I’ve run across several Flickr accounts belonging to various bands and musicians while looking up extreme music artwork (Niklas Sundin’s, for instance), but Erik K. Skodvin’s photos are easily some of the most interesting. Skodvin is the man behind creepy experimental/ambient act Svarte Greiner, he’s one of the two members of Deaf Center, and he also runs the Miasmah label.

In addition to his musical pursuits, Skodvin also handles all the artwork for Svarte Greiner, and has also done graphics for several other Miasmah releases. Part of what makes Svarte Greiner’s music so effective is the disturbing artwork that accompanies it, and Skodvin’s talent at finding and capturing stark, haunting images is evident in his photography. His account contains plenty of photos of normal stuff like friends, live performances and travel pictures, but there are some beautifully eerie photos mixed in too.

Skodvin also has a lot of his artwork for Svarte Greiner and other things up in various sets as well, and those are great to check out. The set for Svarte Greiner’s most recent release “Kappe” contains some images that didn’t make their way into the final release (or at least the CD release) so it’s interesting to see some of the images that didn’t make the final cut.

If you browse his contacts, you can also find the accounts of several other Type / Miasmah artists like Xela, Peter Broderick and Grouper.

Jeff Lowe’s art often depicts twisted, deformed figures and strange, alien landscapes. A lot of the things in his drawings and paintings look like they are composed of flesh, guts, brains or other organic materials. Very bizarre stuff.

Given how weird some of Lowe’s work is, you’d think his work would be a perfect fit for metal. The cover art he created for Portal’s “Outre” perfectly suits the band’s chaotic and disorienting style of death metal.

Jeff Lowe’s official site has extensive galleries of his drawings and paintings, as well as a small shop where you can buy a few posters or a book of his artwork. He also has a page on the beinArt Surreal Art Collective (which is full of weird and disturbing art and definitely worth a look).

Theodor Kittelsen was a Norwegian artist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is known mainly for his illustrations of trolls and other fictional creatures, although he published several books of drawings and illustrations over the course of his life.

His book Svartedauen, which depicted the Black Death running its course through Norway, should be of particular interest to metal fans. The sparse, black and white illustrations often use a hideous old woman or flocks of birds to symbolize the plague’s path. Burzum has used several of Kittelsen’s illustrations for album covers and liner notes, including many taken from Svartedauen.

Aside from his sometimes dark subject matter, Kittlesen’s passion for the natural world and his homeland of Norway aligns well with many bands of today. He wrote:

“Most of all I am fascinated by mystery, fabulousness and majesty of our nature. If I do not combine my work with careful observation of nature, then, I am afraid my senses will involuntary be stupefied.”

For more details about Kittlesen’s life as well as an extensive gallery of his work, check out Kittelsen.ru. They have several high-quality scans from the Svartedauen book here. This Kittelsen site also has a very extensive gallery of his work.

American artist Matthew Woodson is another artist with a pretty impressive list of clients. He’s provided illustrations for several well-known publications and companies such as American Express, Penthouse, Wired, ESPN, and New York Magazine, among many others. He’s featured here because of his extensive work with UK experimental music label Type Records, having provided album artwork for artists like Xela, and Helios.

Woodson has a unique and very recognizable style. For the majority of his illustrations he starts with a hand-drawn pen & ink sketch and then uses Photoshop to paint and color different sections, provide further texture, and tweak the final appearance. The highly realistic images and sometimes surreal subject matter rendered with strong pen-lines and discontinuous colors and shading definitely give Woodson’s works a unique look. His illustrations also often also give the impression of capturing fleeting moments in time, with subjects sometimes in mid-motion or partially cut-off by the frame.

Woodson’s website at Ghostco.org contains a fairly extensive gallery of his illustrations, as well as handful of prints for sale. He also maintains a blog where he occasionally discusses techniques, inspirations, and random other aspects of his life. Check here and here for a few posts in which he describes some of the intermediate steps involved in creating his illustrations, giving some interesting insight into his artistic style and creative process.

Raymond Swanland is a fairly accomplished artist in the fantasy / science fiction space, being perhaps best known for his illustrations for the Oddworld video game series. He’s apparently only done a handful of metal CD covers so far, but the few he has done are pretty awesome. The covers for Psycroptic’s “Ob(Servant)” and Deeds of Flesh’s “Crown of Souls” and “Of What’s To Come” are among his recent creations.

Swanland’s website has a really interesting Q + A section which describes some of Swanland’s techniques. Apparently he started out painting with acrylics on canvas, but nowadays he makes extensive use of Photoshop and a graphic tablet, which seems to be what a lot of today’s metal artists are doing.

He also goes into some detail about how he constructs an image, starting with a sketch, moving the main elements into Photoshop layers, and finally applying details. It was interesting going back to the gallery after reading about his process - things like his use of the darkest base for the foreground images to accentuate the subject of his paintings are really evident in the final works.

RaymondSwanland.com has an extensive gallery with a bunch of his work, but not too much of his metal-related stuff is in there, unfortunately. He doesn’t currently have any paintings for sale but he plans to in the near future, and is taking suggestions for which ones to offer first. So if you see some paintings that you like, let him know!

