Ascended, T-shirts and Detest Records

Right after Where Death and Decay Reign I got several new designs to work with.

Ascended's first (and sadly last) EP was to be published as a tape alongside CD and the tape version needed a cover. Tommi Sookari already knew me because of the Stench of Decay covers so he asked me to do it.

It was fun to draw but considering the actual size of the final cover, I got bit carried away. So the image is quite crowded. I sent them a version with the logo in but it didn't really stand out so the final version was just like this, no text or logos. I think it worked out better that way.

Ascended - Temple of Dark Offerings (EP Tape, 2009, Detest records).

After doing several covers, I got a chance to do couple shirt designs. Stench of Decay wanted an original T-shirt design and the shirt was to be white. On a white shirt, I think the image shouldn't be too dark so I went in with a different kind of atmosphere than my earlier works but tied the image to the Where Death and Decay Reign demo cover with the building on the background. So its kind of a zoom out of the demo cover. The image itself has much more space that in the works I had done before and also the desert atmosphere is quite different that I was used to. But I guess the haunting feeling in this picture comes from that, the vast space with no life signs around (only dead!) - so i named the artwork Where No-one Hears You Scream.

Where No-one Hears You Scream. Design for the Stench of Decay T-shirt.

 And this is how it looked on the final product:

Stench of Decay T-shirt (2009)

With Stench of Decay and Ascended I also got to know Jerry from Detest Records as he has been putting out records from both of the bands. Jerry is very enthusiastic about music so It was easy to accept his work for a Detest Records T-shirt. And for the design, I had pretty much free hands, Jerry just said that come up with something grim, morbid and evil! I had learned from the Stench of Decay T-shirt that a T-shirt design is definately something else than doing a cover but I took the challenge and had fun with it. Around the time I started sketching this work I was reading H.P.Lovecraft's fiction and I guess it influenced me quite a lot for this bizarre tentacled monster. Nowadays I tend to draw more pictures with tentacles than without! Iä! Iä!

Here is the design:

Detest

The image was inverted for the shirt:

Detest Records T-shirt (2010)

 Looking back, every single commission work I had done this far was for Detest Records in a way or another! So I owe a great deal to the bands for a possibility to work for them - but also Jerry of Detest Records who is publishing good bands (and artwork alongside with it) and supporting the good old death metal. \,,/

Until next time,

-Eero