TMN List: Worst/Best Metal Cover Art

15 November 2012

by Poppy Reid

There is a fine line between a horrific and perfect metal album cover (re: Iron Maiden) and the kind of ridiculous offering that can only be met with laughter. This list is based on the understanding that while the genre's cover art generally cops a lot of flack, sometimes it can be celebrated and ridiculed at the same time.

1. Cannibal Corpse – The Wretched Spawn
















While Cannibal Corpse have taken a literal approach to almost all their cover art, the ability to shock has always been their forté, with every cover having been either censored or given an alternate visual for the last 15 years.

2. Lard – 70’s Rock Must Die

While this is actually a three-track EP from the Chicago duo, it gets an honourable mention for its colour and design assault; and if you look closely, you can see he hangs to the right.

3. Cradle Of Filth – Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa

Perhaps the band are honing in on every metal-lovers’ ostensible fantasy, she’s even holding the forbidden fruit, hot right? If this artwork floats your boat then we can only imagine the mess you’re making over the band’s logo.

4. Monster Magnet – Spine Of God

At the time of reissuing the 1991 debut in 2006, the New Jersey band found themselves in an immense hallucinogenic drug coma. This is the result.

5. Anthrax – Fistful of Metal

Just because it was their debut album, does not mean they should be pardoned.

6. W.A.S.P – Inside The Electric Circus

When frontman Blackie Lawless said this third album was by far his worst, we assumed he was also referring to the artwork. However a cursory glance at the band’s previous releases show that yes, the spandex is always intentional.

7. Boned – Up At The Crack

Featuring tracks like Loaded On Love, Drain The Main Vein and Ain’t No Talkin’ With Your Mouth Full, this cover, in all its phallic glory, is entirely understandable.

8. Acid Bath - When the Kite String Pops

As if metal bands using clown imagery weren’t already naff, this sludge metal band from Louisiana had to make it utterly guileless too. If you’re going to get your kid to make your album artwork, at least put their age under the signature.

9. Alestorm – Back Through Time

This album was recorded at LSD Studios in Germany, the same year Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was released. ‘Nuff said.

10. Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell

Meat Loaf is undeniably a heroic outcome of the ‘70s, and Bat Out Of Hell is the lead and pinnacle of one of the greatest album trilogies ever recorded, but as forward-thinking as this was in 1977, it’s still a naked man riding a bike out of a grave.

11. Bruce Dickinson – Accident Of Birth

“Oh no! There’s a Jack in the Box with fuzzy eyebrows coming at me with a baseball bat. I’m so scared!” – said no one. The artist however, is responsible for Iron Maiden’s incredible mascot Eddie, which makes this offering twenty-times worse.

12. Burzum - Burzum
While this album was recorded ‘pre-imprisonment’ for the murder of fellow black metal musician Euronymous (who recorded a guitar solo on this record), and therefore not his darkest visual, the Norwegian artist was already exerting grim tendencies.

13. Darkthrone – Dark Thrones and Black Flags

Never fear! The vampish varmint with the thighs is here! The illustration skills here are apt, it’s just the illustration depicting a million contradictions that isn’t.

14. Deceased – Supernatural Addiction

If it was the Virginian thrash-metal band’s ultimate intention to conjure Tales From The Crypt nostalgia (circa 1990), then by golly they’ve done a neat job!

15. Doomriders – Black Thunder

While we’re wholly aware that the aim of metal artwork is to make fifty shades of Doomrider’s debut album cover, we’re just not sure this puts the fear of the metal Gods inside us.

16. Exodus – Bonded By Blood

The perfect depiction of Yin and Yang. From the black-polished vamp nails, to the wiry blue-black hair and the gnashing fangs, plus the super-glue attachment, which connects him to the ‘good child’ – yes, this would have look quite scary in your head.

17. Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Opus Eponymous was nominated for the Swedish version of the Grammy Awards in 2010 in the Best Hard Rock category, the cover art was named #4 in Revolver magazine’s 2010 awards, but it only takes a perfunctory glance at the haunted house, bats, full moon, lightening and Priest-ghost to understand its place in this list.

18. Immortal - Pure Holocaust
KISS had been touring and recording for seventeen years before this New York band formed; this just cannot be forgiven.

19. Mayhem – Dawn Of The Black Hearts

This infamous photograph was taken by Mayhem guitarist Euronymous (the very same from #12), when he discovered the body of the band’s vocalist after he had shot himself in the head. Not only is this cover in horrendously bad taste, it was also Euronymous’ idea to use the image, after he had allegedly encouraged the suicide. What a guy!

20. Municipal Waste – The Fatal Feast

We bet $50 and a can of spray paint that these guys almost died in their Virginian mosh shorts when The Walking Dead TV series was made available as a box set.

