Packaged Rebellion: When Presentation Enhances the Album Experience

Insert tired fucking cliché about books and covers [HERE]. Well worn bromides of questionable veracity aside, a good cover and an innovative package in the hands of a clever designer can actually enhance the album experience. While album art and packaging are meant to convey quickly what a record’s about (“Hey, this has Ed Repka zombies on the cover; it must be the new Taylor Swift album,” said nobody ever), the designs can actually take music and elevate it by providing another entryway into the art. A good visual and a design that invites close study and an extra minute of thought can even elevate albums that were otherwise forgettable failures.
Here are five albums that stepped up the game on the visual side. 

Discordance Axis
The Inalienable Dreamless 
Hydra Head
2000
The Inalienable Dreamless looks like no other album before or since. Jon Chang’s meticulous design ensured that Discordance Axis’ final album would stand out from all of their peers and competitors (even if it did get grindcore’s defining moment mistakenly exiled to the DVD section of many retailers). Most obviously, The Inalienable Dreamless came packaged in a DVD case, which gave a wider, more cinematic aspect ratio to the wrap around horizon and seascape the band chose for the art. If most album art was in a TV aspect, Discordance Axis had jumped to wide screen. The colors and imagery gave no hint to The Inalienable Dreamless’ content and the illegible logo, tiny script for the album title and lack of even song titles and a bar code on the packaging ensured the album would be an enticing mystery for those brave enough to peek inside. And inside, fans would find a larger than usual booklet that was laid out to look like a journal, just one more personal touch that made The Inalienable Dreamless the endlessly fascinating musical landmark it remains today.

Coldworker
The Contaminated Void
Relapse
2006
Coldworker’s music vacillates between inoffensively forgettable to insultingly unlistenable. But the one thing Anders Jakobsson’s post-Nasum project got perfect was the art for debut album The Contaminated Void.  Relapse’s resident visual maestro Orion Landau crafted a clever booklet for the album that includes clear cellophane overlays that alter the art a page at the time, concealing and revealing the Breugellian horror behind, framing and then exposing the hellish slasher film revelry. Coldworker never deviated much from the well worn themes of death, decay, betrayal and misery and even then weren’t album to elevate their material beyond the legions of similarly minded metallers, but the booklet art is enough to keep you coming back periodically to experience The Contaminated Void against the backdrop of such a striking package. Relapse has to be applauded for cracking open its wallet for such a visually inventive presentation. It’s just a shame it wasn’t in service of a better album.

Creation is Crucifixion
Child as Audience
Hactivist Media
2001
Child as Audience is many things: Creation is Crucifixion’s best sounding effort, a didactic lesson in critical theory by a droning, monotone lecturer and a whole Anarchist’s Cookbook full of practical cultural and technological subversion suggestions. Against all of that, the three songs, which were some of Creation is Crucifixion’s best, can understandably get lost. At the center of the unassuming brown cardboard box, a nod back to the brown paper bags used to sell dirty magazines in the bad old days, is an inch think multilingual book that lays out the Creation is Crucifixion manifesto on education, liberty and authoritarianism. Child as Audience is intent on subverting the methods used to indoctrinate children, instead turning them into opportunities to learn the principles of radical anarchism. Creation is Crucifixion provide one means for subverting indoctrination by detailing instructions for reverse engineering old Nintendo Gameboy cartridges to create games that teach children the joys of of their own sexual development while reinforcing the message that authority figures can never be trusted. That’s a hell of a lot to cram into a package that contains less than 15 minutes of music.

Graf Orlock
Doombox
Vitriol Records
2011
Graf Orlock’s creative packaging is so legendary it probably deserves a post of its own from the face-hugger CD-holder of Destination Time Tomorrow to the multiple foldout fronts of Destination Time Today. The attention to detail they put into their offerings is meticulous and a large part of the band’s charm. But the cinephile grinders absolutely outdid themselves with the stunning Doombox. The 2011 release not only included the band’s entire discography to date, but the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle folded out into a giant ass boombox to hold your precious filmcore records. The whole concept is deliberately over the top but it also perfectly encapsulates Graf Orlock’s passion for film and their go for broke approach to music and presentation. It’s that kind of time and budget killing vision that lets you know Graf Orlock view their music as something more serious than a revenue stream.

Pig Destroyer
Book Burner
Relapse
2012
However disappointing Book Burner might have been musically, the packaging, especially for those of us who shelled out for the two CD digipack, does admirably reflect Pig Destroyer’s lyrical themes and ambitions. The book-bound digipack, which includes J.R. Hayes’ short story “The Atheist,” feels like a tome in your hands. It's like a samizdat missive from the dystopian world of Hayes’ imagination and that does help reinforce the themes Pig Destroyer were trying to build on Book Burner. Now none of that redeems flaccid music, a stale concept and a trite, poorly written short story, but it does show some forethought and an eye toward worldbuilding. The term concept album gets tossed out too casually for every wanking prog band that slaps together a handful tunes about calculus, but Book Burner at least tried to create a complete packing from the art to the presentation to the music that established multiple entry points into their blighted landscape. It was ultimately a failure, but it was a failure that took a chance.

Tickets to the Car Crash

Pig Destroyer's first album in five years has routinely been the most anticipated grind record of the year for about the past three years as it continually kept getting pushed back and postponed. But when the band finally put Book Burner in our hands we were left with ... this. I've never before checked my watch in boredom waiting for a Pig Destroyer album to be over. Ever. That just happened with Book Burner.
While I was certainly disappointed, I'm surprised at how quickly the consensus seems to have emerged that Book Burner kinda sucks. I'm just now emerging from my self-imposed media blackout on this (still haven't bothered to watch more than 5 seconds of that awful monkey video). So I've been cocooned for weeks so my impressions wouldn't be tainted by the conventional wisdom.
But given the emotions I've invested in Pig Destroyer over the years, I'm still trying to discern exactly how the disappointment happened. I know that I don't like it, but I'm still trying to discern the why. So I'm opening the floor to theories both here and [shameless plug following] G&P's new Facebook page (where you can be subjected to even more grind-related ramblings that don't even rate blogging)[/shameless plug].
So it's time to play (psycho)pathologist...what went wrong and how does Pig Destroyer get themselves back on track? The floor is yours.

G&P Review: Pig Destroyer

Pig Destroyer
Book Burner
Relapse
Pig Destroyer have wrenched a number of unpleasant emotions from me over the course of their five album career. Most obviously, there's the morbid fascination you get driving past a nasty fatal traffic accident. Then there's the sickening self-loathing I feel when I recognize the worst aspects of my personality reflected back in the J.R. Hayes' madman scribblings. Hayes' lyrics can also force me to recoil in disgust at his relentlessly jaundiced take on life, particularly his interaction with women. But the one sensation their previous albums had not prepared me for was indifference.
Book Burner is an average Relapse grind record. Taken as that, I'm sure some people will find plenty to like. While I've loved everything Pig Destroyer have done before (Yes, Phantom Limb included), this made almost no impression. The past few years have been tumultuous for Pig Destroyer as they've been plagued by constant turnover behind the drums and a few false starts before they were able to get serious about writing and recording Book Burner and that toll sounds obvious here. This is a band that sounds uncertain and strained.
While the album is full of shorter, grindier songs in the vein of their 38 Counts of Battery material with just a small handful of longer, more involved tunes that take after Phantom Limb, they're missing that primal intensity that set them apart. Scott Hull is one of the most prodigious musical talents in all of metaldom and I kept waiting for that signature hook to come -- a "Sheet Metal Girl," a "Carrion Fairy," a "Thought Crime Spree" -- but it never showed up. The closest we come is the fishtailing end of "Valley of Geysers." You'd also be forgiven for forgetting Blake Harrison is in the band because his talents are being severely underutilized. The much ballyhooed addition of Adam Jarvis seems to have imported the worst aspect of Misery Index as well: that lifeless, emotionless drumming. Jarvis' playing could probably be timed with an atomic clock, but he doesn't generate a single significant emotion throughout 30 minutes of music. If there's a bright spot to be had, it's that J.R. Hayes still sounds pissed as all fuck. The short story he contributes to the expanded edition of the song is nothing memorable, but he's still slitting his musical wrists and laying it all out with his performance. (Likewise the bonus album of punk covers is demo quality, by the numbers takes of familiar songs that doesn't take them anywhere new.)
Pig Destroyer have been at the acme of grindcore for more than a decade. When I defend the notion of grind as art, I point people to Prowler in the Yard and The Inalienable Dreamless. But Book Burner falls short of the standard they've set for themselves with past efforts.  Everybody is entitled to an off album. Hopefully this lineup is stable and the band can gel and really find their footing because next time I want to feel something.