The Beauty of Symmetry in Metal Imagery

Menu

Archive: Motion

Napalm Death - Wolf Still

Napalm Death – The Symmetric Wolf I Feed

7th of July, 2012

Napalm Death (no introduction needed) just released a new video for The Wolf I Feed taken from their latest effort Utilitarian – released in 2012 via Century Media. The clip was directed by Tim Fox.

Commented Napalm Death singer Mark “Barney” Greenway: “This is one of Mitch’s lyrics. It is about Armageddon ideology and the way this is used to drive populations sensitive towards religious dogma. When they can fear ‘The Great Satan’, that is, of course, a very powerful tool. It can be used to propagate everything from racial suspicion and superiority, to wars based around the dogmatic quest for moral purification.” (source)

Read More

Daath - Feature

Daath – Sharpen the Symmetry

17th of March, 2012

Daath (or Dååth) is a progressive Death Metal band from Atlanta, USA. The Concealers – whose cover is depicted above – is their third full length album with a self-titled release being the latest one. This cover artwork was created by Jordan Haley.

The interesting thing about this cover is the (in Metal standards) unusual way of showing cliche elements. If you would close your eyes and I would list you the elements shown in this cover you would definitely have something different in mind. We’ve got blades, coffins, blood, axes, knifes, chains, bones, spikes, horns and batwings. And not in the usual gory but in a rather graphic and reduced way. With a strict color coding of black, white and red.

Read More

Mastodon - Spectrelight

Mastodon – The Hunter of Symmetry

14th of November, 2011

Mastodon is an American Heavy Metal band from Atlanta, USA, formed in 1999. They have released five full-length albums to date. The video featured in this post was made for the song Spectrelight (featuring Scott Kelly of Neurosis) from their latest release The Hunter.

The video uses a kaleidoscope effect to generate symmetric patterns and images out of a few pictures. It was released about 500 hours before The Hunter was released (Sept. 27, 2011) (source). That might be the reason why the video feels like a teaser to the album and its visual content. Documented in the cover art of The Hunter – a sculpture made by AJ Fosik – being a repetitive image in the video.

Read More

Michael Angelo Batio

Batio – Lucid Intervals and Moments of Symmetry

8th of November, 2011

Although this post isn’t about symmetric Metal imagery, Michael Angelo Batio has to be featured on this blog. Apart from being a guitar player not from this world, he is the only guitarist able to play symmetrically.

Batio (born February 23, 1956) also known as Mike Batio or MAB, is a guitarist from Chicago, USA. He was voted the “No. 1 Shredder of All Time” by Guitar One Magazine in 2003 and listed as one of the “Top 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists of All Time” by Guitar World Magazine.

Batio is ambidextrous, a skill he taught himself. This enables him to play two guitars at the same time either in synchronization or using separate harmonies. Batio invented and often demonstrates the “Over-Under” technique, which involves flipping his fretting hand over and under the neck rapidly, playing the guitar both regularly and like a piano (source).

Read More