21. Boris – Heavy Rocks

Here we have a rule breaker. Yes, it’s a reissue, but the original was two shades of orange. The Japanese band has taken all that was heinous and holy about metal artwork and ‘Princeified’ it.

22. Tankard – Zombie Attack

What’s worse than seeing all the harmless film protagonists in one place? Featuring them watching television on an album cover, for a band named after a cup.

23. Terror Squad - Artillery

This is that drawing you made into your album cover when you were drunk and wanted to show your little brother you love him, and encourage his artistic pursuits... even though he clearly can't draw.

Little Mix: Girl Power

                                                                                Photography: Ken Leanfore

15 November 2012

by Poppy Reid

Boisterous femininity, unbound self-awareness, patriarchal resistance and sensationalised depth within each cliché; in other words, Girl Power is back. Leading the way are the four adorable twenty-something-year-olds sitting on a couch at Sydney’s Luna Park, ready for consumerists to collect them all.

“Little Mix stands for everything,” says Perrie Edwards, the group’s only blonde and only member dating a fifth of fellow X Factor UK phenomenon One Direction. “We’re a mix of girls, we’re a mix of personalities, we’re all little, we’re a mix of races...”
“And musical influences,” interjects the gregarious Leigh-Anne Pinnock.

With Sydney’s Harbour Bridge an active backdrop behind the myriad of versicolour (some actually coordinated with one another), the layers of makeup, lip gloss and the pairs of six-inch heels, Edwards, Pinnock, Jesy Nelson and Jade Thirlwall aren’t completely dissimilar to the MGA-manufactured Bratz Dolls. Although they may have been assembled as a marketable, profit-producing commodity–perhaps with both Bratz and the Spice Girls in mind–Edwards assures TMN that you won’t catch them in a mini-skirt.

“When we first got together we knew straight away that we didn’t want to dress in skimpy outfits, mini skirts and bras and go onstage. We’re all into the music and bringing all the old-school elements back rather than a lot of sexiness... As cheesy as this sounds, the girl power.” She looks to the other three: “We’re all about that, aren’t we?”

While it’s easy to form comparisons to The Spice Girls, Little Mix couldn’t be more flattered, even from those collating the two on a superficial level. “It’s about time for the return of the girl group,” says Nelson, the most wide-eyed and open of the bunch. “For me personally, when I was younger I loved that I had somebody to look up to. The Spice Girls were great role models: they had strong opinions; they were all different shapes and sizes; they weren’t perfect. I think that’s real, I feel that’s what we’re all about.”

After auditioning as solo artists, the four were put together by X Factor producers during the show’s bootcamp stage. However, all four had actually formed a contingency plan after looking at the soloist talent, and began marketing themselves as a group. “One day me and Jesy [Nelson] were looking at each other in the mirror,” laughs Pinnock. “And we thought, ‘we’d look really good together in a group wouldn’t we?’” “The talent [level] was just so high,” adds Nelson. “So we were just trying to keep our options open in case we didn’t get through on our own... We just stuck together and were hoping for the best.”

Interestingly, along for the televised ride and climacteric win last December, were thousands of international fans who followed the journey online. With over a thousand Little Mix-dedicated (and utterly devoted) Twitter accounts, it’s no wonder Australia has been quick to jump on the wagon. “There’s nothing better than coming off that plane and seeing like two hundred girls there supporting you,” says Thirlwall, the group’s most pensive member.

“The amount of fans here is just ridiculous,” adds Edwards. “It’s a massive compliment, they’re having to work hard to get us, do you know what I mean?... We’re the luckiest girls ever.” “Obviously we want to be known for our music and not as that group off The X Factor,” adds Thirlwall, “and that will change when the [debut] album comes out, but we’re so grateful for the show.”

Edwards’ relationship with One Direction’s Zayn Malik could have easily been detrimental; when Malik asked Nova Radio receptionist Anna Crotti on a date during their last stint in the country, the young woman received death threats via her personal Facebook account. However, the group does admit it was a stratagem of theirs to gain female support from the beginning. “When we first got together we were like ‘we have to get the girls on our side’,” says Nelson. “They’re the ones that vote.”

“A lot of our fans were One Direction fans anyway,” says Edwards. “So as we grew as a group they’ve just supported us.” Despite the negativity that surrounds manufactured groups, the resurgence of boy bands is well and truly underway; regardless of whether or not Little Mix become global stars, if they can stop young girls from idolising women who view their ‘ogle areas’ as foodstuffs, then the rebirth of Girl Power will be cause for celebration.

Live Review: Refused, Sydney

14 November 2012

by Poppy Reid

Tuesday November 13
Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW

“Sometimes punk rock is beautiful because it’s a reflection of what life should be, and sometimes it’s just a stupid clique for adolescents. When it’s time to die, who is ready to die as nobly and as gloriously as the fact of our mortality demands? Who is ready for that? By the time you die, you’re so exhausted and so beaten and miserable, you can only die.” – from Refused Are Fucking Dead.

