This is the second EYE-CATCHERS feature in as many days. In yesterday’s installment, we reported on new cover art for a forthcoming album from a band whose music we know — 16. In this post, we’re returning to the original intent of the EYE-CATCHERS series: using cool album art as a guide to finding music from bands we don’t know.

In this case, the album art was created by the talented Italian artist Marco Hasman. We’ve featured his artwork before at NCS, in posts about albums from Fleshgod Apocalypse, Beyond Creation, and Blasphemer. This time, his work will grace the cover of a debut record by a band from Evansville, Indiana, named Visceral Throne. The album is called Omnipotent Asperity and it will be released by Brutal Bands at some point later this year.

What Visceral Throne produced before that album was a two-song, 2010 demo. Both of those songs appear on the track list for the album; don’t know if they’ve been re-recorded for the album. The demo versions are still available for free download via Bandcamp (HERE), though that option will close once the album is released.

Let me attempt to describe the two songs without using the word brutal: barbarous, bloodthirsty, ferocious, heartless, inhuman, insensitive, merciless, pitiless, remorseless, rough, rude, ruthless, savage, severe, vicious, and impolite.

I seem to be on an album-art roll over the past week, featuring the new Gorod cover plus new covers by Valnoir, Dan Seagrave, and Niklas Sundin, but as long as the grown-ups continue stuffing my Halloween bag with eye-candy, my wide-eyed inner kid will continue to light up.

SoCal’s 16 began recording their new album, Deep Cuts From Dark Clouds, last September. On Halloween they completed the final mix. In early November, they sent it off to Scott Hull (Pig Destroyer) for mastering. And then two days ago Relapse Records announced a release date (April 26) and delivered unto us the album art you see above. They’re pre-selling the CD and LP versions here.

I had a feeling it would be sweet, because the cover art for their last album, 2009′s Bridges To Burn, was one of the best metal album covers ever. In fact, not having heard 16 before seeing that cover, I bought the album about two seconds after I did. Plus a shirt, which still draws looks when I wear it (unless people are looking at the space where my head is supposed to be — that’s always a possibility).

Anyway, the cover art to Deep Cuts is by Orion Landau (Red Fang, Rwake). It’s not quite as striking as the cover for Bridges that Florian Bertmer (Napalm Death, Converge, Pig Destroyer) created, but I guess it would be too much to get two home runs in a row. After the jump, I’ve collected the rest of 16′s full-length-album covers, plus a song from the last album.

I was a relatively late-coming fan of Sweden’s Naglfar, discovering them through their 2007 release, Harvest, but I’m now solidly in their camp. Their skillful intertwining of melodic black metal and death metal elements creates music that is both memorable and viciously scathing.

I’m happy to report that as of today, we now have more details about their next album on Century Media, Téras. First, we have the album’s killer cover art by Niklas Sundin (Dark Tranquillity), who has previously designed artwork for bands such as In Flames, Arch Enemy, and At the Gates.

Second, we have specific release dates: March 26th in Europe and March 27th in North America. Third, we have a track list:

1. Téras
2. Pale Horse
3. III: Death Dimension Phantasma
4. The Monolith
5. An Extension Of His Arm And Will
6. Bring Out Your Dead
7. Come Perdition
8. Invoc(H)ate
9. The Dying Flame Of Existence

Since Naglfar and this album cover are on my mind, I decided to collect all of their previous album covers, which are equally eye-catching. That’s after the jump, along with a replay of the first song from Téras.

Dan Seagrave is a god among men, at least when it comes to pens, pencils, and paint. I’ve slobbered over his artwork before — for example, in this review of Wretched’s Beyond the Gate in 2010, which included many examples of his album art at the end. But I got a fresh reminder this morning when Rev. Will sent me a link to that stunner up above.

I had to do some net sleuthing to find out what it was. Turns out it’s the cover art to a 2011 album called Facet of Aberration by a thrash band from the Bay Area called Invection. I hadn’t heard of them before, but I’m throwing in some of their music after the jump.

As for Mr. Seagrave’s artwork, there’s a fan-sponsored page on Facebook, the creator of which has been adding album art — without any band logos or album titles to obscure the sheer brutal goodness of the artwork. As of a few minutes ago, that page included 65 pieces of album art. You can gaze upon all of that via this link. And after the jump, you can see a few more examples I haven’t previously posted at NCS.

Dan Seagrave has a merch store here and a personal Facebook page here.

This post is really about news of new spring tours, but I couldn’t resist adding that just-released cover artwork for the next studio album by Paradise Lost, Tragic Idol, which is scheduled for release on April 23 in Europe via Century Media Records. The album’s artwork was designed by Parisian designer Valnoir (www.metastazis.com), who has also worked with other artists such as Morbid Angel, Ulver, Watain, and more than 150 others.

Now, on to the tours news:

First, Lambgoat reported this news earlier today: “Late this spring there will be a festival type tour in the U.S featuring Origin, Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Aborted, Vital Remains, Threat Signal, Rings Of Saturn, and Dawn Of Ashes. The trek is currently being booked, with dates expected to surface in several weeks. We’ll keep you posted.” I mean, holy shit, that’s a helluva tour right there. But there’s more:

Hails and Horns reports that Skeletonwitch and The Black Dahlia Murder will be mounting a U.S. tour this spring. The dates are after the jump.

But that’s not all: MetalSucks will be co-sponsoring a 24-city U.S. tour consisting of Protest the Hero, Periphery, Jeff Loomis, The Safety Fire, and Today I Caught the Plague. The schedule for that one is after the jump — and there’s one more tour after the jump, too.

