Hateful Chains

  Some Setbacks...

Of course, I spoke too early and there's been a delay in the release of our album. Oh well, can't help it in anyway, this pandemic keeps f---ing everything up. It should be in a week or at least in April. So let's hope so. The album has been printed, I hear, so it shouldn't be long until we have our own copies in our hands...

I've been posting stuff about the songs to keep the buzz alive somehow. For now it seems a little quiet, but I'll have to make some noise again, when we have the album. And we agreed to release the music video in connection to the actual album release. Can't wait to show it to y'all!

There's been a few online radio shows that have played our songs, and I even got to make a little jingle for one of them. Thank you Flyflew Radio, Flatlines Radio and Radio Hazzard of Darkness, for noting and giving us some air time! I've also done an interview, about that later then... This pre-promotion has mostly happened in Germany, which is of course, the home of Danse Macabre Records as well. 

While waiting for the release I thought I'd give you guys a glimpse to the album cover process. Here are some of the other options, which were not bad, but in the end the one chosen was the most original in all our opinions. That is, the band. In the end, though, I was the one who made the final decision on the cover picture and the album title.

This is a photograph of a plastic mask, which I then altered. We thought of Hollow Place as the album title, but decided on Invite in the end...

This one is a painting by a close person of mine, in it's original colouring. 

Maybe it could be used some day?

And this one is a negative of that same picture, actually pretty nice this way too

This is a photograph of a beach and I just made it red. It's ok, but didn't make it to the top three.

And this is the final version of the cover we chose. 

In the end, we went through with a cover full of cows. Luckily weird cows, slightly melting, maybe tears in their eyes or something. The cow is from a painting of mine. The original is red characters on blue, so for this idea I detached the characters, multiplied the cows and turned the background red too. The other characters are in the cover material too, so you'll see them once you have the album in your hands. 

I describe quite simply what I did with the pictures to make the cover, but the truth is that it took a long time, first the process of choosing the right one, then the actual making of the cover, the booklet, the back of the cd- case, and the cd itself. I was lucky to have help. Two people, who have done lay out and editing like this before, and pro ones actually. Alone I wouldn't have been able to get the material into the right printing format and all that. I have some experience in graphic design, but this was honestly a deep end for me. 

After all the trouble I went through I have decided that the next album cover is probably going to be black and white. With candles, probably... And yes, we are already working on that. There are still some things to be done with this one, to get it out there to be seen etc. But I have written new songs during all this time it took us to finish this album. So there is enough material to fill two albums. Which is awesome!

Yours in darkness, Flora