Originally when I planned to feature notable artists from the metal scene on this site, I had a short list of prominent names (Dave McKean, Dan Seagrave, Travis Smith, Wes Benscoter, etc.) and I was actually worried that I’d run out pretty quickly. Instead, I’ve been discovering new artists faster than I’ve been able to post about them, and have been generally amazed at how many talented artists and designers are out there contributing to the scene.

The subject of this post is Belgian artist Christophe Szpajdel, an artist whose name may not be as recognizable as the artists mentioned above, but whose body of work is at least as pervasive in metal as any of them. Szpajdel has designed over 7,000 band logos, including the iconic logos of Emperor, Enthroned, Nargaroth, Tsjuder, Horna, Moonspell and Nachtmystium. A forestry engineer by trade, Szpajdel draws inspiration from landscapes, forests and other aspects of nature. He also is influenced by different styles of architecture he encounters while travelling, and he has lately begun exploring different directions such as Art Deco and Art Nouveau.

Various interviews with Szpajdel over the years have revealed him to be a fascinating and complex person whose passion for underground metal is matched only by his enthusiasm for his profession. He speaks eight languages, has traveled the world performing research, and possesses almost encyclopedic knowledge about regional metal scenes and bands.

It’s interesting that Szpajdel has admitted that he has, at least in the past, preferred not to receive direct monetary compensation for his logos. Instead, he requests several copies of the bands’ CDs so that he can both make some money and promote the band. His commitment to the scene is also evident in his method of choosing which bands to design logos for - he compiles information about the band and makes a decision based on the level of dedication the band displays to their music.

You can read more about Christophe Szpajdel in this excellent 2002 interview by Maelstrom Magazine, as well as this interview in Vice Magazine. You can also find Szpajdel on MySpace and Flickr.

Meanspark Illustration is another artist who seems to be just starting to make a splash the extreme music scene. Of the many images displayed on the website, a couple have been featured on Novembers Doom albums, but the rest don’t have titles or any associated works listed.

Also strange is the almost total lack of information about the artist on the site - there’s no name or background information listed. The site does feature a somewhat interesting ‘About’ section that provides insight into the artist’s tehcniques and creative process.

Stylistically, the images displayed on Meanspark sometimes bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Travis Smith. Honestly if you took a pile of illustrations from Meanspark and a pile of Smith’s lesser-known works and mixed them up, I’d have a pretty hard time telling them apart. The way lighting and color is used to create mood and highlight certain aspects of the artwork is very similar between the two. It’s also trippy that both artists’ websites use the exact same image gallery interface to display each image. Part of me wonders if I’ve somehow been tricked.

Obviously, being compared to one of the extreme music scene’s most prolific and talented artists is quite a compliment, and I’m very eager to see more work from Meanspark. The Meanspark website mentions that you can buy prints of any of the illustrations in various sizes.

British artist Roisin Dunne is just getting started in the world of metal artwork, but already she’s responsible for one of the most striking album covers of the year with her work for Capricorns‘ “River, Bear Your Bones” (view the artwork here). She’s also done work for a handful of other bands, including most of the art for Moss’s “Sub Templum.”

Dunne is currently working towards a Master’s Degree at London’s Royal College of Art. In addition to producing great artwork, she also has excellent taste in music, listing Deathspell Omega, Nadja, Emperor, Blut Aus Nord and Elegi as favorites. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more work from this promising artist. You can get in touch with Roisin and view her recent works on Roisin Dunne’s MySpace page.

Most metal fans should know Niklas Sundin as guitarist and founding member of Dark Tranquillity. In addition to his musical contributions to Dark Tranquillity and Laethora, his other death metal project, Sundin has also become increasingly active as an artist, graphic designer and photographer. He now handles all artwork and merchandise design for Dark Tranquillity, and has designed cover art and layouts for numerous other bands as well. Some recent clients include At The Gates, Evergrey and Arch Enemy.

You can view Sundin’s work at Cabin Fever Media. He also maintains a blog at NiklasSundin.com to share personal tidbits, rough sketches, and various artwork updates.

Sundin is an avid photographer as well, and he maintains an online portfolio of his photos. Subjects range from informal shots of fellow band members to various concert photos and numerous shots from the band’s travels on various tours worldwide. You can also check out his Flickr account directly.

Sundin has recently published Gadus Morhua, a book of his artwork and sketches. Both volumes are now sold out, but Niklas’s blog has links to PDF versions so you can see what you missed. The Cabin Fever site also mentions that prints and original artwork will be available for purchase in the near future.

Metal fans should recognize Arik Roper’s artwork from several High on Fire albums, Mammatus’s “Mammatus,” and Sleep’s “Jerusalem” and “Dopesmoker” albums. He’s also done work for Sunn O))), Boris, Om, and Southern Lord. His style is pretty easy to identify by its comic/fantasy feel and psychedelic influence. Roper has recently begun branching out into other areas such as poster design, graphic illustration, and animation.

Visit ArikRoper.com for a nice gallery of his artwork. You can also buy prints of a couple of his works.