make it clearly visible. All while there are several focal points in the moon, the creature/ship, and the ground.
A big part of why this works is that the hatching is used, correctly, as surface areas to add detail but also to mark shapes and distance well. The sky, for instance, has a set of horizontal lines over it to make it flat but to allow for a lot of detail from the atmosphere too. Meanwhile, the purple gradients add depth while the lines hold down the contrasts. This might be the most technical pick on this list but I am seriously stunned by this piece.
Mark McCoy
Featured on The Ailing Facade by Aeviterne
More art here: Instagram
Listen to the music here: Songwhip
Review of the music: Weekly 2022 W11, Scuttlegoat's AotY
A lot of you will already know Mark McCoy's great photo- and photo manipulation artwork from his work on the latest Full of Hell albums (including the iconic art for Trumpeting Ecstasy) . He has a lot of experience with the Grindcore Xeroxed kind of artwork too, but his work for Aeviterne's debut album stood out to me as a well arranged piece. Photography is often about choosing the right moment and correct angle of viewing things from. I am not wholly sure if this is a digitally arranged piece but it all looks physically arranged and is impressive nonetheless.
But the main reason I am drawn to this artwork is that it represents the style Aeviterne are going for exceptionally well. The Ailing Facade is a dense piece of Atmospheric Death Metal, a genre that has not set into a distinct style with its own set of rules yet. But the music carries an ever present tension bordering on Industrial music in expression, something you would hear when hunted in a game like Silent Hill for instance. Left pitch black in its edges, this artwork makes you feel like you are in that room, watched.