Finally a metal band woke up and used a painting from one of my favorite artists, Francis Bacon. Seriously, how can an artist who did a series of paintings of popes screaming in agony not have his art used in some fashion by the underground metal scene?

Francis Bacon was a highly successful Irish figurative painter in the 20th century. His artwork is known for its abtract, distorted figures and tortured imagery. He painted a series of works depicting screaming Papal heads or torsos, and other themes included crucifixions and grotesque self portraits or portraits of friends. H.R. Geiger has stated that Bacon’s work was a strong inspirational force behind his creations for the film Alien.

Anyway, the winner (unless there are other bands using Bacon’s work that I’m not aware of) is Prosanctus Inferi, a death metal band who will be releasing their first album Pandemonic Ululations of Vesperic Palpitation later this year. Their album cover uses a portion of Bacon’s Head I painting. Check out the cover art below.

You can learn more about Francis Bacon on Wikipedia, and check out a couple galleries containing some of his work here and here.

Metal illustrator Mike Hrubovcak has managed to get his artwork used in a portion of an upcoming Hollywood movie titled “Dream House.” The film is a thriller starring Daniel Craig and Naomi Watts, and it involves Daniel Craig’s character and his family moving into a new house and eventually discovering that it was the scene of a horrible crime involving some of the former owners. Of course, bad things then start to happen to Daniel Craig and his family.

Hrubovcak’s contribution occurs in a scene where a young ‘metal’ couple share an apartment and have death metal posters all over their walls. Hrubovcak has previously worked with bands like Decrepit Birth, Sinister, Brain Drill, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Mortician and Grave, and apparently some of his designs for those bands and others will be shown in the film.

Kudos to Hrubovcak for getting his artwork into the film. Speaking of dark, metal-ish art in films, I’m still trying to figure out who did the awesomely creepy art for the movie Suspect Zero. For those that haven’t seen it, the movie involves Ben Kingsley as a psychotic remote viewer who freaks out a lot and draws pictures of dead children and other cool stuff. I definitely recommend it.

If you’re not familiar with Mike Hrubovcak’s artwork, check out his website at VisualDarkness.com.

Black metal logo artist Christophe Szpajdel will have a book out early next year featuring hundreds of his logos, along with some photography that helped to inspired the artwork. The book will be 272 pages long, and will chronicle Szpajdel’s work in several different styles, from his more nature-influenced designs to some of his newer art deco creations.

You can find a bit of info about the Lord of the Logos book at Gestalten, including several sample pages. It looks like there isn’t much explanation or commentary from Szpajdel itself, which is kind of disappointing, but it also looks like the book is going to be packed with logos. Having a large chunk of Szpajdel’s output consolidated into a book seems like it should be really interesting for artist and designer types as well as black metal fans, and I’m very much looking forward to this coming out.

Saint John is the man behind Inkshadows, which has provided album art for black metal bands like Svartsyn, Arckanum and End. His style of simple pen & ink, black and white illustrations is easily recognizable, and like many artists who use similar techniques, the rawness and roughness of his work makes it perfect for metal music. Many of Arckanum’s recent album covers, such as those for ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ, Grimalkinz Skaldi and splits with Svartsyn and Sataros Grief were all Inkshadows creations.

Aside from his album cover work, he’s also done numerous illustrations for various books and magazines. While his other illustrations are pretty decent, there’s a certain ‘ugliness’ that he imparts on many of his metal-related creations that I think really set them apart and give them a uniquely dark feel. His recent work with Arckanum and End is probably the best example of what I’m talking about.

The Inkshadows website seems to be down at the moment, but you can get in touch with Saint John and see some examples of his work on the Inkshadows MySpace page.

Dying Fetus and Relapse Records are basically ripping off what Suffocation and Nuclear Blast did earlier this year for the release of Suffocation’s Blood Oath: They are holding a Dying Fetus art contest for fans to wield their artistic talents in exchange for Fetus-related prizes and merchandise.

