Legendary death metal band Cannibal Corpse is taking their cartoonish, ultra-violent imagery a step further. The band announced plans to release a limited-edition graphic novel to accompany their latest album, “Evisceration Plague.”

The 96-page graphic novel is illustrated by Vince Locke, who also created all of Cannibal Corpse’s gruesome album covers. Locke has previously done illustration work on several graphic novels including “A History of Violence,” “The Sandman,” “Batman” and “2000 AD”.

The “Evisceration Plague” graphic novel will be sold exclusively on the Rockstar Mayhem Festival tour at the Hot Topic booth, and it will also include a copy of the album. It contains a story for each song on the album, following the same order as the tracks on the album do. Check out a sample page from the comic here.

Since I’m obviously a fan of album artwork and other visual expressions that accompany extreme music, I really like this idea of creating graphic novels or visual supplements to help promote albums. It gives us art fans more to enjoy and it also gives bands another way to express their creative vision. Hopefully more bands and labels will start doing stuff like this.