To me the greatest album of all time is Iron Maiden’s Live After Death. Not even my massive love for all things Sammet is as great as my affinity for that album, although it is pretty close sometimes. Before the internet, before I started reading magazines, and before I got into metal really I picked up this cd and it changed my life. But why did I grab that one in particular? It was because as well as being the greatest music in the world it also has one of the most bad ass artwork I have seen that still ranks up there in the higher echelons of godly metal art even today. I was captivated by the image of Eddie rising out of the grave in the dead of night, breaking the chains as lighting seared the sky and his face was alight by white fire, that just made go “Woa.” The cover of an album is one of the biggest selling points a band has in attracting unknown fans. A cool band logo and a great illustration can be that dividing line between giving a cd a shot or passing it up and moving on to something else.

Personally, I think that other than in the 80’s, metal artwork was best in the mid to late nineties and has taken a sharp drop in terms of sheer awesomeness. Almost every single piece of Iron Maiden art was incredible, even the shirts and the singles just screamed “METAL!” to you and everyone else knew what Iron Maiden was all about just by looking at their cd covers. The 80’s was also marked by several distinct styles used for cds. Judas Priest and Raven had a string of weird looking brightly colored, sharp angled covers with Defenders of the Faith, Screaming For Vengeance, Turbo and Wiped Out to name a few. You had the skulls and fire aplenty with albums like The Legacy, Peace Sells, Years of Decay, Hell Awaits, and Among the Living. I call these the glory days of art because in this time frame we had great hand drawn illustrations, yes there were a few bands that cheaped out and used normal band photos or pictures of weird stuff (Red Hot and Heavy) but the majority of these cd covers were labors of love.

There aren’t too many artists that come to mind when you think of a who’s who in the metal world, but two come to mind for other than creating killer covers, they seemed to be at the bands’ personal use, Derek Riggs and Andreas Marschall. Derek Riggs is legendary, if you don’t know what band he was employed by exclusively you don’t like metal. I’m glad to see him back in business today doing work for Stratovarius and Gamma Ray but compared to the work he did back in the 80’s, his recent material pales in comparison. From around 1995 – 1999 Andreas was the guy that everyone wanted to do their albums in the Power Metal scene. Despite doing the covers for Hammerfall, Nocturnal Rites, Iron Fire, and In Flames he is best known as being Blind Guardian’s call boy. From Tales From the Twilight World up to and including the singles for Nightfall in Middle Earth he did every album, every single, and all the shirt designs for the band, and they were all killer. When I first got into Power Metal I could tell an album would be good just by looking for his brand of drawing and his signature. I don’t know what’s happened to him though, I haven’t seen his work lately which is disappointing, as soon as he made a name for himself he disappeared.

Why have band logos become so dull in recent times? Even though they’re great bands, Nightwish, Labyrinth, Firewind, Primal Fear, Dream Theater, Pink Cream 69, and Steel Prophet all have bland logos that don’t grab you at all. Especially Nightwish and Labyrinth theirs are just sad. Sonata Arctica, Wolf, Dragonforce, Bonfire, Iced Earth they all have loud, proud, and bold standards that are sharp and representative of the band. They exemplify metalness and are a beacon in the otherwise dull world of Power Metal logos.

Today we are seeing a huge increase in computer drawn artwork and while there are still some killer pieces out there I’m sad to see the hand drawn work diminish year after year. I haven’t seen anyone come close to making a piece as godly as that on Live After Death and while I don’t think there will be another one soon, there has to be another Derek Riggs out there to come at us and completely kick our asses again.