fredag 12 maj 2017

THE THREE WINDOWS

Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Monastery Graveyard in the Snow" is one of those paintings that has been used as a cover by many bands. Interesting in this post are not these covers, but we name drop them, just because. But first, the original:



On cassette we see it like this:



Featured here is: Redeemer, Regnum, Manes, Eternal Oath, Musica Eternal, Sombre Chemin/Peste Noire (split), Torrent, Gehenna, Abhorrent, Black Destiny, Dark Ages, Insanul Maut, Funeral Spirits, Bane of Existence, Megatera (also did release an additional two tapes featuring the same art, but why bother), Legion (Does/have existed 36 bands with this name).

A band called Ominous Force also used this painting, but without adding either logo or title, so I second; why bother.

On other formats?



As you can see this is a shit load of bands, lets settle with that..

Another example we have is Lugburz album "Forgotten Empire of Desolation". What differs this one from the previous is that it's not taken from the original Caspar David Friedrich painting, but an interpretation of it. As you can see I also added Summoning's debut album "Lugburz" from '95 because while gazing upon "Forgotten Empire of Desolation" I thought to myself "Ha! They even borrowed the logo!"



But as you can see I was wrong. They used another font. "Lugburz" is of course from the world of Tolkien. Do note that they compressed the image for the album cover to get the whole spectra, not to shaggy.

Another band who used a "The Monastery Graveyard..." interpretation is Severance with their compilation "Progression Towards Purgatory".



So finally we have arrived at what was supposed to be the content of this post. Which album covers was actually inspired by "Monastery Graveyard in the Snow"!?



Convulse version to "World Without God" '88, is a perfect example to what inspiration can do: inspire. The most similar component in this image is the doorway. We get the three window ruin, but in an slightly different version, a tree, a cross, some tombstones and a cloaked man standing in the snow in a world without a god.

Dark Funeral's version to "The Secrets of the Black Arts" '96 are equally genius. Painted by famous Necrolord we get the three window ruin but in a brand new version and a group of cloaked men carrying the secrets of the black arts.

Deathstorm's version to "As Death Awakes" '13 is far more reminiscent to the variation above, used by Lugburz,  but without the trees in the foreground and a couple of other features. We also get what seems to be a mountain range in the background. Even though more true to the original then our previous examples, this piece of art is just as good.