Behind The Artworks: Deva Obida - Rudiment (2019)

We used to generate the ideas for covering all of our releases by ourselves. Having the ready vision of an image we get in touch with artists that create art based on our attitudes. That was the way we did it with our previous works and we decided to repeat it once more. First, we contacted an artist we cooperated on arts of our two earlier releases - "Стайный Инстинкт" (LP 2012) and "Varaka" (Single 2014). MAYHEM PROJECT DESIGN is a really gifted designer, perhaps, one of the best painters working on metal covers in our country. Unfortunately, after some tryouts and sketches, we realized that we won't succeed as we used although the illustrator really did all his best. Otherwise, that was an excellent moment to improve our chances to try to find a different visual style made by others. It has to be said that we're rather scrupulous for the art and maybe we're not the perfect customer for all the designers. That's the reason why some covers, ready and paid for by us, are never materialized. Although that's our right and curse as well. The works of the next artist, for instance, who presented his unpublished artwork for RUDIMENT didn't reflect the essence of our album as well. And that illustrator was none other than legendary Niklas Sundin, the musician of DARK TRANQUILLITY and the owner of CABIN FEVER MEDIA, the studio that produces covers and layouts for the 1st and major metal leagues dwellers. Knowing that fact you can now realize that wasn't easy for us. In spite of feeling desperate, we went on with our search a bit nearer. So the next lucky one which we chose turned out our old buddy, the designer and singer of TOWN TUNDRA - Alexx W. Crow. Together we revised the art's concept and finalized that after plenty of alignments and clarifications, but (what a surprise) that ended up on a shelf of our unreleased arts. Suddenly, after continuous moil, an insight came down. We realized that we didn't need a conceptual, complex art, traditional for metal covers. We picked a photo, shot by our friend. There was a band, with the northern hills in the background, symbolizing the northern nature, one of our main and basic source of inspiration. Nothing unnecessary was there, everything looked right, as it should be. For the band's become our unifying factor, the rudiment of youthfulness and awareness, being true to ourselves and our ideals through many years. That turned out to be the best expression of the album's essence.