Shameless Self-Promotion: Oculus Rot

 Shameless Self-Promotion
"Oculus Rot" by Buried

It's another bit of Shameless Self-Promotion!  As I obliquely mentioned in my MF Doom Memoriam posting, this is a shout out to my friend, Joel, and his bandmates for their new album which dropped on Valentine's Day (yeah, I know, I'm a little slow, sometimes): "Oculus Rot" by Buried.  

When it comes to my taste in music, I'm pretty omnivorous: I listen to everything from Abba to Zappa, if you will, and everything in between.  And while I will admit that Death Metal isn't my go to when I'm chillin' at home, it does find its way into rotation when the mood strikes.  As does Classical Music, Opera, Alternative, Thrash, Hip Hop, Trip Hop, Pop, Metal, Ska, Punk, Rap... Oh, you get the idea.  A little bit of everything.  Stuff that would alternately bore you to death and scare the life outta you.

Anyhoo, it started many years ago when Joel contacted me to see if they could use my Facehugger Valentine drawing for their T-Shirt.  Sure!  As a follow up, he was kind enough to ask me to do the cover for their new Album, Oculus Rot.  It just so happens, doing a cover to a Heavy Metal/Death Metal album/T-Shirts was high up on my Bucket List.  So, that's kinda cool!

I also did a pastiche of a "Tales From the Crypt" cover, which included the caricatures of Joel, Steve, Robbert, and Marc, and it is used on the Mutoid Maniac shirts.  (I did the caricature of Joel as an alien in "They Live" during my first "31 Days of HELL-O-Ween" which he got it as a tattoo on his leg--so he has a history of questionable decisions.)  

BTW, the stereotype of Death Metal band members being among the nicest, kindest people out there seems to be true in my experience (all the stories about nihilistic hooliganism are usually associated with Black Metal, which is a different genre altogether).  Many times when I was writing to Joel, he'd mention it was a sunny day and he was out with his family, hiking, rescuing cute woodland critters injured by other careless hikers, picking wildflowers, and reenacting the opening scene to "The Sound of Music" with him in the role of Julie Andrews, to which I'd think "Hmm, that's not very metal..."  (While I am engaged in mild hyperbole to give Joel a bit of a comedic roast, it is shocking how close to reality it is!  Shocking, I tell you!)

So, my best to Joel and his bandmates!  Here's to hoping my meager Blog helps even a little bit.  Thanks for the opportunity letting me do the cover art, gents--much appreciated!

Here's a link to their FACEBOOK Page and a link to a REVIEW from RocknLoadMag, which gave them 8 out of 10 stars!

If you like what you hear, buy 10 copies so they can become world-famous and I can maybe trick them into letting me do another cover or bit of promotional art!  If you hate it, buy 20 copies to remove it from the market and make sure no one else can get a copy!  Oh, and maybe just get a bunch of T-Shirts, too, while your at it for the same reasons listed above. 😁

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Shameless Self-Promotion / Cross-Promotion

Please forgive a shameless bit of self-promotion/cross-promotion.  This is still hard for me to get my head around... I was contacted by Joel from the band BURIED, a Dutch death metal band hoping to use my drawing of the Facehugger for their T-Shirts.  That sounded super-cool, so of course I said "YES"!

I'm in Minnesota--about the middest of the Mid-West--so it's weird for me to think about a band from the Netherlands finding my art (part one of the impossible), and then liking it enough to want to put it on their t-shirts (part two of the impossible), and contacting me for permission and putting up a link to my site on their Facebook Page and sending me a few shirts and CD's to boot (part three of the impossible).   The fact there will be people in the Netherlands walking around, wearing shirts with my art on them, is just so weird for me to think about and try to wrap my head around.

So, my secret dream to be on a metal band's t-shirt is something I can cross of my bucket-list.  I would say I can't wait to do more t-shirt art for metal bands, but I don't even know how it happened this time, let alone do it again...  ;-)

Here is one of the band members wearing the shirt (my box of swag is in the mail and should be arriving any day).

You can visit Buried's Facebook page HERE!  If you happen to be at a venue at which they are playing, feel free to purchase one--or more!--of their shirts and CD's!  :-D

Here's the original Facehugger drawing from my series of "Unwanted Valentines".

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