It’s been a really great experience so far.”Ī celebrated illustrator, photographer and music video director, Mahurin was suggested to the band by their management, who had previously worked with the 56-year-old Californian on a number of Metallica projects. “The reaction I’ve had from fans has been hugely positive. There’s nothing to really prepare you for how passionate and international their fan base is, for the intensity and breadth of their reaction,” says Matt Mahurin, the man behind the sleeve, and a number of other artworks centered around ‘Drones’ (he also provided images for the ‘Psycho’ video). No wonder, then, that a week after the cover to ‘Drones’, their seventh album, due on June 8, hit the web, debate continues to rage about its meaning and merit. Muse, you get the impression, see album sleeves as another opportunity to chill, confuse and provoke.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s that Muse will likely never settle for a moody press photo slapped on a jewel case when it comes to artwork. Even 2012’s more playful ‘The 2nd Law’ cover, featuring what looked like a stick of radioactive broccoli, startled in its neon weirdness. 2006’s ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ sleeve, the work of acclaimed Pink Floyd collaborator Storm Thorgerson, was more subtly unnerving: a surreal shot of four bald men sat calmly at the forefront of a dusty otherworldly vista (think Magritte on Mars).
#Cover album muse full#
2003’s ‘Absolution’ cover suggested a sky full of falling bodies that, released almost two years to the day of the September 11 attacks in New York, tapped into the teeth-grinding tension of the era that followed, full of constant, looming terror.
Muse album sleeves have a habit of stopping fans in their tracks.