- Review by Faye Coulman
Anaal Nathrakh's Dave Hunt talks cover art inspiration for 10th studio album 'A New Kind of
"We started out swapping images between the two of is, which is how we usually start considering artwork. We’re not sure at the time what we’re looking for – maybe an image that we can use wholesale, maybe just things that set a kind of visual tone that we can both get into as somehow connecting with the spirit of the album as a whole. For A New Kind of Horror, obviously one of the most visual inspirations was the first world war theme. But we have a particular take on it."
"So we did a lot of research and sent reams of images to one another, discussing them, looking for related works or other things by the same artist or from the same photograph resource, and so on. And eventually we came to the conclusion that the right piece of artwork would have to have an array of elements that we couldn’t quite find an existing image to capture. So Mick made the image we ended up using, drawing together some of the more strongly visual themes on the album. So we’ve got the eternal image of war, Mars, dominant over the whole scene and exuding gas that’s part ‘fog of war’ and part weapon."
"No matter how the world changes, it seems that war is a constant throughout human societies. So Mars presides over a battlefield with more modern human figures almost lost as individuals in the scale of the events, but nonetheless vital to the context. And in the background there’s a reminder that this isn’t just historic, it’s about today’s world just as much as any time in the past. So there are modern ICBMs in the sky. I really like the image, in fact we’ve had a huge version made to use as a backdrop for large festival shows. We’ve only been able to use it once so far since we had it made, and we thought it looked ace."
'A New Kind of Horror' is out now on Metal Blade
Visit https://tinyurl.com/yan5lv4t to read the full story on the making of the album