THE NEW MASTODON ALBUM ARTWORK SURE IS DIFFERENT

Our inbox blew up with links to the new Mastodon album cover last night, but as far as I can tell MS artist Rodney Githens was the first to break the news to the world on his brand new site MetalBandArt.com. Nice work on the scoop!

The first thing you’ll notice is that the artwork is stylistically completely different from all of Mastodon’s past album covers, and that’s because it wasn’t done by Paul Romano. Romano drew all four of Mastodon’s previous covers, including some associated singles and special releases along the way if I’m not mistaken… so why the switch? Perhaps the Mastodudes just decided it was time for a change. Or perhaps this album is so different from past Mastodon albums that it warranted a switch in artwork styles; DUN DUN DUN!!!

MetalBandArt.com tells us that the cover for The Hunter was done by AJ Fosik, whose work recently appeared on the cover of Hi-Fructose Magazine. I’d really like to know more about the process for this cover and how Mastodon decided to go with Fosik; perhaps we’ll find out more when Rodney interviews Fosik for his site.

-VN