EYE-CATCHERS (Part 4)

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers  14 Responses »
Jul 022010
 

Yes, it’s time again for another installment in our irregular “Eye-Catchers” series. In case you’ve forgotten, this is both an ongoing experiment and a vehicle for discovering new music. The experiment is designed to test the completely illogical hypothesis that cool album art tends to correlate with cool music. There’s really no reason why the two should go together, but in our experience, they do go together more often than not.

Of course, our experience is completely random and anecdotal, with no statistical significance behind it at all, and undoubtedly the day will come when we’ll see a cool cover and then run for the vomitorium after we start listening to the tunes. But since we started this experiment back in April, most of our test cases have validated the hypothesis.

This experiment also provides a way for us to explore new music that we otherwise might not discover. We see eye-catching album art, and based on nothing but that, we go listen to the music.

As we explained in an earlier post, as a way of picking new music, it’s like throwing a dart at a dartboard or putting a quarter in a slot machine and pulling the handle. It makes no logical sense, except there’s so much new music from so many new bands out in the world that randomization sometimes seems as good a way as any to make choices.

Today we’ve got two test cases — two bands we had never heard before. The first one is a band from Poitiers, France, called Klone. They recently released their third full-length album, Black Days, on Season of Mist. The album cover is at the top of this post.

The second one is an unsigned band from Oregon called Arkhum, and they’re on the verge of releasing their first album, Anno Universum, in August.

How did these bands fare in our Eye-Catchers test? Read on after the jump to find out (and, for your trouble, we’ll have some music for you to hear . . .) Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS (Part 3)

 Album Reviews, Eye-Catchers, Metal News  6 Responses »
May 292010
 

If you’ve been visiting this site regularly, you know that we’re suckers for cool album art. In fact, we’ve been engaged in an experiment, off and on, to test the completely illogical hypothesis that if album art is eye-catching, there’s usually something about the music that’s worthwhile, too. You can see our last test cases here and here.

Today’s example is that mind-bending motherfucker up above. The art is by Kenneth Fairclough, whose MySpace page is at this location. It’s the cover for the first EP of a New York metal band named FXZero.

It seems to be a twist on iconic images of the Madonna and Child, except this conception wasn’t immaculate and Mary don’t look too thrilled about daddy’s visitation, or about the offspring of their not-so-blessed union. Looks like the rest of the world isn’t too happy about the visit either, given the destruction that surrounds this bizarre trio. The beret is a nice touch, too.

This thing is so eye-catchingly strange that it’s worth a closer look. Let’s blow up part of this image. Bigger is better, right?  (after the jump . . . and we’ll get to the music, too) Continue reading »

THE OSEDAX

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  No Responses »
May 102010
 

We were hopping around the interwebz last night looking for metal news. We saw a blurb about a Virginia band called The Osedax that had just put up three new songs for streaming. Didn’t know anything about them. But sometimes we check out unfamiliar, unsigned bands for completely random reasons, like cool album cover art or an unusual name.

As a way of picking new music, it’s like throwing a dart at a dartboard or putting a quarter in a slot machine and pulling the handle. It makes no logical sense, except there’s so much new music from so many new bands out in the world that randomization sometimes seems as good a way as any to make choices.

So, in the case of The Osedax, it was the name that made us take the next step. There are lots of extreme metal bands with weird names. Some of them turn out to be completely made up, and The Osedax certainly had the ring of a made-up name. But it was weirdly interesting enough that we decided to find out more about the band, if for no other reason than to investigate where the name came from. And it turns out that Osedax is the name of an actual life form that’s a real mind-bender.

We’ll come back to that eventually, but to continue with the current story: A bit of web surfing took us to a page where we saw some artwork for the band, presumably created for their forthcoming EP (the band’s first release). And that turned out to be cool — and it became even more cool after we discovered the connection between the art and the source of the band name.

So, we had a new chance to test out our completely illogical theory that in the world of extreme metal, cool album art correlates more than you’d think with cool music. (We explored other test cases here and here.)

And whaddaya know? More confirmation for our theory — because we’re really digging the music of The Osedax. So, with apologies for this tedious wind-up, continue reading after the jump to see the pitch — more about the music, more album art, more info about what an Osedax really is, and a widget that will allow you to hear those three new songs. Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS (Part 2)

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  No Responses »
Apr 302010
 

Today we’re continuing the experiment we began two days ago, to test our hypothesis that at least in the world of extreme metal, cool album cover art usually means there’s something worth hearing in the music. Yeah, we know it’s a ridiculous, illogical hypothesis, but at least in our random experience we think there’s some truth to it. Besides, it’s proven to be an interesting vehicle for checking out some new music.

