Metallica new album artwork 2016

20/04/2024

Last time I was in here I wrote about Metallica.. which is a bit funny as it would seem like I'm obsesssed with them. I'm not. But this is more about artwork originality than music. 

Ok so the new album is called; Hardwired .. to self destruct. A bit of a lame title. They should have just called it Hardwired, you didn't need ot add the 'to self destruct' bit on the end. Anyway, the songs not bad I suppose but here is the cover art:

It's also pretty lame. But you must remember Metallica are all in their 50's now.. so they are still probably quite impressed with photoshop filter extremes. Some kids has a good mash with layer masks, the blur tool and dumped some vivid light blending modes on there. 

Metallica's probably not renounded for ground breaking cover art. But they did give us both of these which were pretty decent. 

A statue of lady justice being torn down in a public outcry. Strings of the marionette dangling down to the graves of believers. Pretty powerful stuff for the 1980s and certainly much better than some angry photoshop faces, pretending to self destruct even though we all know James can't even have a beer these days.

But here is where it gets even more interesting.. since we're looking at '80s albums.. whats this? Crowbars 1985 album 'Odd Fellows Rest.'

 
Now that probably was pretty awesome back in '85... Photoshop wasn't to be released for another 3 years.

Those face expressions are even similar! 

It's not to say Metallica personally are to blame. I doubt Lars sits in his bedroom playing with photoshop.. although I could be wrong. But they intrusted an artist, and clearly they should probably not give the gig to someones kid to make on his iphone. 
Hire a proper artist to come up with something awesome, we all know you can afford it. 

Check out what Opeth does for their art, hiring artist Travis Smith to come up with this sort of majesty: