Trevor Brown

For the next few posts I am going to look at specific artists who are known for working on album covers and how the themes of their work relate to the themes of the music they design for. For this first one I wanted to respond to my last post on controversial album art because I found it really interesting. What I liked about the controversy was how it made me react; some artwork I looked at and found funny, others I looked at and felt sick, and the artwork I am used to looking at for research doesn't do that.

I found the artist Trevor Brown, an English artist whose work explores ideas around innocence and violence, paraphilias such as pedophilia, bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, masochism (BDSM), and other fetishes. The overall imagery also shows reference to Japanese pop art, as he currently lives in Japan.

Because of the extreme nature of these themes, the album that advertises Brown's art can't just be any album. The musical and lyrical themes should relate to Brown's themes, so I looked up the bands he has created cover art for:

Deicide:

The word deicide means the killing of a god, which is very appropriate for this death metal band whose lyrics revolve around anti-Christian themes. Without hearing the music, there are plenty of things to prove they are satanic, or atleast pretend to be. For example, they are inspired by bands with names like Destruction, Sodom, Venom, Mayhem, Possessed, Autopsy and Slayer, and they have song titles like 'Death to Jesus', 'Fuck Your God', 'Kill the Christian', and 'Behead the Prophet'.

This came up in my last post referring to religious controversy. Brown's original work was a disembowled Jesus without the bloodied white sheet to cover anything. This gruesome imagery definately coincides with Brown's personal work, it has a highly violent nature on a very touchy subject.

For a death metal band this kind of image is pretty typical though, so I was really interested in the fact that Brown also did cover art for the band Whitehouse:

Whitehouse are an English power electronics band who are well known for their controversial lyrics which portray sadistic sex, misogyny, serial murder, eating disorders, child abuse and other violent themes. Both Whitehouse and Trevor Brown explore the darker, sicker side of life so it seems like this is the perfect match. I actually like the use of the same character for both of these albums, not necessarily for what has been done to her but rather the implication that she is the personification of all of the above themes and the story of the band's musical and lyrical progression.

I am really glad I found this artist because his work is visually arresting, unusually pretty yet filled with dark, sadistic symbolism. I like that he does cover art for metal bands and electronic bands, it unconventional. He is a great example of album art expressing the ideas of the music, I don't think I could have found a better one.