Seems like I was just apologizing for the number of posts we’ve published today, but then I saw this album art for the first time and all thought of trying to be judicious with your time just evaporated like a soft shower in the Sahara.

I’m sure my enthusiasm is attributable in part to how eager I am to hear this album. Gorod is a remarkable band. Even as an inter-album EP, their 2011 release, Transcendence, blew me away. The next full-length, A Perfect Absolution, holds so much potential, and yet I have a feeling that it will unfold in multiple, unpredictable directions.

But wholly apart from anticipation for the music, this album art is bursting with visual extravagance and worthy of attention by itself. I don’t know what the bizarre imagery represents, but it’s striking. I also don’t know who created the artwork, though the style does seem familiar. I’m still searching for that info.

As for the music, the teaser video after the jump includes just a part of one song, without vocals, but it’s very sweet. Such a pity that the album won’t be released until March 12. It’s available for pre-order at Listenable Records web shop (here). I’ve put an even larger version of the album cover after the jump, too.

I’m ridiculously far behind in listening to EPs and albums that bands have sent to NCS over the last couple of months. Hell, I’m embarrassingly far behind in even answering the e-mails from bands who sent us music to hear, which is just plain rude. But I’m going to make an effort to catch up, beginning today.

Long ago, in dog years, we started this EYE-CATCHERS series as a way of unscientifically testing the hypothesis that if album art is cool, the music on the album is probably going to be cool, too. Of course, that hypothesis doesn’t make much logical sense, but then again neither does turning water into wine and lots of people seem to buy that, so who knows? Since we started, this series has branched out to include features on metal artwork, in addition to music, but today I’m going back to the original idea.

Liber Necris (“book of the dead”) is a UK band who wrote us in December. The first thing I noticed, even before reading the words, was the cover art you see above for their debut EP/demo, The Immutable Aversion. I thought it was really well done. The artist is Drew Millward, who has created album covers for other bands, in addition to many shirt and poster designs and much else besides (you can see more of his creations via this link), and we’ll have more of his art for Liber Necris at the end of this post. As soon as I saw the art, I resolved to listen to the EP. That was a good decision.

We hardly ever actually “plan” anything around here.  Impulse is in the driver’s seat most of the time.  But sometimes a pattern develops despite the absence of design, and this week our content has been heavier than usual with videos and album art. Yesterday I saw even more eye-catching artwork for forthcoming albums, so I’m collecting them here (along with some music, of course).

BORKNAGAR

This long-running avant-garde Norwegian band is one I learned about through readers on this site back in the early days of NCS. What with all the clean singing, I didn’t immediately love the music, but I’ve developed an appreciation for what they do, and so I’m interested in the new studio album they recorded with Jens Bogren at Fascination Street Studios (Opeth, Paradise Lost, Katatonia) in Örebro, Sweden. The album is titled Urd and will be released on March 26 in Europe and March 27 in North America via Century Media Records.

The eye-catching album art was designed by Brazilian artist Marcelo Vasco, who did the cover for this band’s previous Universal album. He has also created album art for many other bands, some of which we’ve featured here, including Belphegor, Einherjer, Dimmu Borgir, The Faceless, Noctem, and Keep of Kalessin.

The cover for Urd captures the look and feel of a Nordic wood carving. More info about the design and the album can be found on a post at Borknagar’s official site, here. As for the clean singing, the new album will feature three pretty talented vocalists working together – Vintersorg, Lars Nedland, and ICS Vortex. One of the heavier tracks from the band’s last album comes right after the jump.

A couple days ago TheMadIsraeli sent me a link to DECIBEL’s online site, and what should greet my eyes upon landing there but THAT piece of arresting artwork up. I was so struck by the colors and the imagery that I almost forgot there was supposed to be a song on that page, too.

The song is a new single called “Lairs of the Ascending Masters” by a Nashville band signed to Sumerian called Enfold Darkness. It’s an interesting blackened take on tech metal, with spidery riffing, swarmy soloing, spit-fire drumming, and vocals that vault from growly lows to torture-victim shrieks of pain — all of it rushing along well above the speed limit. If that sounds attractive, hop over to DECIBEL and let “Lairs” give your head a good scouring.

Since I’ve heard the song several times, what I want to do is talk more about the artwork. It was created by Ken Sarafin, who happens to be the vocalist for a Denver-based band named Vale of Pnath. Vale of Pnath released a self-titled EP in 2009 and then a debut album last August on Willowtip Records called The Prodigal Empire. I haven’t heard the whole album, though I’ve seen good things written about the band in comments here at NCS as well as elsewhere, and I was certainly intrigued enough by the artwork of Vale’s vocalist to finally dip a toe in the water. As noted, I also took a deeper dive into Ken Sarafin’s art.

Huh.  It appears I jumped the gun earlier today when I posted what I thought was the album art for Meshuggah’s new album, Koloss. If I had just waited, I would have seen THIS.

According to a press release I received, it’s going to be in 3-D, and its name is “Gateman”.  It was developed by Luminokaya Lab — over a period of nine months. Luminokaya Lab appears to be the alter ego of a Russian graphic artist named Keerych Luminokaya. I found a lot more of his work, some of which you can see after the jump. “Eye-catching” is probably too mild a word for it. “Eye-popping” perhaps. Or “Eye-exploding”.

What I posted today as the Koloss album art turns out to be only a part of a bigger piece of work. I think I like the larger concept even more. But do yourself a favor, and see more of Luminokaya’s work after the jump, and much more can be found via that Luminokaya Lab link up above. This may be the first metal album cover he’s done, but I have a feeling it won’t be the last.