Renowned death metal cover painter Dan Seagrave has an upcoming exhibit of his Migrators September 17th at Eridanos Tattoo and Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More information may be found on the Facebook event page:
1 CommentTags: art, cover art, dan seagrave, death metal cover art
Vader‘s debut, The Ultimate Incantation, is being reissued on June 3rd on both CD and LP by Polish label Witching Hour. The original, discarded recording session produced by Tomas Skogsberg at the famous Sunlight Studio in Stockholm, Sweden is included as a bonus disc. The lost Swedish session released for the first time should make this reissue worth checking out for fans of the band along with those of Swedish and Slayer-style death metal in general.
We are proud to present the long awaited reissue of VADER’s debut album “The Ultimate Incantation”. This album was a milestone in death metal history and a groundbreaking masterpiece for the Polish scene allowing our bands to be heard beyond the Iron Curtain. With this record VADER’s international career begun and it’s a cult classic since then. Once again we made our best to deliver this classic album as a top notch release. To match our words we will attach an extra stuff with never before released original album session done by THOMAS SKOGSBERG in SUNLIGHT STUDIOS. And that’s not all. We also asked the master himself – DAN SEAGRAVE to prepare new artwork for this release.
The 2xCD digipack may be pre-ordered from Witching Hour here.
15 CommentsTags: 1992, dan seagrave, death metal, news, poland, reissue, tomas skogsberg, vader
French progressive rock/death metal hybrid Supuration have released the cover for their upcoming album, Reveries…. Created by famed underground metal artist Dan Seagrave, the cover image displays classic death metal symbology in its gnarled and organic textures in a mythological setting.
Reveries… will see release via Listenable Records on May 29, 2015. Mastered by Dawn Swano (Edge of Sanity), the album “is a re_recording of old songs written during the 90s” according to the band. Perhaps the combination of their newer more aggressive technique, classic death metal imagery and their inventive songwriting will forge a new classic.
1 CommentTags: dan seagrave, death metal, indie metal, listenable records, progressive metal, progressive rock, supuration
Artist Dan Seagrave, whose works adorned the cover of classic death metal bands like Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Entombed and Pestilence, sells prints of the art uses for these classic covers. This means the underlying image, without the logo and title.
Seagrave has begun offering the art from the Morbid Angel album Altars of Madness as a large format limited edition of 99 prints and ten artist proofs. Printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl, the prints measure 28 inches to a side and are specially made to order for $350 each plus shipping.
In addition, he’s offering the art from the Suffocation album Effigy of the Forgotten in the same size for $270 each in an edition of 450 on Somerset Velvet matte stock paper. He cites the increased cost of printing on high-quality paper as the reason for the rise in price for this longstanding favorite.
For more information, you can seek out the Dan Seagrave art home page.
1 CommentTags: dan seagrave, metal art
I like to believe that every death metal fan has seen a Dan Seagrave cover at one time or another. The man has painted the covers of some of the most influential death metal albums out there – we’re talking Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Entombed, Pestilence, Dismember, Gorguts and Carnage among others. Some of those covers have undeniably somewhat added to the spirit of death metal mythology.
Seagrave is a self-taught Brit, initially inspired by the rural and urban surroundings of his native Ravenshead (near Nottingham). That the young artist’s paintings would fit the imagery of death metal music makes sense when considering how his early influences included John Martin, a Romantic painter keen on apocalyptic and chthonic scenery, and M. C. Escher, a graphic artist interested in labyrinthine visual paradoxes. Top it off with some Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci and early sci-fi films, like Alien, and the road to metal doesn’t seem entirely unlikely. Seagrave is nevertheless (and hardly surprising) more into architecture than other visual arts:
I like to see the layers of history in buildings, things like old signs or hand painted fading billboards – that kind of thing, and a little bit of seedy urban decay.
The typical Seagrave painting these days often seems to delve in a sea of thorns or a mess of jagged bark that’s come alive in some decrepit, chaotic universe. Some of his works are, by contrast, highly symmetrical pieces (think The Ultimate Incantation or Like an Ever-flowing Stream). In all his works, however, there’s a penetrating attention to detail. You can spend an awful lot of time discovering all the elements of the cover of, say, Effigy of the Forgotten.
Seagrave’s early paintings used gouache paint, which, while rather dull, is more tolerant of the meticulous. Whereas these early works are reminiscent of morbid still lifes, his more recent paintings – mostly painted with acrylics – experiment more with gnarly shapes, twisted movements and vertiginous perspectives.
Seagrave painted a lot of cover art from 1988 to 1994, more or less until the advent of computer graphics (and the death of a lot of underground metal). He prefers to work instinctively and hardly uses any reference material. He is, as he expresses it, “trying to convey”. Seagrave’s legacy should indeed remind us that real paintings pertain more to the authenticity of metal culture than any Photoshop production:
5 CommentsI did around 40 covers, computer graphics were cheaper alternatives, but I think paintings are far more interesting to look at. And people realize that computer art is as different to painting as photography, it’s simply another medium which is why things are beginning to level off again.
Tags: album covers, dan seagrave
