Ghoul

Drawing skulls don’t pay bills

but they are fun to draw with a sharpie on unpaid bills.

Nothing new out in a while that I can recall that I worked on.

Currently finishing up Blasphemophagher “The III Command of the Absolute Chaos” layout. LP approval is going on right now and CD is about to be sent off. Pictures of that when it comes out. Awesome paintings by Paolo “Madman” Girardi.

Ghoul “Transmission Zero” is at the press right now and is out due Nov. 8 on Tankcrimes. Great artwork by Bill Hauser! The band and label were thrilled with the artwork but not exactly happy with the coloring so Bill was nice enough to send us a layered version. They had me change it to their desire and match the color scheme they had in mind. Here’s a before:

And after:

Alternative Tentacles

Alternative Tentacles catalogs

Since 2006 I have been designing the yearly catalog for Alternative Tentacles. I have a good amount of freedom with the cover concept which is nice.

The first concept idea was using a monkey photo that I thought was funny and had used for some demo cassettes previously. Even though I knew Alternative Tentacles from a punk rock perspective they have released tons of spoken word and different styles of music so it has always had to be something that can appeal to a broad audience. I always make sure that the rest of the catalog has some sort of continuity with the cover.

For the second catalog they let me get away with a more of a punk concept where I grabbed the same monkey and decked him out.

For the third one I grabbed once again the same monkey but gave it more of an Amebix thing, dressed up in a henchman getup.

After that it was passed along that Jello said ‘no more monkey’ so we went with an old wood cut print of a krakken attacking a ship that he liked. Of course I added some giant AT bats flying over it for some angle.

To keep the continuity we re-used some coincident artwork which they originally used in ‘The Day the Needles Stood Still’ v/a compilation.

Pizza is one of my favorite types of food so for the latest one I decided to keep going with the octopus tentacles / krakken direction but give it a pizza delivery twist. This one is currently at the press! It should be going out with orders from them in the next month or so.

All of the above catalogs were printed at 1984.

box set

Night Fever LP CASSETTE / Obsessor CASSETTE / Cannabis…

Probably the highest profile job that has most recently come out that I was a part of in the layout / design was the Cannabis Corpse Beneath the Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise LP/CD on Tankcrimes. Crazy concept from the band with art by Andrei Bouzikov, logo by Barf. Check it out:

Listen to a track here.

Some other cool new stuff going on at Tankcrimes that I had the pleasure to work on was the screen printed jacket for Night Fever, here is the mock up:

And then the actual screen print photo, printed on chipboard, 3 up, uncut:

Insert here, pretty much exactly as they sent it with a minor text addition and some pre-press work:

The cassette version of the Night Fever folded out, pretty much just reiterated the LP insert to fit in a cassette J-card; along with the Obsessor tape cover, (logo by Sean McGrath art by Andrei Bouzikov):

Night Fever tape and tape case:

Obsessor cassette:

To order Night Fever from Tankcrimes click here.

To order Obsessor from Tankcrimes click here.

Another amazing project that recently came out that was awesome to work on was the Conqueror box set. The packaging here is insane, definitely first time for a metal box made in china for me. They are a brutal Black Metal band from Canada, this amazing release is on Nuclear War Now! productions:

I also helped out with the layout of the regular version of this and the CD. To check out more pictures of this awesome project click here.

To order it from NWN click here.

Another recent project which is totally killer with Nuclear War Now was the Abigail LP / CD The Lord Satan.

This should be out now too so check out the NWN store to purchase it soon too, cheers!

box set

Give Praise Enter button / Volture site / Asta…

Volture site (custom WordPress template):

Fucking Volture bro! The website is done, check it out. They had a really rad site designed by Nathcore who rules but they needed something that they could easily update so I offered to make them a wordpress powered site. I am happy to say they are really stoked on their new site and that they have been updating it pretty frequently! This band kicks ass.

http://volture.us/

 

So the LP layout for the Belgian hardcore band Reproach is finally done! That is exciting stuff! It turned out really cool with sweet Andrei Bouzikov artwork on the cover and back. Next up on the agenda is the CD version, which is basically the same deal but it will include a Japanese translation of the lyrics. Pretty awesome. The CD will be out on Crew For Life from Japan and the LP on Deep Six Records.

