When looking at vinyl covers I wanted to research some of the artists that have created the art for one of my favourite bands The Queens of the StoneAge. Throughout the years, there having been different artists working with the band but they all tend to have the same sort of feel or design in common. All of their posters and album consists of graphic ‘indie’ art with bold colours and strong images of demons, ladies and skulls.
My favourite artist of all is the graphic illustrative artist known as Boneface. Born in Liverpool he describes his style as being a mash of comic books, video games, 80’s trash culture and B-movie horror saying that “I frequently find myself going back to keepsakes and curiosities of my childhood to try to distort them to give them a new lease of life.”
The artist Boneface was the man behind of the 2013 ‘Like Clockwork’ album and in 2017 was a nominee for Best Album Cover with ‘Villains’ album.
These artworks are very bold in their imagery, with red being the consistent theme for this band. The images both display a demon of some sort behind a victim, being controlled by them, or in their grasp. This is the feeling that The Queens of the StoneAge want to convey, a darkness in their art and music that both come together on their album covers and posted art. I think the grungy 80’s art plays well for their theme and is very simplistic in its design but gives a really full effect with the block colours chosen and the what the imagery depicts. The illustrations only give you a taster of what could be happening and that’s what Boneface wanted, for the audience to complete the ending of the story themselves, certainly that being a dark one.