SECRET 7" - Black Sabbath - Age of Reason

The Brief

Secret 7" take 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and press each one 100 times to 7" vinyl. The Brief entailed choosing a song to visually interpret in my own style, resulting in a one-of-a-kind sleeve for every 7”. The brief was pretty open and we were able to produce pretty much anything as long as it is within the size constraints and doesn't include the song name or artist on the design.

After completing my T.Rex cover I decided to do another secret 7" brief but this time for the great metal legends that are Black Sabbath. The tune this year was taken from their latest album '13' and is entitled 'Age of Reason'. The song is about how the world is controlled and manipulated and is built on the premises of money, politics and religon. There is loads of evil going on in the world that is ruining the planet, whilst everyone is oblivious to whats really happening and are kept docile and distracted by the shit in the media. That is what I have interpreted from the lyrics and have asked several people what they think the song means and all have responded with similar answers. I think the theme of the song is interesting and there is potential for some powerful imagery.

Lyrics

Do you hear the thunder
Raging in the sky?
Premonition of
A shattered world that's gonna die.

In the Age of Reason,
how do we survive?
The protocols of evil
Ravaging so many lives?

Mystifying silence
Talking Peace on Earth.
We should judge each other
For ourselves not what we're worth.

Sustainable extinction,
A fractured human race.
A jaded revolution
Disappears without a trace.

Always felt that there'd be trouble.
Mass distraction hides the truth.
Prozac days and sleepless hours.
Seeds of change that don't bear fruit.

These time are heavy
And you're all alone.
The battle's over
But the war goes on.

Politics, religion,
Love of money too.
It's what the world was built for
But not for me and you. 

Album Cover Research

I researched into existing Sabbath album covers to get an idea of the kind of colour scheme to work with and to see what style of work they have had in the past. I wanted to create something unique in my own illustration style but have elements of sabbath within the design. The imagery and colour scheme is important and needs to emphasize the genre of music as well as the band and the subject matter.

 

The latest cover is quite dark and eerie which works really well for the metal legends. The number 13 obviously refers to the unlucky number and the fire promotes destruction and terror. The cover is quite eerie like the music.

The colour schemes throughout the album covers are quite similar often including red and black within the design and also purple. There are other random covers but the majority come back to this dark death metal like colour scheme which keeps cropping up.

Once again the red and black colour scheme is present with quite dark satanic imagery.

Red again.

 

Initial Ideas

I started off coming up with a little mind map of the subject matter and what I wanted to try and include within the album cover. Drawing on what I know from the lyrics.

I decided to concentrate on the how i could portray the world to being doomed or shattered, with its dependency on money and politics. I came up with various visual metaphors to try and highlight aspects of the song. From imagery of the world in flames to signify how it is doomed, and also puppetery imagery to emphasize how the wolrd is controlled. I had a lot of different ideas and I wanted to try and include as many aspects as possible with out cluttering the design too much.

I wanted to show how the world was built on money and religeon etc. so came up with the idea that all the continents could be made up of relevant symbols to show the world is made up of those things. I also liked the idea of a television being the distraction from whats really happening to the world. I wanted to emphasize that the world is fucked at the moment and it stands for all the wrong things. The subject matter is pretty heavy and I wanted to convey the message in a dark and powerful way just like the song itself.

Digital Designs

 I started mocking up my design on illustrator but found that the globe I was trying to create actually looked nothing like what it was supposed to be. In order to make it look more like the earth i would have to try and make the icons have a similar shape to the worlds continents.

I ended up printing out a picture of the earth and then tracing over the image drawing the symbols over the tops of the continents and islands to produce something which looks a lot more globe like.

Once I had got the earth right I concentrated on the other elements of the design. I added a demon like puppet hand to emphasize how the world is controlled and manipulated. I also added in the TV displaying the lies on television. There was definitely something not quite right about the tv though that needed sorting out.

I addedin the flames onto the globe to show how the earth is burning away and being destroyed each day. I also reduced the size of the TV as it was taking away too much of the focus from the earth.

More experimentation

I had started to get close when I changed the TV to black, this created more of a silhouette of the TV leaving just the screen shining as if you were sat in the dark. The TV definitely still needed work and the type needed thickening as it was too scribbly.

I finally changed the size of the TV to size which complemented the composition. The typeface I have drawn is rough and looks a bit psychopathic, it is unstructured and looks kind of evil which goes with the theme of the song and also fits in with the bands image well. I have stuck to the red and black colour scheme which could be seen throughout Sabbaths album covers. The imagery is bold and eye catching and I believe is a good visual metaphor for the themes brought up in the song.

Final Mock Up