THE MASSES WAR-LAW

Mass was a german heavy metal outfit who managed to record eight albums between an, almost, ten year span running through '77 to '86. They formed in '73 so it took them six years to perfect their craft or just get a record company's attention.

I absolutely dig their seventh album "War-Law" and its cover art, and of course that's what this entry is about. But first of, before we get into the illustration we have to set one thing straight. Why have I written the title as "War-Law" instead of "War Law" as the cover clearly states? Because contrary to what the front cover and various internet pages wants you to believe the actual title for this record is "War-Law" and not "War Law". But how do I know that? Just by looking at the spine and the back of the cover you'll see that they have spelled the title with a "-", so that's two against one! Nice to have that one in the open! Now to something important.



The cover art shows us an guardian angel and a foxy redhead amazon. This actually reminds me of the superior sci-fi adventure of "Barbarella" from '68, when she gets carried into battle by her blind lover.



But Mass cover ain't a sci-fi illustration. It reminds more of an illustration by Frank Frazetta, known for his work on Conan the Barbarian, the cartoon "Fire and Ice", used/featured on tons of rock/metal covers by such bands as Molly Hatchet, Danzig, Dust, Solemnity, Wolfmother, High on Fire and Frank Morino to name a few.. Something we might get back to in the future.

The painting was done by a German called Martin Meyer, who also did three other pieces for Mass. Though it's freaking cool, it has to be said that winged Achilles holding Red Sonya is quite crappy at his job. Sure he guards her from getting her head pierced by spears, but when this photo was taken, he was so busy doing just that so he forgot to hold her in a appropriate way, and what we are witnessing is her looking into the camera, realizing she's about to fall to the ground and die. She's clearly not making a fuzz about it, still swinging her sword, but look at how poorly he holds her! She's doomed.

Red Sonya for you:

TOUCHED BY SINNERS

Most of the time we assume that bands chosen cover art are original pieces, except maybe when we face an old classic painting, an illustration by Gustave Doré or a photo from World War II. It's also easy to assumed that most stuff from the 80s is original, but of course that's not the case.

There have been cases where scenes from movies have been used as inspiration to artworks, such as Cancer's "To the Gory End" '90 (Which we include to this post, assuming most people know this) who was inspired by the supercool machete cut in "Dawn of the Dead" from 1978.



Also posters or cover artworks from movies have been borrowed, twisted or ripped in order to sell records with a cool front. But what we rarely think of, being not as huge as the music or film industry, is the comic department. Have bands ever borrowed, twisted or ripped anything from comic books? Yes they have! And when you look at Sinner's fourth record "Touch by Sin" from 1985, do you think "Hey, that could easily have been a front cover of a comic mag!"? No, you don't. At least I never did, because it's sleazy perfect for the record (Not calling Sinner Sleaze here thou), but you should, because it is.



I have very little detail about the true origin of this artwork and where it originally comes from. In this picture you see a Swedish magazine which published adult cartoons mostly from French magazines. I tracked down the artist name, which apparently is Gi Versalt? But that's where the hunt ends.. Apparently he hasn't done enough for internet to care. But look close and you'll see that Sinners cover ain't just a total loan, as the art department actually has added some sweet lingerie to the butts legs, and used someone who apparently has no clue how stay-ups work.

To be continued, Mat Sinner wasn't the only youngster to pleasure himself while dreaming of perfectly shaped cartoon women.

For all non-swedish homo-sapiens out there, the blue text states: "Gargle"! Wheelchair Drama

Genius.

FRAGMENTS OF SOULS IN HELL

Italian Necrodeath's "Fragments of Insanity" is a must have in all deathrash™ (Sarcófago '87) metallers collection... LP, CD, MC, doesn't matter, the music is mind blowing on each and every format. So if you don't have it, get it or get the fuck out (and get it)...

Lets agree that labyrinths are pretty cool stuff. Who doesn't wanna try one out? Of course not if it's a death trap, but for fun I surely would. Today's topic is Necrodeath vs. Evil Madness. As pictured below you can see that the two album covers aren't much alike except for the fact that both portraits a labyrinth. What we have here must be some sort of homage, because it would be strange if the gus behind Evil Madness wasn't aware of Necrodeath's masterpiece from '89 while launching their debut in 2010.



While "Maze of Souls" makes me think of "Fragments of Insanity", the later makes me think of the labyrinth in Hellraiser: Bloodbound from '88



I guess what's similar with these three paintings is that the labyrinths seems endless. Other from that, not much. "Fragments..." has kind of the same angle as "Bloodbound" while "Maze.." is just straight in line. A third album cover that comes to mind is Blue Öyster Cult's debut from '72.



But by that comparison I think we're of track, since that cover art just seems to portrait and ill-planned storage space or an infinity of rooms and doors leading to who knows where...

BUT WAIT! If we put Blue Öyster Cult's album art and Necrodeath's together, we might have find the true origin to the inspiration to "Maze of Souls"? Nope....

THE FEAR OF THE DARK

Of course we all want absolutely everything that Iron Maiden does to be 100% original, and I would guess most of their stuff are, even though another Iron Maiden did exist in the 60s (without much success, and a 90s release of old tracks) and the fact that most of their lyrics are inspired by poems, novels and history (but to be fair, that goes for a shit loads of bands).

But we do have one album fitting like a glove (of metal) into the concept of Uncoverseum. Namely: Fear of the Dark. This may come as a shock to some readers, so be warned! To others, no biggie. Have you ever scrolled through a case of vinyls you might quite likely have crossed this other piece. Of course we're talking about the album Fear of the Dark... By Gordon Giltrap.



Funny about Gordon Giltrap's album, which was released in 1978, is not just the title as you can see, but that he used the same font that we later in music history only would recognize as the "Iron Maiden"-font, and he did use it on his previous release in '77 as well. It was also used by other bands. An example of that is Hawkwind's album "Choose Your Masques" in '82.

Even though this is fun as hell, I have a hard time imagining that Iron Maiden was inspired by this release. Or was they? Please correct me if I'm wrong. The Gordon Giltrap album does have a quite funny looking cover. What does it mean? Iron Maiden's version is pretty obvious. If there's a monster emerging from a tree you might be afraid of the dark. But what does the other album cover tell us? To use glasses?? Or if you don't wear them, it all goes black? No, just fuzzy, black means blind. Maybe he should have used a blindfold instead of glasses for his cover. My guess is that this is a classic 70s cover where people just stopped communicating with each other, or the artist just didn't give a rats ass what the suits did to sell his record.

What ever happened here, I'm glad it did so that I years later could feel a bit excited when I pulled up Gordon Giltrap's slighly forgotten and ugly piece of work out of the dirt. But even though the cover stinks or just isn't much, theres some gold imprinted on the wax.