Art on Our Sleeves: Blood and Guts

By: James Sandham

August 21, 2008
Toronto, Canada

Music is so minutely categorized these days. You don’t just have “rock” as opposed to “heavy metal” — you have “deathcore” as opposed to “grindcore” as opposed to “black metal” as opposed to “hardcore death metal” and 10,000 other genres in-between. Well, add another one to the list: gore-core. It’s like all of the above except with an emphasis on gore. Subsequently, it’s the album art that really distinguishes this genre. So let’s take a look at what it has to offer.

 

 

Avulsed
Gorespattered Suicide
(Metal Age)

When it comes to bloody album art, this 2005 release from the Madrid-based, death-metal quintet is an obvious first choice. I don’t know if album art can get much gorier than this – although their 1999 release, Stabwound Orgasm, does put up some tough competition. Nonetheless, Gorespattered Suicide wins out for several reasons: the curtains are covered in blood, the walls are covered in blood, there’s a naked, gore-soaked female corpse on the bed – and we’re still just talking about the image’s background details at this point. In the foreground, buddy’s already got one of his wrists slashed and is in the midst of avoiding an immanent beheading by a shirtless, blood-soaked vixen by blowing his own brains out. Classic gore-core. Needless to say, this band’s music is a bit on the heavy side.

 

Lord Gore
The Autophagous Orgy
(Razorback Records)

According to dictionary.com “autophagy” refers to “the process of self-digestion by a cell through the action of enzymes originating within the same cell.” In the context of Lord Gore’s 2002 release, it’s basically a fancy way to say “eating yourself,” which is also the subject matter of the disc’s cover art. Tastefully rendered in cheery Manga style, five or six naked cartoon chicks vociferously devour themselves and each other in an orgy of ecstatic bliss. Pretty sick, but then again, what would you expect from a band self-described as a “slavering horde of psychotic individuals with an insatiable hunger for violence, gore and deviated pornography” who are “fuelled by all things disgusting and morally repugnant”? Who knew Portland, Oregon could produce such depravity. Check out their MySpace for such classic ditties as “Kicked to Death” and “Brainfucker”.

 

Gorerotted
Mutilated in Minutes
(Relapse/IDB)

The now defunct Gorerotted (they disbanded this year) have offered up some pretty sick album covers over the unmercifully long eleven years they played, but Mutilated in Minutes remains one of their sickest. The album face depicts a woman who appears to have been attacked by zombies, with both her arms and legs missing and her entrails ripped out and being swallowed by the zombie below her. Furthermore, she is simultaneously being fucked from behind by some kind of ghoul who is also pulling her intestines out through her rectum in a splash of blood. Behind her, more zombies look on while eating her severed legs. You can probably imagine what the music from this UK-based quintet sounds like. 

 

Cannibal Corpse
Butchered at Birth
(Metal Blade)

Cannibal Corpse is probably one of the more mainstream gore-core bands (and may only be considered hardcore metal by some). Subsequently, their album art is relatively tame. Nonetheless, their 1991 release still makes our list. The artwork is kind of cheesy compared to some of the more hardcore gore-core stuff, but it’s still classic in that it incorporates three staples of the genre: a disembodied female corpse, zombies and fetuses. In this particular arrangement, said zombies remove said fetus from said corpse to hang with the other babies that swing from their umbilical cords in the background. Sick.

 

Cephalotripsy
Uterovaginal Insertion of Extirpated Anomolies
(Amputated Vein)

Gore-core bands seem to have this weird predilection for obscure and crazy long words. San Diego-based Cephalotripsy have scored a double-whammy in this regard, using completely unheard of shit in both their own name and the name of their 2007 release. So let’s break it down. “Cephalotripsy” refers to “the act or operation of crushing the head of a fetus in the womb in order to effect delivery,” while the “uterovaginal insertion of extirpated anomolies” refers to sticking weird, unwanted shit that’s already been torn out back into someone’s vagina and/or uterus. Uh, right. Maybe it’s better that the meaning remains obfuscated in these cases. Also, their music sounds like someone burping over really heavy drumming.

 

Grotesque Formation
Basement Decompositions
(Sevared)

This band describes their music as “holocaustic deathgrind” and hails from Corpus Christi and Houston, Texas. It already sounds like the beginning of a plot to some crappy Rob Zombie flick — and the music’s not much better either (unless you’re really into being screamed at and dominated, which I guess is the target market for these guys). Anyway, their album art is still gory as hell and as such makes it onto our list. We have the usual mutilated corpses on display here, but this time with the inventive addition of frothing pools of maggots that spill from the eyes and mouth of those in the foreground. How unique.

 

Infernal Revulsion
Devastate Under Hallucination
(Goregiastic)

The Kobe region of Japan doesn’t just produce expensive beef — it also produces angry young men who form bands like Infernal Revulsion. Their first full-length album, released early in 2007, makes our list more for its title than for its artwork. The album depicts a deranged psychopath at the end of a street full of bodies he himself has deceased, and is still pretty gory, but is even crazier given that it’s called Devastate Under Hallucination. Get it? He killed all those people ’cause he was hallucinating! I can only imagine how he’ll feel once the drugs wear off. It’ll be like that sinking feeling you get after waking up naked and hung-over beside the ugliest person you’ve ever seen. Except way worse.

 

Regorge
Kingdoms of Derision
(Dead Again)

Whenever I’ve gone to Europe there’s always been guys on the pavement outside the most touristy places selling these spray-painted fantasy images that they whip up on the spot in like three seconds, using a few simple stencils. This is what they look like, except instead of the Coliseum or the Pantheon, this one is of a guy getting blown apart by lasers from another dimension. Did I mention he’s also crouching atop a pile of bloody skulls? Pretty sweet.

 

Oh, and then there is this:

The Beatles
Yesterday and Today
(Capitol)