There’s a reason why we’ve gone over-the-top with coverage of Obituary’s latest slab of guttural Florida death metal majesty - it’s the scent from grave. A beautiful aroma of rotting corpses and haunting visions of a body ripped apart, both mentally and physically. Those are the feelings oozing like lava-flowing blood from a human body until you are drowning. I fell back in love with Obituary on the recent 70000 Tons Of Metal trip from Miami to Costa Maya and back this past January. They played two riveting sets. The indoor assault was the ultimate in horror, a flowing mass of down-tuned heaviness and intrigue. While leaving the coast of Mexico, the boys - with a back-drop of palm trees and beaches - tore the skin off once again (more than the sun’s rays) with material from their first three treasured albums. And Inked In Blood contains all those characteristics and more. It’s a bludgeoning mass of deathly delights, led by the punishers “Centuries Of Lies”, “Violent By Nature” and the machine-gun focus track “Visions In My Head” which contains the most addictive, moshing chorus line! But “Within A Dying Breed” shines a particular spotlight on Obituary in 2014, sharp as the beheading knife, the song changes paths into a swirling pit of echoing madness as the final rhythms and drums beats ensures the victim is out of their misery. The track is easily one of the most intelligently-written in their career. And Inked In Blood may be the best album to come barrelling out of the Relapse stable since Tales Of The Thousand Lakes!

 

 

But before you crank this vinyl, CD or MP3 (available here), you notice the gore-festing cover art first, finely detailed in blood by Andreas Marschall, known for his heavy-handed images gracing albums from In Flames, Kreator, Rage, Running Wild, Sodom, Blind Guardian, HammerFall, Grave Digger, U.D.O., Immolation and of course Obituary, including their The End Complete, Xecutioner's Return and Darkest Day opuses!

 

 

Andreas Marschall was kind enough to provide BraveWords some background and images from Obituary’s latest, Inked In Blood. In his words...

“When John and Donald (Tardy) from Obituary contacted me this year and asked me to think of a new album cover, they had an idea called 10,000 Ways To Die. In the last years we had established these demonic dragons as a mascot on nearly every cover since The End Complete and we all loved the creature. So the first idea showed a dragon in predator pose on endless piles of bloody gore and victims. You can see in a couple of sketches how the vision of the creature’s face has shaped up when the guys from the band suggested changes. The final version is the wide version which was perfect for an epic backdrop. The finished artwork turned out wonderfully and everybody loved it.

 

 

But then the name of the album changed to name Inked In Blood. John and Donald asked me to think about an art which could bring this alive. I had the feeling, that both the band and me wanted to do something different this time. I am a great fan of horror movies. I even directed three feature films since 2004 and I love classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I remembered that I made an artwork suggestion one or two years ago where the Obituary logo was engraved into the forehead of a poor fellow, but the idea wasn’t used (see sketch Obituary face below).

 

 

Still the idea of engraving the band´s logo into human flesh seemed great for the Inked-Title. It’s realistic gory impression recalled very early covers like Slowly We Rot.  It had the fresh and shocking appeal that the band wanted.

And it gave me the possibility to be much more hard and graphic than in any artwork I did in many years, except the latest cover for the Italian band Irreverance which is gory too, and some stuff for Kreator. I really love to provoke and stir up emotions with my artworks and the Inked In Bood art was perfect for that.

So I put a lot of effort in the tiny details that make the mutilated body on the cover so realistic. You can see every little wrinkle in the chest and the cuts and the gore looks really disturbing. To achieve this realism it´s not enough to use only the airbrush. I use also extremely thin brushes that were  designed to retouch photographs in the analogue era.  I use acrylic colours and these incredibly thin brushes to get this manic detailed look that you don’t see on the usual digital photoshop  artworks. It´s all handmade – lot of work, but the result is worth it - and it is great for giant backdrops and vinyl-editions.

 I also used a hard greenish cinematographic lighting that recalls the atmosphere of modern splatter movies. Pale lighting from above and very deep shadows, an almost photographic effect.

 

 

The realism of the painting , the details, the nasty instruments – this all makes you think about what happened to this poor guy. You link the music with the artwork and create your own story, your own movie  in your head. And that´s what I always liked on good record/DC artworks, especially in the Metal world.

The band loved the result and so did I. It was great fun doing Inked In Blood.”

Andreas Marschall can be found at Marschall-arts.com.