GO BEHIND THE CREATION OF ABYSMAL DAWN’S AWESOME COVER ART FOR LEVELING THE PLANE OF EXISTENCE

Just yesterday we debuted the full album stream of Abysmal Dawn’s aardvark-baby-impaling new album, Leveling the Plane of Existence; now our bro-bros over at The Deciblog have an awesome guest column from Pär Olofsson, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Made the Awesome Cover for Plane.” Olofsson has done art for bands ranging from Immortal to Immolation to The Faceless, so he really knows his stuff, and this a very in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at one of his creations. Here’s a sample:

“When Charles [Elliott; vocals/guitar] contacted me the only lyrics that was written was “Leveling the Plane of Existence.” It makes reference to us crawling out from the primordial ooze and is basically about wiping us from the planet so that everything starts from zero again. It had great potential as a cover piece since the concept included fossils and things crawling out from ooze. So I made a quick sketch of a fossilized human hand with never before seen bugs crawling around it, a lake of ooze and some city ruins in the background.”

Now, obviously, what you see above is not the finished cover… but I won’t give away how this sketch evolved into the final product. To learn that info, you’ll have to read the post at The Deciblog. It’s well worth it; visual are is such a huge part of metal, and the men and women who make said art are so often overlooked, that it’s great to peek into the process like this.

And if you haven’t already checked it out, listen to Leveling the Plane of Existence in full right here, and pre-order it here. It comes out on February 1 on Relapse.

-AR