WHO THE HELL IS ON THE COVER OF THE NEW DORO ALBUM?

The below photo of Doro Pesch, who will turn forty-eight in June, was taken at the Echo Awards in Berlin on March 22 of this year — in other words, just about two months ago:

And this is the cover of Doro’s new album, Raise Your Fist:

I mean, I understand that touching up pics with Photoshop is pretty common place these days, and if my sixty-seven year-old mother can continue to pretend that her hair isn’t gray, I won’t deny Doro the right to use a little digital chicanery to try and look her best. (And she looks like she’s in pretty good shape for a woman pushing fifty anyway.) But that photo on her album cover is RIDICULOUS. Never mind that it doesn’t look like her now — it barely even looks like her when she twenty-four and still in Warlock:

Why the move to make her look so different? Do her existing fans really care? Is there concern that she won’t be able to make new fans because of her age? And if so, isn’t that a really, really nasty double-standard? I mean, Lars Ulrich, for example, is a year older than Doro. But no one is trying to pretend that he still looks like this:

So what gives?

Raise Your Fist will be released in North America this fall via Nuclear Blast.

-AR