The solemn story of Refused has plagued their zealots and the creatives who shaped their own stylistic hedonism and integrity on the band who punk rock could not save.

This concert may have been fourteen years in the making, and would have been vastly different had it come any earlier, but thankfully, somehow, Refused are still the non-conformist visionaries whose romanticised ethos haven’t wavered.

From the menacing pound of David Sandstrom’s bass drum to Dennis Lyxzén’s first leg-jerk - which kicked off his androgynous front in opening tracks The Shape Of Punk To Come and The Refused Party Program - Refused eclipsed any doubt that the close-to-forty-year-olds had lost their vexation. In fact, over almost two hours at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre, the Swedish five-piece sounded more embroiled with fervour than they ever had been.

“We wrote all these songs when we were younger and we were super angry,” says Lyxzén while taking first-timers through a history crash course. “And one of the things we said was ‘how are these songs going to hold up when you're 40 and wearing skin tight pants?’”

As the guitars melted into the first lines of Rather Be Dead, the crowd screaming “than alive by your oppression,” the track hit a chord with all who knew their tragic story. This was the track they didn’t get to finish, this was the last sound before their split, these were the words screamed before police came to their rescue, ending the exhaustion in a Virginian basement. Lyxzén stacked two amps vertically on one another at the cusp of the stage, mounting the two with ease for the penultimate chant; the crowd seemed both anxious and exalted before his rhythmic leap back onto the wood.

“It was life,” Lyxzén declared as he explained their absence. “It fucked you over, it fucked us over, but then again if we did come in ‘98 we would have played the fucking Annandale Hotel or something.”

Throughout tracks like Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine and Hook, Line and Sinker, each member harboured their own mania, still looking like adolescent punks out to start a riot, which they did. Lyxzén created a circle pit with a simple twirl of his index finger during the track inspired by the mosh mainstay. “I like the fact that you're very rowdy people here in Australia,” he laughed.

Later, the frontman tried to tell a Patti Smith anecdote only to be forced off course by a shouter. “You start your own fucking band. I'll come and see you and you can say whatever you want,” he laughed. “I mean that, I will come see you.”

As guitars created a state of emergency alarm sound preceding final tracks Refused Are Fucking Dead, Worms of the Senses and Faculties of the Skull, Sandstrom and his rapid-fire percussion drew a playground for the other players to loom over.

After a dangerous encore, where Lyxzén entered the crowd and one radical made it onstage, Refused had surprised, awakened and satiated. This was a band who the mainstream had ignored, yet a band who have inspired so much of what falls under the umbrella now. And even now, fourteen years after their tragic end, Refused are still an untouched acme of alternative music.

Live Review: Matchbox Twenty, Sydney

                                                                             Photography: Rebecca Holden

31 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

Fourteen years ago, Matchbox Twenty performed Sydney’s 16,000 capacity Enmore Theatre in the wake of their 8x Platinum debut Yourself Or Someone Like You. Last night they returned for a sold-out concert at the 13,250 capacity Entertainment Centre, in support of their ARIA #1 album North.

But their first of two Sydney concerts wasn’t about numbers or accolades, or even to prove they still had it after sixteen years together (which they very much do), according to frontman Rob Thomas, it was about us.

“If you guys give us your time tonight, for the next two hours we're going to celebrate you.”

The lights swayed bright across the crowd for new track and opener Parade. Thomas, bassist Brian Yale (who danced endearingly throughout), ex-drummer-turned-rhythm-guitarist Paul Douchette and lead guitarist/vocalist Kyle Cook gave the fresher material just as much avidity as old favourites like Bent, Disease and the Tabitha’s Secret track, 3AM.

The backdrop screens projected the band’s journey perfectly, from the complacent-looking plump man on the cover of their debut to the full She’s So Mean music video, which showed the band's new taste in ‘art’ – Matchbox Twenty are still riding a monumental passage, and as two young teenage boys joined the 40-something couples, the flock of women in matching homemade MB20 shirts, and the side-stage security in singing every lyric verbatim, it’s clear it is far from tapering.

:: VIEW LIVE SHOTS FROM THE MELBOURNE CONCERT HERE

Among the 112 highlights were the opening backing vocals from Douchette and Cook turning midway track All Your Reasons into what could have introduced an Act II with its epic variations; Thomas’ subtle hip swivels while Douchette unleashed havoc taking over from touring drummer Stacy Jones, and again for his ferocious two-drum contribution to new track English Town; Cook mouthing every lyric when he was sans mic and his solo vocal debut in co-penned track The Way, and also the beautiful interaction during So Sad So Lonely, where Thomas took a fan’s iPhone and filmed himself and Cook for a full verse as they crouched on the edge of the stage.

