Some people think physical CDs and album artwork have become, or soon will become, an anachronism, as the unstoppable movement to digital downloads continues to surge ahead. Some of your NCS Co-Authors are in that camp. But not me. Whenever possible, even when I’ve already listened to a download of music, I try to get my hands on a physical CD. Lots of reasons for that, but one reason is that I like to see all the album art and any text content that may be included. And sometimes, seeing an image of album art on the webz draws me to the music, when otherwise I might never have listened to it.
A recent case in point: German black-metal band Odem Arcarum‘s new album, Outrageous Reverie Above The Erosion Of Barren Earth. I saw the amazing cover art for that album by Bulgarian artist Haate Kaate and put up a short post on it not too long ago. (You really should go check out that post to see what I’m talking about.) At that time, I had only listened to one song from the album on Odem Arcarum’s MySpace page — and did that solely because I thought the art was cool. But it didn’t take me long to buy the CD, which I now have in my grimy claws.
For me, the album art would have been worth the price of the CD. But as an added bonus, the music is also strikingly impressive — one of the coolest examples of progressive black metal I’ve yet heard. (and we’ll tell you why after the jump . . .) Continue reading »
