Heavy metal art

Olf says:

What really makes good heavy metal art? I've been doing the art for Flesh Socket since the begining, and have recently started doing art for a few other bands here in the City of Brotherly Hate-that-leads-to-Fratricide. And usually I get very positive comments ("Totally brutal man!" or "Fuckin' A man, that's sick!" or the like) on the stuff I do, but I want more. I want to make the kind of cover that will make albums sell themselves.

And some people can be more difficult to work with. I did the cover for our friends Blackmass Mafia's upcoming new album, War Machine. And that was cool, save for a bit of run-around making everyone happy. Now, the lead man from the band, Nuge, is great, totally metal, got the looks and the voice and the attitude. And he only emails me IN ALL CAPS. So metal, man!

So he asked me for "a sick-ass transformer tank robot thing, fuckin' shit up!" Well, I selt him this:



Pretty good, no? Well, I was really happy, and was sure they'd be to, particularly since I was doing all this art for them for free. "That's the cover!" he says, and I thought no more of it. But then I hear that some of the other guys don't like it, and can we have a "beefier" robot? Well, I didn't want to do more than one more, so I sent them sketch after sketch, till I finally hit on one that they liked. Funniest thing? Right after I got the drawing finalized, Nuge fired the rest of the band and hired new members. Musicians, eh? Anyway the new robot looks like this:



More brutal, more 'beefy' and altogeter more metal, I do believe. I'm not as happy with the composition though. But I do like having an eviscerated corpse and a good blood splatter. Gives it a really hard-core feel, very old-school. Which is what the guys form Blackmass where going for, I think. They have that sound. So now, everyone's happy. And check out their new disc when it comes out -- the tunes are GOOD. And it's worth buying for just the art.

If anyone wants that first robot, let me know. He's for sale.

Other than that, I've had great luck, save this one time. A while back, I did a cover for a start up band (that doesn't seem to've come to anything) called Hangmans Cry. He asked me to do a reaper, holding a noose. Now, I said to myself, "That's going to look cheesy no matter what I do," but I said I'd give it a shot. So I thought and thought, and in the end, an idea hit me in the head like a flying wad of bloody cum! I painted the whole thing in a week, and loved it. Sent the guy the drawing, and he hated it.

Look at the painting first, and try to guess why. Here's the drawing:



Give up yet? He said something like "we're not a death metal band... the idea is Hangmans cry too, like, the hangman himself crys, because of the death he has to deal with." Have you ever heard such emo shit? Yeah, me neither. And that means that "hangmans" is some sorry misspelling of "hangmen" as well: did we pass the third grade? Apparently not.

BUT, not to worry, I sent it to my friend Randy from Your Lowest Moment, whom I'd done this logo for a while back:




And he loved it. So, as soon as those guys can find a steady drummer, they'll be recording a full-length disk, and they'll use that cover. I'm glad someone likes it. Because it's awesome. Not that Randy, incidentally, I also went back and forth with a bit, about that logo. Originally, I had a much more 'old school' logo in mind, but when I presented it to him, he expressed a desire for something a bit more 'creeped out' to go with his gore-metal sound. And I obliged. In the end, I like the final version, but the original concept still has a lot of appeal to me:



I think I'll do a really old-school looking logo for Flesh Socket once I'm done with the new t-shirt design I'm working on. That oughta be fun.

So yeah, I'm learning that in heavy metal art, everyone has different ideas, and desires -- and if I'm to work with more than just my band, I need to be more receptive of commentary early in the process. The cost of doing business. I can stop once we rule the world with an iron fist of doom and destruction, and the carbon-based flesh bags have been wiped away like so much snot and cum.

We end with a cthulu:

Heavy Metal Names

Ölf says:

I would like to discuss, for a moment, naming conventions in heavy metal. Let us never forget that the only thing that can predict how much money and fame a band will reap is the awesomeness of its name, judged on a Bernard Scale (yes, I did just make that up: why do you ask?) from one to six hundred and sixty six. We can see this empirically if we look at a few examples:

Opeth:
Do I really need to say anything here? Amazing band name -- original, catchy, easy to remember, and looks great when drawn into a kick-ass logo with gothically brutal calligraph ic amazingness. And look what happened to them: these guys are probably the most respected metal band in metal circles out there. So what if the pop-radio masses would rather listen to Corey Taylor masturbating his vocal chords on stage while his band misses beats and plays off-key?

Strapping Young Lad:
Can you come up with a more awesome band name? Or a more successful and amazing band, particularly one that comes from the vast empty spaces of Canada? (Okay, they're not from a particularly empty part of Canada, but whateva.)

GWAR:
Aaaah, GWAR does my heart good. The kind of good that involves gallons of splooge, sluicing over hordes of hapless carbon-based fleshbags. Amazing name? Check. Amazing success? Check.

Slipknot:
Now here's an interesting case: a bit of a shitty band with a bit of a dick as its front man. The name is deceptive: on first glance it looks kind of cool, but when you stop to think about it, it's really dumb. Slipknot? That's like a granny knot, which is a poorly made and childish square knot. Now that's a knot to remember, a square knot. The other thing the name calls to mind is a noose, and really, could you get any more emo than that? Screaming about all the shit that's fucked up cause your mummy didn't luv you, and naming your band after a childish excuse for a real knot that brings to mind a noose. Pathetic! So, the band has very little success in its music, they're not respected by serious metal musicians (e.g. us), but, because of the superficial resemblance to a cool name, they've made a lot of money off of the sheeple.