The Dying Fetus contest sounds a little more elaborate, and certainly the prizes seem pretty sweet. You are to design your own ‘panel of artwork’ that fits the themes of the record and prizes include show tickets, CDs, posters, shirts, etc. There will be three prize winners plus 10 runners-up, so they apparently have quite a lot of stuff to give away for this contest.

“Descend Into Depravity” seems like a theme that could be quite open to interpretation, so it’ll be interesting to see what people submit. The contest runs until November 15th.

» Dying Fetus Contest details

Robert Høyem is a Norwegian artist whose design company, At The Ends of The Earth Designs, has done illustration and design for numerous metal bands. Some of his clients include Shining, Drautran, Iskald, Galar, Agua de Annique, Den Saakaldte, and Reverend Bizarre.

Høyem’s style varies quite a bit; he apparently uses several different techniques and is very flexible. Some of his work, such as the cover paintings created for Elite and Iskald, is pretty similar to the style of Travis Smith and similar artists, featuring various elements blurred in and out of one another and great use of color. Other pieces, such as his covers for Galar and Drautran, are more landscape-oriented and minimal. He also has some works that are mostly photorealistic with some additional noise and effects added.

You can see a great deal of Høyem’s work at his website, AtTheEnds.com. Be sure to check out the section of unused artwork, which might come in handy if you’re looking for album cover art in a hurry.

Photographer Peter Beste’s amazing True Norwegian Black Metal photography book is available again, so if you’re an idiot like me and waited too long to get a copy, now’s your chance. For now you’ll have to order directly from Peter through PayPal, although I’d expect that he’ll have a webstore set up shortly, as well as copies available from retailers like Amazon.com.

For information on how to order, check out this post on Peter Beste’s MySpace page.

For more info on the book itself, you can check out my earlier post about the True Norwegian Black Metal book and my artist feature on Peter Beste. Peter’s website at PeterBeste.com also has previews and details about the book.

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.

Mark Riddick is one of the better known and certainly one of the more prolific artists in the world of extreme metal. He’s been providing illustrations for the metal community for almost 20 years, and his work can be seen on album covers, merchandsise, and in various metal publications.

Riddick’s uses a rough, often black-and-white pen and ink style, which gives his artwork a very old-school, underground quality. Corpses, zombies, demons and other similar creatures are frequent subjects of Riddick’s illustrations. Probably the most prominent example of Riddick’s style is his recent work for Arsis; Riddick designed pretty much all of the band’s recent cover art and merchandise. In addition to Arsis, he’s worked with numerous other extreme metal bands, including Devourment, Beneath The Massacre, Kataklysm, Dying Fetus, The Black Dahlia Murder, Hypocrisy, Internal Bleeding and Psycroptic.

Riddick has published a few art books that are worth a look. “Killustration” and the more recent “Rotten Renderings” feature large collections of his illustrations. Both books include much of Riddick’s work for various extreme metal bands, as well as unreleased work and other illustrations. Riddick also compiled and annotated “Logos From Hell,” a book featuring many of metal’s most influential band logos. In addition to Riddick, the book includes logos by Chris Moyen, Christophe Szpajdel, Kris Verwimp, JonZig and many others.

Check out Mark Riddick’s website RiddickArt.com for a gallery of his work, some cool wallpapers and an extensive store featuring books, t-shirts, posters, CDs and other good stuff.

Mark also has a twin brother Mike Riddick who is equally active in the music scene. The brothers work together through RiddickBros.com to provide professional design services for music media. Mike also created MetalHit.com, a pioneering digital extreme music label, and operates The Fossil Dungeon, a record label specializing in ethereal and gothic artists.

All of you artistically-inclined readers may want to check out an art contest Suffocation and Nuclear Blast are running to promote the band’s upcoming “Blood Oath” album.

To go with the hellish cover art and the ‘Images of Purgatory’ track, the band is asking fans to create their own image of purgatory in whatever medium they prefer, and send it in to the label for consideration. One grand prize winner will receive a big package of Suffocation merchandise, and two runner-up winners will get lesser prizes.

» Suffocation Fan Art Contest Information