 

I have also been working diligently with the legendary hardcore power violence band Spazz on their La Revancha re-issue. This will be screen printed with white and black ink on chip board which will turn out really classy. Martyrdod are some sick d-beat crusters from Sweden. I just sent off the separations for the screen printed cover of their new album Sect. This is another black and white ink on chip board adventure which is gonna be awesome. It is the Prank Records US edition to be printed over at Monolith Press. There will also be an offset full color version with gatefold covers and insert, so rad!

 

Do you love 80’s Swedish punk? Get stoked dude because a couple of weeks ago I finished designing the Asta Kask reissues on Prank Records! One of the things I designed is a collection of the 7″ box set. We went for an “ancient” look on these, to try to make them look as much as possible like the original seven inches. We even went as far as designing two color covers (instead of cmyk) and black ink on colored paper for the center labels. My favorite part was redesigning the labels to create the illusion of utmost authenticity.

For example this original was on Pang:

Here’s the redone one on Prank records:

 

Give Praise Records ‘Enter’ animated gif, Paul changes his site layout pretty frequently so it might be gone by now, it may also make a come back at any given time:

Direct Control

Pirates Press Record of the Week

Record of The Week is a blog that mentions releases over at Pirates Press. Skimming through the first page I found a few gems on Tankcrimes, Nuclear War Now Productions, and Buried by Time and Dust that I helped design or prepare files for print.

Okay back to cranking the finishing touches on Short Fast and Loud #24, 10 year anniversary issue!

http://piratespress.com/rotw/

box set

Tankcrimes Box Set design

This is a Box Set that came out almost a year ago on Tankcrimes. Some of the bands featured in this box-set are Population Reduction, Vitamin X, Cannabis Corpse, Voetsek and ANS. It shows one of my favorite own illustrations. A chicken where the neck folds around the box.

Here it is on template all folded out:

For more pictures of the screen printed process and finished product:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=149774&id=207044605752&ref=mf

A limited edition poster was printed of just the chicken with out the lines.

Flyers

Flyer for Asmereir show

I am in Lima, Peru for a couple weeks to play bass with my band Asmereir at Inmortal Fest II. My band’s out of town shows in Arequipa and other provinces near there ended up falling through so we are organising a gig in Barranco instead.

I decided to make a quick flyer with an illustration for the show. The drummer Cesar had a silly idea for it, so I decided to roll with that.

Here’s little bit on the Illustration process.

A quick composite for tracing.

The traced composite using Wacom.

Here is a 300dpi print link of this for those interested.

Flyers

Couple Flyers

From time to time people ask me to do some quick flyers for shows. Here is a couple sample’s for some upcoming Bay Area shows.

For this one Scotty from Tankcrimes came up with the idea. He handed me a quick sketch and I did the rest.

This one is for a 2 day festival that Jeff and Athena from Six Weeks are doing for the 10 year anniversary of the Short Fast and Loud zine. I started with SF+L by doing the front cover design of issue #15 in 2006. I have been in charge of doing the layout for the whole thing since then! The next issue will be #24 and will be out and for sale at this 10 year anniversary show.

Direct Control

Promo video for Direct Control “Bucktown Hardcore” LP on…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLihx2CF_ac

“Finally available on vinyl, this is a collection of some of DIRECT CONTROL’s finest work. Classic 1980s style hardcore punk done correctly. This LP includes the cult 2003 demo, the “Public Safety” session from 2006 (Maximum Rock N’ Roll named their 2006 hardcore compilation after this song) and the original War All the Time demo from 2002.” –Record description from Tankcrimes.

Available on splatter vinyl and black.

The print ad to appear in the next Maximum Rocknroll and Razorcake Magazine, also used as a web ad on the front page of Tankcrimes:

The splatter vinyl:

All artwork was drawn by hand drawn by the Brandon Ferrell. I was in charge of the layout / pre-press.

Autopsy

New stuff on Nuclear War Now! Productions

Metal Deadness picture disc LP layout – radical original artwork from 1986! Ripping speed metal!:


more info at http://metal-archives.com/release.php?id=47518

buy it at NWN prod

Autopsy – Awakened by Gore LP. Diehard and Regular (not shown) LP layout. I highly doubt I’ll ever get to see a copy of one of these. “In addition to the demo recordings, this release also contains a bonus LP featuring one side of rare and unreleased rehearsal and live recordings while the other side is etched with artwork.” – NWN! prod. Awesome artwork by my partner in crime from Deadfall – Andrei Bouzikov. Also illustrations by Chris Reifert himself!

Gold:

Silver:

Red:

purchase a copy from NWN prod