Mutoid Man's first EP!!!

 I was pretty honored to be asked to create the cover for Steve Brodsky and Ben Koller's new two man project, Mutoid Man. Their first EP, Helium Head will be coming out soon On Magic Bullet Records on CD/LP  and will have some of the songs that were performed during their performance in New York at Saint Vitus.

listen : Friday 13/8

 When I was on the Converge/Torche/Kvelertak tour,  Ben told me about this new project with Stephen and asked if I could draw up a weird and psychedelic idea for a cover in the same cartoony vein as Torche's Harmonicraft album. After tour, I was sent the lyrics and was able to come up with a scene combining both images from the lyrics and my own strange ideas.

I first drew up the space slug with the television helmet and sent it to Ben and Steve. They liked it right away and then I knew that I could get out of hand with the rest of it. The slug ended up working as later found out the title of the record will be Helium Head (a nod to Sir Lord Baltimore). The image of a space slug with a television helmet fit that title well, even though he's completely ridiculous.

The band of vultures in the background are a hybrid of ideas based off of the first two songs, "Gnarcissist" & "Scavengers". "Gnarcissist" warns of attention whore rock stars and their constant ego stroking. The vultures in the band are all collared with shackle-like apparatus' that have several mirrors hanging from them fitting the need for the constant self love. Also, a part of this image would be the large hole in the place where their hearts would be.

"Scavengers" is a song about people who tend to thieve their sound from other bands and musicians. It speaks of the vultures and their ways and even mentions playing the bones of their creative victims. I know that I made this part of the design quite literal, but I think it's an idea that had to be mentioned and pointed out. That would be the whole idea behind the boney instruments that the band are using.

Littered among the mushrooms are little degenerate frogs and turtles. I just thought it'd be fun to have a knife wielding frog and a cool smoking frog watching the heartless band wail. There's even a beer sipping turtle in the corner waving a pennant that made a great place for my signature.

The back cover continued with the duel turtle idea personifying the rockin' party contained on the album. So the party turtles were made. One with a custom bong shell and the other with a keg contained in his shell. They brought across the great personalities of both Steve and Ben and made these characters a blast to create. Steve also has two turtles of his own, so he really liked that I added some into the design.


Helium Head comes out on black Friday (November 29th, 2013) LP/CD/Digital.

Next up is a new 7" cover for Torche.