ALBUM ART ROUND-UP: NEW ALBUM COVERS FROM DEVILDRIVER, LAZARUS A.D., AND NEURAXIS

So three well  known bands released their new album art today, and rather than give each one its own post, it just seemed to make sense to lump ’em all in together. So here comes the lumping.

First up is the cover for DevilDriver’s new, Mark Lewis produced beast, uh, Beast. It’s kind of a meh album cover (what, no owls this time?); the image seems designed to appear as though it’s been held under a blacklight, when it would be way cooler if they went the Mudvayne route and made something that would actually look good under a blacklight. Obviously this doesn’t say anything about the music, though, and in this day and age, with all the downloading goin’ on, who the fuck knows if anyone besides decaying old fogies like me even gives a shit about album art.

ANYWAY, Beast will come out on Roadrunner on February 22. The cover debuted earlier today on Bloody Disgusting.

Next is up the cover for Lazarus A.D.’s sophomore effort, Black Rivers Flow. This might be an even-less impressive cover than the one for Beast — except that we got our advance copy of this record yesterday, and while I haven’t had a chance to listen to the entire thing yet, what I did listen to leads me to believe that this band is in no danger of suffering from a sophomore slump (the title track is especially wicked). In other words, I think the cover image could be Gene Hoglan waxing his nuts, and it wouldn’t really make a difference. Metal Blade will release this album on February 1.

Finally, we have the cover for Neuraxis’ latest, Asylon, which comes out February 15 on Prosthetic. This is far and away the strongest of the three album covers, which isn’t shocking, since it was done by Dennis Sibeijn from Damnengine. Sibeijn has been responsible for some of my favorite album art over the past five or six years, from Chimaira’s Resurrection to See You Next Tuesday’s (R.I.P.) Parasite to Brother Von Doom’s (also R.I.P.) Relentless; he has a really distinctive style which is somehow gnarly-yet-smooth, which I dig. And we’re Neuraxis fans here at MS, so we have high hopes for this album.

-AR