Matchbox Twenty’s concert meant more than just a night out for their Sydney fans. The quartet and their collection harboured a mixture of emotions for everyone; a happy place, a place to wallow in self-pity, a place of vindication, but most of all a celebration that one of the world’s best group’s are still having infectious fun and branching out over their long and glorious career.

:: READ TMN'S INTERVIEW WITH THE BAND HERE

Album Review: Anberlin, Vital

30 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

After the lambast of emotional and stylistic schizophrenia on fifth album Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place, Anberlin have finally found their utopia. It’s clear they’re at peace in subtle pop-rock borders, where main lyricist Stephen Christian is free to indulge in a sophisticated croon while ‘80s-style synths pepper the background.

In the wake of ten years and five albums together, the Florida five-piece were faced with the age-old decision for album six, the same decision they were forced to make from number three onward: dare they evolve or placate fans and fade into the abyss; to write, record and perform with their loyal fanbase a mind-constant, or to take the born rite of every creative type and explore new territory? It’s an idiom that’s bound to backfire whichever path is taken but while fans have always been fickle creatures, Anberlin have passed through unscathed this time.

Sure, some tracks are a little staggering when paired against previous jaunts, the tossed-off track Orpheum, and cheesy ballad Innocent (with lyrics like “I miss you so much” and “we were born to run carefree”). But with vigorous opener Self-Starter featuring Nashville singer Julia Marie, the radio-ready single Someone Anyone, and the fulgurant rage of guitars and slap percussion in Little Tyrants, most criticisms will simply bounce off of Vital’s cohesive armour.

Producer Aaron Sprinkle (MXPX, Pedro The Lion, Deftones, Emery), who helmed Anberlin’s three previous records and their Godspeed EP, has underscored the record with his distinct tautness. As he has done in the past with this band, Sprinkle has formed a portrait of what an Anberlin album should look like in 2012, bracing it against his earlier blueprints with the band.

While bands like Emery, Silverstein and Senses Fail-who underwent their embryonic stage along with Anberlin-haven’t moved beyond their cult status (bar the release of Silverstein’s Short Songs album in February), Anberlin have grown quite soft, in a way that should be seen as perennial rather than weak.

The fact Vital has failed to creep past the ARIA’s Top 40 doesn’t make this band any less fascinating; it’s still their fourth to chart here in Australia and as Christian chants in the sullen dolor of album closer God, Drugs & Sex - “let go, let go of me now, I’m already gone,” in one litany he addresses his fans’ possessiveness of earlier sounds and captures the crux of what has made Anberlin so significant.

Live Review: The Black Keys, Sydney

23 October 2012

by Poppy Reid

Monday October 22
Sydney Entertainment Centre, NSW

While Nashville blues-rock is always welcome on our shores, The Black Keys gathered an exceptionally feverish crowd at Sydney’s Entertainment Centre last night.

Along for the ride were Sydney band Royal Headache, who despite the groundswell of interest surrounding their excellent debut record, are still coming into their own as a live act; a stagnant opening slot at one of Sydney’s biggest live venue just didn’t sit right for these Pitchfork-touted garage-rockers, and it showed. However, as frontman Shogun entered the audience to hug his parents after the set, it was worth the cringe-worthy parts just to witness a rare moment before the band’s preordained rise.

From their gumption-laden entrance - tall shadows strutting behind back screens - to their powerful hot-lit exit, Sydney watched on with open mouths and tapping limbs as The Black Keys charmed their way through a twenty-song set.

Industrial backing bulbs pulsated white heat in all the best parts of opening tracks Howlin’ For You and Next Girl, each filament fading to orange after the switch. Singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney together created the vast wall of sound every rock band dreams of; positioned side-by-side, sharing equal limelight, the duo took us over the hills and through the valleys of a decade's worth of committed bliss.

:: VIEW ALL THE LIVE SHOTS FROM THE NIGHT

With Auerbach’s cosmic bravado in both his epic guitar solos and soaring vocals, and Carney’s beautiful energy, one could simply watch either member for the set’s full duration and still leave dragging your jaw across the ground.

“We're gonna play just the two of us for a while,” said Auerbach, before new tracks like Little Black Submarines, Money Maker and early tracks like Strange Times and Sinister Kid. Even without touring members Nick Movshon (bass) and John Wood (keyboards), The Black Keys were able to create the same dialling drones and full sound on their own.

Closing with ARIA #2 Lonely Boy (stirring ARIA CEO Dan Rosen to his feet) Auerback and Carney unsurprisingly had saved the best for last. Returning for extended versions of Everlasting Light and I Got Mine (while the crowd were disco-drenched in swirling light), it seems that when The Black Keys are on form, not one touring act in what’s shaping up to be 2012's most spoiled-for-choice month of live music can match their rock steady.