It’s been said that album artwork is just as important as the music inside. That’s a rather terribly misguided statement, but album artwork is nevertheless still pretty important. After all, without it, the internet would be sorely lacking in blog posts like this discussing it. Which would be, of course, a Bad Thingâ„¢.

Now that you’re thoroughly convinced of the eminent importance of a good album cover, let’s eliminate from the running a good 70% of them.
Rule #1: If your picture is on the front of your album, you automatically lose. If you want to be taken seriously, that is, so Weird Al is therefore exempt. Off The Deep End is a great parody of perhaps the second most overrated album cover ever.

Now without further ado, onto the running. The David Crowder Band’s album Illuminate is the essence of good design: Minimalistic, smooth gradient, good font, and orange (ok, orange really isn’t a rule, but look at the header and you’ll see I’m rather partial to fiery varieties of orange myself). And for bonus points, the image is quite appropriate to the title.

Second, we have Subway To Sally’s Nord Nord Ost (North North East). It’s a rather ornate cover, but unlike others of its sort, the focus is clearly on the compass - the Aurora Borealis above and the waves beneath complement it without distracting from it, and the title font above fits the dark and surreal mood of the cover well.

Lastly, there’s Regicide’s Break The Silence. It’s a rather visually unimpressive album, but what’s so great here is the concept: one man otherwise indistinguishable from the identical and seemingly apathetic crowd screaming in frustration. It evokes the same atmosphere of Apple’s famous 1984 commercial with the mindless crowd apparently doing whatever they’re told, though the album has more of a connotation of helplessness in contrast to the commercial’s connotation of victory. And on top of that, they have a pretty cool logo.

Getting the list down to three was certainly a challenge - there are quite a few runners up that I couldn’t bear not to mention:
Rammstein - Rosenrot. Evocative photo.
Nickelback - Silver Side Up.
Breaking Benjamin - Phobia. Surprisingly poignant cover for a surprisingly good album.
Vintersorg - Ödemarkens Son. Fits well with the Swedish mythological themes.
Within Temptation - The Silent Force. Perhaps a better desktop picture than album cover (I actually had it as mine for a while), but a nice graphic nonetheless.

Any album covers you prefer?

Simply having a catchy melody or good instrumentation seems not to be enough to establish one’s street cred in music culture anymore. As more and more people flock to Sufjan Stevens because he’s the cool thing now (or maybe sometimes even because they actually enjoy him), a lot of qualities are cited that make him great.

Maybe I’m not cool, but I don’t think Sufjan is that great (gasp). But that doesn’t mean I can’t hop on the esoteric musical bandwagon too! Let’s look at Sufjan’s commonly cited attributes, and see how Corvus Corax compares:

Talent: Check. Corvus Corax has not only collectively mastered almost every medieval instrument they can get their hands on, but they even build them themselves. Beat that.

Expert Songwriting: CC’s songs aren’t original (they’re medieval reprises), but the sheer amount of research they put into their music more than makes up for that.

Out of the Mainstream: I’d hardly call Sufjan “obscure” anymore, but I have yet to come across another person in the meatlife who’s heard of CC.

Not Heavy, i.e., not grinding in a hard-rock sort of way: Check. Nothing electronic at all, in fact.

The first step towards a wider genre of even more obscure music: Yup. Sufjan has his Spoon, Iron And Wine and The Decembrists, and CC has their Omnia, Tanzwut and In Extremo (for example).

Any attributes I’m missing?

Is it just me, or has Vintersorg been getting lamer with every album release?

First of all, Till Fjälls and Ödemarkens Son were both amazing albums. Strong melodies, a powerfully deep voice, heavy and fast drums, and noticable folk-influence all made for a great sound - despite (and at times even because of) the growling - perfectly exemplified in songs like När Alver Sina Runor Sjungit and Fångad Utav Nordens Själ. Even the mellow instrumental Trollbunden was a masterpiece.

Then comes Cosmic Genesis. Oh dear, he’s singing in English. The folk influence and Swedish language are suddenly gone, but despite the esoteric ramblings of songs like Astral And Arcane and A Dialogue With The Stars, it still has strong melodic tracks like Rainbow Demon and The Enigmatic Spirit. It’s not as great or unique as his first few albums, but I could live with the new Vintersorg.

And as if Cosmic Genesis wasn’t a lofty enough title, his next album is titled Visions from The Spiral Generator. Though it opens strongly with the brief-but-catchy Quotation, the entire rest of the album is basically more of the esoteric rambling of Cosmic Genesis. And worse, the generally octave-higher melodies seem to have been tacked on as an afterthought, and the growling is a lot more dense. Lyrics like “I intersect the shining pulsator/When I travel in this spirit simulator/Receiving visions from the generator/E.S.P. Mirage” - they don’t mean anything. I could write a new Vintersorg song by jumping around randomly on the melodic scale singing from a thesaurus and interspersing it with sections of mucosal growling. Besides Quotation, A Star-Guarded Coronation is really the only worthwhile track on the album.

And The Focusing Blur. This album was so bad it made me want to puke. Everything that was bad about VftSG was worse here. A Matrix Odyssey, for example, has to be the lamest track I’ve ever heard. “With whom shall I have this dialogue? The mad, the noble, the wit?…”. The voice that section is spoken in sounds like deliberate silliness, except I know it’s not. And that makes it painful to listen to.

Vintersorg says his next album (due soon, though I don’t know when), Solens Rötter (The Sun’s Origin), will be written entirely in Swedish again, with more folk influence. Then again, he also says it will “still be forward thinking”, and will certainly not be another Till Fjälls or Ödemarkens Son. I’m tentatively hopeful for it, but we’ll see.

Nothing short of another PR blunder (and believe me, we aren’t short of those. Heard the one about the dead guy?) could have dealt a bigger blow to the RIAA’s credibility: An artist, one of their own and a high-profile one at that, has not only come out against their actions (there have been plenty of those. Did you know Avril Lavigne is a Canadian against the RIAA? No? Not many people do), but has recorded a song, a single no less, roasting them in irony.

Weird Al’s new single, Don’t Download This Song, to the melody of We Are The World, lists all kinds of reasons why you shouldn’t:

‘Cause you start out stealin’ songs, then you’re robbin’ liquor stores / And sellin’ crack and running over schoolkids with your car…Oh, you don’t want to mess with the RI-double-A / They’ll sue you if you burn that CD-R / It doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma or a seven-year-old girl / They’ll treat you like the evil hard-bitten criminal scum you are

And my favorite line,

Don’t take away money from artists just like me / How else can I afford another solid-gold Humvee? / And diamond-studded swimming pools? These things don’t grow on trees

One of the RIAA’s favorite lines is how most artists aren’t nearly as rich as the pop stars you see on Cribs. And to say nothing about their own hypocrisy in that area (10-30¢ on the dollar is not good enough if you care about your “starving artists”), it’s good to see at least one that isn’t starving take a shot at the greed of the industry by sounding the trumpet of irony.

And the final blow: the song is available for download - legitimately and in 160k MP3 - from the Al-sponsored website dontdownloadthissong.com. Happy downloading, and try not to get sued!