Research and Planning. Ancillary task. Album Covers.

For our research and planning into our music video we have to create an Album cover. As we are looking at a heavy metal band i have also looked at album covers for other heavy metal bands. A lot of album covers  in the metal genre just depict designs that are relative to the album or to provoke audience/fans feelings. Here are a few good examples.

Avenged Sevenfold:-

Avenged Sevenfold or A7X are an American Heavy metal band from California. They were formed in 1999, consisting of M.Shadows (vocalist), Synyster Gates (lead guitarist), Zacky Vengeance (rhythm guitarist) and Johnny Christ (bassist).  Their Album 'City of Evil' was released in 2005 by Warner Bros. Records. Co. The album cover is very interesting as it depicts a skeletal figure with bat like wings (hinting to their logo of the death bat) riding a horse over a dark city that is shown in the background. The sky is a swirling mix of blacks, purples and reds. All this matches the album title 'City of Evil' and the overall style of the album cover is quite eye catching and theatrical but not too busy.



Green Day:-


Green day are an American Punk rock abnd formed in 1987. The band consists of Billie Joe Armstrong (Vocalist and Guitarist), Mike Dirnt (bassist and backing vocalist) and Tre Cool (drummer).  This is their 8th album '21st Century Breakdown'. The album cover is very styilized, depicting street art of a couple kissing infront of firey colours of red, yellow, and orange. This could create a feeling of dispair or destruction,and the black border around the couple also creates the scence of an end. This is linked to the overall theme for this album of corruption and pollitical wars that are effecting everyday lives. This album cover is very simple but has an effective message.



Trivium:-

Trivium are an American Heavy Metal band from Florida, formed in 2000. They are signed to Roadrunner Records. This is their 4th album named 'Shogun'. This album cover is very linked to the title as it shows Japanese drawings of dragons and ghouls, as well as having Japanese characters written behind the band name. It also depictes the Japanese mountain, Mt.Fuji in a red cirlce that could hint to the Japanese flag. This is all tied into the lead singers background as his Mother is Japanese. This Album cover is very interesting and it shows that album covers can sometimes have a lot of background context to the album title and members background. This is helpful because our group could do this for our Ancillary task. 


Sylosis:-

Sylosis are a British heavy metal band from Reading who's record label are Nuclear Blast. This is their 3rd album 'Monolith'. This album is based around Greek mythology and the album cover depicts this by using a rustic design showing two women in robes and one of them having a ram's skull for a head. The album title is very small at the bottom so the album cover makes the audience focus on the artwork first. This design has keeped to a small colour palette of green, brown and cream so eventhough the design is intricut the colouring keeps the whole thing simple.

 

Another common design for album covers is to show the bands logo such as these:-

 

Thousand Foot Krutch

The End Is Where We Begin

 

 

Avenged Sevenfold

Self Titled Album

 

 

Whitechapel

Self Titled Album

My Chemical Romance

Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys.

Our group could do this by simply designing a logo for Ravenface however if we are Re-branding our chosen artists this would be quite difficult to do as we do not want to insult or copy the Ravenface image.

The final aspect for designs of an album cover are to depict the band members them selfs such as these:-

 

Escape The Fate

Self Titled Album.

 

The Rasmus

Dead Letters.

 

Billy Talent

Self Titled Album.

 

 

Pantera

Cowboys From Hell.

 

 

This would be the best design to do for our ancillary task as we could take photographs of  the actors we've got for  the music video and either have them on a plain background or to place them in a setting to do with the music video or our chosen song.