Masters of the Cover Art

After a long recovery from Metal Archives April Fool's joke, I was again faced with the difficult question of who to feature on our Masters of the Cover Art series.

The dubious honour goes to the german artist Werner Hornung with Dol Theeta's The Universe Expands. Polemic choice but truly deserved, controversial for my own standards but as Frank Zappa used to say "without deviation, progress is not possible".

You can see more work by Werner Hornung here and here

"Trust the Expert" by Werner Hornung

Masters of the Cover Art

Swedish painter Thomas Holm, born in 1957, is the man responsible for the "Melissa", "Don't Break the Oath", King Diamond's "Abigail" and others like swedish defenders of the faith Wolf's "Black Wings", to name just a few.

Mr Holm seems to enjoy a low profile, as it was extremely difficult to find any info on his work, this was the best I can come up with, but here's some more of his latest work with Wolf's Legions of Bastards.



Without a shadow of a doubt, "Don't Break the Oath", is one of the most attention grabbing covers ever, especially in vinyl (the first time I saw it, was in vinyl), which really works due to the size of the cover and outstanding colours. Again, I'm no art critic, but I'm allowed my personal taste.

Masters of the Cover Art

Here's another heavyweight of the epic cover art. From Manowar's 1987 album, "Fighting the World" to the classic Rainbow's "Rising" or Kiss' album "Destroyer" (not a fan of Kiss, sorry) Ken Kelly, a disciple of the larger than life Frank Frazetta has done it all, including work in magazines like Eerie, Creepy and some Conan title covers.

More about Ken Kelly here

Masters of the Cover Art

Randy Berrett was the artist responsible for one of my favourite covers of all time, Dio's "Holy Diver". Although Berrett was an accomplished artist who made fantasy his genre, he now works for Pixar and was the sketch artist in both “Toy Story II” and “Monsters Inc". Berret was also one of four art directors credited in “Finding Nemo”.

Terrible career move, in my modest opinion, but then again, I don't have to feed his family.


Thanks to Per-Helge Berg from Dio Album Covers for the info used in this post.

Masters of the Cover Art

The art of Dan Seagrave, with more metal minded art here. Dan was born in Worksop U.K in 1970, an area in Nottinghamshire but now lives in Canada. he's mainly known for death metal cover art like Morbid Angel's "Altar of Madness", not an album that I enjoy but this is about covers art not my (terrible) taste in music.

Album cover for Demon Hunter's 2010 release. 'The World is a Thorn '

Depths of Repair (Return to the Source)