Beau Nasty:
You remember the '80's? That's what this is, distilled essence of the eighties. Not bad, in the eighties, but not good now. And how many of you have ever heard of Beau Nasty? How many of you think it's a kick-ass, brutal, awesome name? That's what I thought.

Blessed by a Broken Heart:
This band took the award for Most Emo Name Ever three years in a row. And they are everything that is terrible about eighties hair metal, and pop music' and hardcore emo crap, all rolled into one putrefied musically talentless pile of dog shit that's Benn eaten by another dog and shat out again. And to make matters worse, they're Christian! What kind of a self-respecting metal band is Christian? On the bright side, that means we won't have to hear their shitty music at Valhalla.

Now let's look at the way that names can be chosen in Heavy Metal. Doogie Horner over at Comic vs. Audience has put together a brilliantly worked diagramme to instruct the ignorant on the type and variety of heavy metal names. Let us examine it:



This is a very instructive. The only thing I take issue with is the lack of category "TOTALLY AWESOME". Although, there being only one band in this category, I can forgive him leaving it off. Or I could have, if that one band were not FLESH SOCKET, gods of the Nether Regions of the Giant of the Northlands and Wielder of the Prehensile Penis! Flesh Socket, being a name above names, fits into all of his categories, and none.

I also take issue with the assertion that a totally bad-ass triple umlaut is not possible. I shall now prove him wrong: Tränsænäl Rapäge. This is a super-bad-ass-double-plus-brutal name. It will be a song on our next album, and then a Flesh Socket cover band will pick it up as the name for their band, and then there shall be a band with a triple umlaut. So it is possible! So there: pbbbbttt!

That is all, Fleshians. Go back to sleep.

Invasions of Fleshy Zombies

Olf says:

Minions of lesser Fleshy holes and the lesser evil beings of worldly excess! I would like to point out that the people of Texas might be ready for us, when we swoop in to give them forcible nasal penetration and take their odorous laundry items. It is reported worldwide that, several days ago, the Zombie Warning System was tested in some detail. Public officials which do not want to acknowledge the fear-inspiring power that our fleshy minions inspire attribute the test to "prankster kids" and promise them "severe spankies," but we know better. We've lost the element of surprise... now, at least for the state of Texas, we'll have to move en-mass, and rely on strength in numbers and the infective capacity of our bile-derived bloodly infective salivic venoms.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/02/04/2009-02-04_midwest_road_sign_prank_warns_drivers_of-4.html

Wrath of Khan, Italian-style

Olf says:

When we were all younger, and more naive, in the 1980's, there was a beautiful tragedy that even William Shatner could not spoil. That tragedy was The Wrath of Khan. A tale of physical and emotional torture, of cold-blooded revenge, and space-opera brutality. In short, the kind of story that we love. A story that only one thing could make better: translation into Italian opera.



Thank you to the guys at Robot Chicken form bringing us such amazingness.

Inauguration Recap, et cetera

Ulf says:

Greetings angst-ridden, bile-deprived minions of the sub-tropical wastes. I, Ulf, am here to bring you a centrifugal force so centrifugalicious that your own blood plasma trembles before just its centrifugal name. First, I would like to address this so-called new President of the United States. Why does our inaugural address have to be personified by such pussified rhetoric? Here, the leader of the apparent “greatest nation in the world”, just has to swear himself in to captivate the bright-eyed masses as they consume their burgers and watch their American Idols. What? No sacrificial slaughter? No virgin decapitation? No reanimated corpses to enforce the iron fist of the great empire under Lord Barackinator Obamatron? Granted, virgins are hard to come by but I am sure there are still enough people aware of anime conventions to not let this one just idly slip by! I am outraged, inraged, sideraged, and just all around cardinal direction-raged. As a loyal soldier in the army of absurdity that is Flesh Socket, I have one thing to say to this lack of wartorn serenadethat this nation damn well deserves: pussies.

Now, my latrine is equipped with all of the latest basic cable technology, so I can see what all of you Fleshies are up to so that I know where to direct my masturbational malevolence. Events have come to my attention that make me feel even less pity for you sacks of carbon-based flesh pods, something I thought was not even conceivable, but then again, you people never fail to disappoint. One such event is the loss of this precious little white spawn known as Caylee Anthony. My fellow Socket colleagues and I do not spend night after night burying children alive in various backyards just to have our recognition mocked under the veil one hot psychotic flesh socket that let her broodling feel the humiliating scorn of defeat by dying by the hands of a non-Fleshian. Oh sure, the news media tries to compensate by flashing images of our work by showing pictures of one missing black child for a day to show that they respect missing dead children of all races (you may thank us later parents), but they are just jealous of our indiscriminate nature towards child abduction. Don't believe me? Just start digging around Rush Limbaugh's yard. You will find plenty of ethnically diverse child sacrifices along with plenty of children porn, which I assure you, Flesh Socket does not condone or have any part of.

We stick to bestiality. Sickos.

Beginnings

Olf says:

So this whole writing thing? I dunno, I've never done anything but carve runes into standing stones, over the mounds of my fallen companions. These letters are harder -- all small and squiggly and shit.

I hate beginnings. I remember when Ymir was borne from the melting ice in Ginnungagap, and how we had to cut him apart to make the world. All that shit with the skull to make the dome for the sky and shit, setting the Sun and the Moon to run across it, chased by wolves to keep them running fast: such a pain in the ass. Luckily Odin and the brothers did most of that shit... I just sat back and played drums on old Ymir's knucklebones.

And here I am, stuck with another shitty beginning.