The test methodology we used is this: We looked at news blurbs on Blabbermouth over a recent 48-hour period about new or forthcoming albums, and every time we saw a cool album cover, we visited the band’s MySpace site and listened to what was available from the album.

In Part 1 of this experiment, we reported on our first two test samples — a forthcoming album from Keep of Kalessin and a recently released album from Trident. So far, our samples confirm the hypothesis. Today, we’re reporting on the results of three more samples, courtesy of Setherial, Trigger the Bloodshed, and Witchery.

The first sample is an album called Ekpyrosis scheduled for release in May on Regain Records by that Swedish band, Setherial. The cover art, by an artist named Bartosz Nalezinski, is pictured at the top of this post. We thought it was kinda cool — a ghoulish metamorphosis of some traditional Christian iconography. But is the music cool?  We have our own opinion … after the jump. (plus the other test results)

Continue reading »

EYE-CATCHERS (Part 1)

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  2 Responses »
Apr 272010
 

We’re suckers for eye-catching album art.  We’ve found, more often than not, that when the album art is really cool, there’s something worth hearing in the music, too. That’s not based on a statistically valid survey, of course, and it doesn’t make any logical sense. But in our own personal case, it seems to be true.

To test out that hypothesis, we hunted through news items on a recent 48-hour period at Blabbermouth to find eye-catching album art, and then we listened to music from the albums in question.

For example, check out that one above.  Actually, if you’re already on this page, you don’t really have any alternative but to check it out. But it’s pretty fucking cool, isn’t it? It’s the cover to a new album called Reptilian by Norway’s Keep of Kalessin, which will be released n North America on June 8 via Nuclear Blast and in most of Europe on May 10 through Indie Recordings.

Based on the track listing (which you can see here), it appears that many of the songs will have something to do with, uh, dragons. So whaddaya know? In addition to being scary cool, the album cover actually has a thematic connection to the music.  The band’s guitarist Obsidian C. commented on the cover: “The music on Reptilian is more in your face and direct than before so we chose this cover and the title to emphasise that directness as well as focusing even more on the fantasy elemement in the band. This beast of an album is staring at you and it’s going straight for your throat!”

Well, if we had a dollar for every band that used the “straight for your throat” line to describe its music, we could quit our day jobs and flog away on this blog full-time. The question is whether Obsidian C. is spouting mere puffery or whether the music really is as cool as the album cover.  That’s the point of this little experiment. What’s the answer?  (we’ll give you our opinion, after the jump, plus another test case for our hypothesis about cool album art and cool music . . .) Continue reading »

BLACK TUSK AND ODEM ARCARUM

 Eye-Catchers, Metal News  No Responses »
Apr 082010
 

Just so you don’t think we only care about ridiculous album covers, here are two we came across this morning that are cool. And even better, so’s the music.

The one at the top is a glimpse of the cover for Black Tusk‘s new album, Taste the Sin, which is scheduled for a May 25 release on Relapse Records. You’ll probably recognize the art of John Dyer Baizley, the singer and guitarist for Baroness, whose amazing art has graced the album covers not only for his own band but also for the likes of Skeletonwitch, Kylesa, Pig Destroyer, and Darkest Hour.

A song from the new Black Tusk album called “Embrace the Madness” is now streaming on the band’s MySpace page. Go check it out, because it’s a killer — overpoweringly heavy but also overpoweringly infectious.  We’re really looking forward to hearing the whole album.

The second cover is from a just-released new album called Outrageous Reverie Above The Erosion Of Barren Earth by a German black metal band named Odem Arcarum. The artwork is by a Bulgarian artist named Haate Kaate (pictured to the right — MySpace page here). To see more of the artwork she created for a 12-page booklet that accompanies the CD, click past the jump. We think it’s really awesome stuff. (You can see the whole booklet here.)

The band has songs from the new album streaming on their MySpace page, and we really like what we’re hearing.  Another album we’re anxiously waiting for the mail to bring us!

(View more Odem Arcarum album art by Haate Kaate after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

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