Inner Scum Front Cover!

Here at last is the front cover of our forthcoming "INNER SCUM" mini-album, courtesy of the genuinely awesome Jesjit Gill.

Ladies with Skulls!

It turns out this is my 300th post here. For the occasion, I figured I'd post something just because I felt like it - something special I've been filing away for awhile - and that special something turned out to be pictures of women with skulls.

As ever, it seems someone else with a blog had the same inclination (and not too long ago either, just a fortnight!) so I'll share their fine collection of images as well - I think we've just the one duplication between us.

Sandra Torralba!

I've been seeing some photos from the "Estranged Sex" series showing up here and there on tumblr and chan sites - and I found them quite remarkable - but just discovered today the identity of the artist: Spanish photographer Sandra Torralba.



Here is a Spanish language making of video concerning one of the more controversial images from the series; that of the 'rape fantasy'. For contrast, the amusing short 'Las Tetas' film. Her flickr photostream, featuring stills from the making of Estranged Sex IXX.


A few interviews with the artist here, here, here, here, and here.


One of Torralba's images is a very matter-of-fact teabagging. I enjoyed her comments on this piece:

"Ever since someone told me about the tea bagging endeavour, I was intrigued by it. It repulsed me of course, it was one of these things that automatically make you feel angry and disgusted. Maybe even so more if you are a woman. Yet there was something very funny about it, especially if could envisage yourself in the place of the owner of the tea bagging testicles.

One of the main purposes of this series is not only to challenge people's ideas and feelings about various aspects of sexual life, but primarily to challenge [my own]. If there is something I feel I don't understand and I feel disgust towards, now that is interesting and shall be explored.

When you face the things that maybe frighten or repulse you, it's somehow liberating. I find that understanding, humour and honesty do help me live a freer life where I am not trapped in my own taboos. Don't get me wrong, if someone ever tea bags me and I wake up and likely quick [kick?] their balls with my forehead. Understanding does NOT mean accepting, does NOT mean you have to like it, it just means you are no longer stuck in your disgust, fear, or anger.

Also we live our lives with much drama, and to be fair, we have a point. Life is full of misery and pain all the way round, yet there is something very ridiculous and enjoyable about life too, which I aim to rescue within this series."

Sexy LP Sleeves!

LP Cover Lover has plenty o' the sex wax for you: that's XXX, S-E-X, nudes, and even cheesecake! Here's some of my faves.

Scary Album Covers!

When I was but a wee lad, still in grade school, I would frequently sneak a small portable radio to my room at bedtime, hide it under my pillow, and quietly (but loudly as I dared) listen to local rock station Q107. I'd occasionally hear something that really freaked me out, probably the best example of which was Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" and the spooky breakdown part wherein Robert Plant goes "AH! AH! AH! AH!".

I know, I know. It seems really stupid now but it gave me the willies at the time. What the heck was going on here, I wondered. Whatever it was sounded seriously creepy, even occultish to my young ears. It was unusual to find hard rock actually scary - although arguably that part of the song isn't really 'hard rock'. Mostly what freaked me out musically then was free jazz (often used in 70s TV shows or movies to denote madness or a drug freakout) or Krzysztof Komeda's soundtrack to "Rosemary's Baby" with its horrifying horns.


If rock music only rarely scared me, rock album covers had rather an easier time of it. Many times I recall being at the Oshawa Centre mall with my parents; inevitably, I'd want to go to Sam The Record Man and have a look at the LP covers (this was the late 70s so there were some pretty crazy ones). Even in the well-lit store, I would pause and stare at Molly Hatchet's 1978 self-titled record or their '79 follow-up "Flirtin' With Disaster" and shudder inside, trying to imagine just what this band must have sounded like. Molly Hatchet must be evil, I thought - and incredibly heavy. When I finally did hear them years later, I was saddened to find out that they were in fact neither.


In hindsight, these album covers seem cool if a bit kitschy. Nowadays an envelope in my mailbox stamped "final notice" scares and haunts me; back then, it was a bloodied creep on an LP cover. Note that although only two of these are actually by the recently-deceased Frank Frazetta, they're all along the same lines as the late great master (Frazetta did the cover for Nazareth's 1977 "Expect No Mercy" record but I found Rodney Matthews' art for their 1979 follow-up "No Mean City" far more freaky and confrontational).


In 1981 Iron Maiden put out "Killers" - an album bearing a cover that was really ahead of its time as far as graphic content goes. Not only was Eddie, the band's mascot, killing some guy with a hatchet on it, but a careful viewer could spot all sorts of interesting things in the background art (not the least of which was a sex shop). Artist Derek Riggs came up with Eddie the Head and went on to do the artwork for most of Iron Maiden's album covers.


The Scorpions' 1982 classic "Blackout" was released when I was nine. By then I was a little bit more jaded and worldly-wise; I didn't find the cover actually scary as such but I do recall being shocked when I first saw it, thinking "geez, forks in the eyes! that's gotta hurt". I liked the simplicity of it, the economical brutality of Gottfried Helnwein's image (an image he repeated years later to lesser effect for Rammstein). Forkface also had a smashing cameo in the video for big hit "No One Like You".


Dio's 1983 "Holy Diver" cover also didn't particularly scare as much as disturb me - something about the empty placidity of band mascot Murray as he towered over an apparently drowning priest. Much respect to Ronnie James Dio, who also just passed away; his video for "The Last In Line" provided some nightmare fuel with its Biblical image of "the hand that writes and quickly moves away".


Battleaxes, straight razors, hatchet, forks, and chains. Of course, within a few years heavy metal album covers made these sleeves look positively benign.