Around the MetalSucks Mansion, we refer to Rodney Githens of Vertebrae 33 as “The Derek Riggs to our Iron Maiden.” The dude does amazing artwork, and has designed some of our most favoritest MS stuff, like this t-shirt, and this t-shirt, and this poster.

And now he’s started his own website, Metal Band Art, devoted entirely to the ongoing search for the world’s finest chili recipe. No, of course that’s what the site is about. It’s about metal band art. Duh.

ANYWAY, I mention it now because Rodney just posted part one of an excellent interview with the legendary Derek Riggs, a.k.a. the creator of Eddie, a.k.a. the dude who did all the Iron Maiden art that’s worth a damn. Here’s an excerpt:

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Every now and then you hear about a miracle. I’m not talking about, like, your dad surviving some emergency surgery or anything as circumstantial as that — no no no, I mean a true, honest-to-God miracle, like someone saw Jesus on their toast, or The Virgin Mary in their coffee. It’s moments like these that make you know there really is a Higher Power, and that life has some meaning to it after all.

Well, reader Michael LaGrow has experienced just such a miracle, and he even sent us photographic evidence to prove it. For Michael has a dirt stain on his wall… that looks just like Eddie. Check it out (click on the picture to embiggen):

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Derek Riggs is an illustrator based in California. His website showcases the album art he’s done over the past thirty years, including his absolutely classic work for Iron Maiden. Derek is opinionated and funny; the half hour you will spend looking through the entire site shows that clearly. In 2006, he put out Run For Cover: The Art of Derek Riggs, a book that includes a bunch of his best stuff as well as several interviews.

I was hesitant to call him and ask him about his work for Iron Maiden, as that’s an old chapter in his life and he’s put a lot of that behind him. But then I thought, “Fuck it, it would be fun to call Derek Riggs, let me see if I can talk to him.” He was game, so I took a deep breath and asked him a few questions about his past.

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A couple of years ago we celebrated/mourned the release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic by turning ourselves into MetallicaSucks for a day, and having each member of the MS staff contribute a review, as well as other Metallica-related shenanigans.

We had a lot of fun doing that (and watching you all argue about it), and have wanted to do it again for some time… but rarely is an album as highly anticipated as Death Magnetic released.

But tomorrow, Iron Maiden’s The Final Frontier comes out in North America, and if the fifteenth (!) studio album from one of metal’s most legendary bands doesn’t qualify as “highly anticipated,” well, nothing does.

So we’re doing it again! Tomorrow will be all Maiden, all the time. We’ll have multiple reviews of The Final Frontier, so you can see that, no, we most certainly do not always agree here at MetalSucks; in addition, there will be lots of other Maiden-related goodness… including an AWESOME interview that The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley conducted with the legendary Derek Riggs!!!

So get stoked… for tomorrow, MAIDENSUCKS!!!

-Everyone at MetalSucks

Last month I criticized Melvyn Grant’s art for the cover of the new Maiden album, The Final Frontier, and I stand by that criticism; I still feel that the purple and blue hues are too soothing, that all the rounded edges take the, uh, edge off the art, and that SME — that’s “Space Monster Eddie” — looks too much like a cartoon Predator.

But guess what? All those changes from Derek Riggs’ classic design were deliberate, and that’s not Eddie at all. Here’s what Grant recently told Examiner:

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Last week our homeslice Anso D-muthafuckin’-F got people arguing about which Maiden album is the worst in their discography. But that seems so silly to me, when, clearly, the correct answer is, “Anything from the Blaze Bayley era.” Seriously, I think the band’s post-Brave New World material (including the new single, “El Dorado,” which does nothing for me) should have been released under the name “Iron Mehden,” but it’s all still better than anything from The X Factor, which sounds exactly like 8,000 terrible unsigned bands from New Jersey, all of whom have e-mailed us or mailed us their life-shortening demos.

No. That discussion is a waste of time. Sorry. Clearly, what we should be focusing on is that which will define the band’s legacy long after they are gone: their album art.

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If you’re not familiar with Continuum’s 33 1/3 book series, you should be. Each entry is written by a different music critic and/or journalist, and each one is devoted to the study of a single, seminal album. There’s a wide range of types of music covered by the series – everything from the Beastie Boys to The Velvet Underground – but metal hass, up ’til now, been criminally unrepresented. There are entries for albums by Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, but those aren’t metal bands in the strictest sense and, obviously, both groups have been wholly accepted by the mainstream; there was a book covering Sabbath’s Master of Reality recently, but, weird though it may be, at this point Sabbath are pretty much as accepted and unrebellious a metal band as we’re likely to get.

So D.X. Ferris’ recently release tome on Slayer’s Reign in Blood is the series’ first honest to God (or honest to Satan?) book covering a metal album. And it’s an AWESOME read – fascinating, intelligent, informative and insightful, you’re likely to blow through it record time, and then feel depressed as you realize you’ve reached the last page. Ferris not only takes a critical look at the album, making astute observations and pointing out little musical nooks and crannies you might have never noticed even after your gazillionth spin of the classic record, but he also managed to interview everyone and anyone who was involved with the album – from the band members themselves to producer Rick Rubin to engineer Andy Wallace to cover artist Larry Carroll and a few hundred other people I’m forgetting about – as well as loads and loads of musicians and artists who are fans of the album (Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, Gary Holt, and Paul Romano among them).

After I wrote this blog about Slayer and their continuing relevance in the metal world back in June, Ferris actually e-mailed me basically just to say “thanks” for the shout-out to his book. I asked him if I could shoot him some interview questions, and luckily for us, he agreed. After the jump, read what Ferris had to say about the process of putting the book together, things he learned about both Slayer and Reign in Blood while working on the book, and the state of Slayer today.

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