And anybody who bitches that CDs “take up too much space” is out of their minds. I probably own upwards of 1100 CDs at this point, and they’re all in a tall, super-slim CD wall unit. If I got rid of it I wouldn’t be able to fit anything else in that space anyway.

I have to say Vince Im quite bummed that you don’t share the same sentiment. I honestly think all metalheads should be in it for the art after all Metal has some of the most amazing artwork

as for the album art specifically, i personally love art, so having that visual to associate with the music is important. the album cover is especially important because when i listen to a band, i subconciously associate it with the colors and feel of the album cover.
baroness’s ‘blue record’ just feels blue to me. im sure that if the album cover was purple, the music would feel completely different to me.
and i think that a big part of the reason i don’t like BTBAM’s new album as much as ‘colors’ is because i never associated BTBAM’s music with the warm colors on the cover of ‘the great misdirect’ so it just doesn’t feel right to me. i’ve always thought BTBAM’s music sounded like it was from outer space, and the ‘colors’ album cover conveyed that theme much better. same with the faceless’ ‘planetary duality’.
i also think that the fact that BTBAM’s album covers have always been pretty simple sort of lets the music speak for its self and paint its own picture rather than having a cover that gives you preconceptions of what the music might sound like.

Sometimes, the art in the liner notes is greater than the cover though. Look at Devin Townsend’s Addicted booklet. I like the cover, sure, it’s clever but the art inside the booklet is SPECTACULAR.

I’ll step away from the abstract to illustrate. The band I’m in just spent a lot – LOT – of time working on the construction of the vinyl version of our next release. We’ve agreed with the label that we are almost certain that we won’t sell out the 500 of these that will be made. I’ll keep a few, they’ll keep a few, the other guy in the band will keep a few … so that’s maybe 400 people in the entire world who will ever come into contact with us this way. Almost all of them will have some other context beyond what the record presents (listening to our myspace, visiting our website, seeing us at a show) before they decide to shell out the $. But we’ve deliberately gone through the trouble of all of this because we’re interested in creating that object – something that presents the music in a way that’s primarily very satisfying to create.

Point is that it’s primarily – or most interestingly – a question of whether or not the BAND chooses to continue their expression through that thing that’s being created. While there are other ways that they can to that (except for myspace, because it’s bullshit for a band to spend time thinking that’s an honest expression of what they’re about, unless their band was created to advertise TurboTax), it’s a band’s choice to use the artwork accompanying the release. If a band does this in a way that I appreciate, that’s great – but I assume it’s what they wanted to make and not about me as the audience, any more than I assume they write songs for me as a listener.

Except, of course, for those that are primarily motivated writing songs/designing album covers/making t-shirts that they think their audience will appreciate (i.e. buy). And screw that.

= Justin