Behind The Artworks: Columbarium - The Morbidious One (2023)

The cover is made by Vladimir Chebakov representing his interpretation of ‘Death’ as a person. We actually bought the piece when we were still starting to write the songs for the album, so we own the rights to the image exclusively. It’s quite interesting how the lyrics on the album and the overall ‘ambiance’ of the songs seem to blend in with the depicted figure.

A part of the artwork was already featured in the lyric video for ‘Rivers of Blood’ almost two years ago as a teaser for the full figure, also used in the clip for ‘Eyes bleed Black’. We liked doing that and use parts of the full image to pimp up our singles before the album had to come out and only then release the full image of the album cover. It gives all the artwork of the singles and albums an identical visual approach. Sepultura also did a thing like that with their maxi-single ‘Under Siege’ which displayed a part of the album cover of ‘Arise’ which was released a little later in 1991.

Rik, our DTP friend laid out the rest of the artwork conceived of Pete's ideas, with the lyrics on the inside sleeve and some more artwork on the back featuring an excerpt from ‘Rivers of Blood’, and of course, some old-school live pics of the band members. Also on the back, you will see a dark picture of a cross. This is not just some picture that we took from the internet. It’s a real photo taken and processed by Pete, our vocalist, at the cemetery in his hometown in the evening many years ago. The logo was made by a Belgian artist Bram Bruyneel, on the inner sleeve of the album we thank him and Chebakov for being our ‘Pencils of Doom’, haha! What we also really liked about the cover is that it reminded us of old covers like ‘Release From Agony’ from Destruction and ‘Doomsday For The Deceiver’ from Flotsam And Jetsam, from around the same period (1986/1987), both displaying ugly but striking creatures which resulted in historical covers that stick to one's minds. We love that old-school vibe. So, we hope our artwork will also stick to the people's minds, we really love it for sure!

The album will be available as of 29 Sep 2023 on vinyl, CD, and digital, released by Argonauta Records.