____twoism

Redd Panderson wrote:I think we're cooking with the same grease here

There's a vague surface to the things/events of our lives and underneath, multitudes in a web that we're all woven into

Redd Panderson wrote:Not to fill the board with stuff not directly related to the cover art here but

I want to stop and say I really appreciate this community right now, it's been cool to read everyone's thoughts and bounce ideas off of everyone. Such an exciting time!

Altruizine wrote:What are those people on the cover even doing? Standing around looking impy? If they took a random family photo again and tried to stage it as being ”sinister” that’s a bit corny. At first I wondered if there was someone lying on the ground in front of them. Imagine a BoC cover pic about someone getting their ass kicked

Chodlington wrote:

Altruizine wrote:What are those people on the cover even doing? Standing around looking impy? If they took a random family photo again and tried to stage it as being ”sinister” that’s a bit corny. At first I wondered if there was someone lying on the ground in front of them. Imagine a BoC cover pic about someone getting their ass kicked

There's a coach in the background, and two of them seem to be carrying bags whilst the third is kneeling down at something. So I'm guessing they've just got off the coach and are about to embark on a backpacking journey, or something like that.

I don't mind the cover it's growing on me, but the text is too big and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.

Redd Panderson wrote:Not to fill the board with stuff not directly related to the cover art here but

I want to stop and say I really appreciate this community right now, it's been cool to read everyone's thoughts and bounce ideas off of everyone. Such an exciting time!

joshu_atx wrote:

Redd Panderson wrote:Bringing in an idea I brought up in the general Inferno thread because it applies to the cover. It has to do with the idea of our past, present, and future selves being contained in this one moment and how parts of ourselves get frozen in the past.

It involves behavioral loops that get stuck on repeat in our psyches as we age and continue to manifest as similar situations in our lives over and over. It's like the negative edge of nostalgia. Not necessarily trauma, but the momentum of habit that we are often blind to while ending up in the same difficult situations time and again.

Also related to loops: feedback. The closed loop producing monstrous things with exaggerated features in our lives, dreams, and societies, frightening us until we can cultivate enough equanimity to face them head-on. I think that exaggerated, maybe even cartoonish, character of our demons when left unchecked kind of fits with the bit of camp in the design for Inferno.

I already said it somewhere else, but, to me, I'm getting the feeling this isn't strictly a dark album, but also about the process of turning to face your demons--individually and as a society--in order to transcend and move beyond them. To thaw the frozen parts inside. To befriend those exiled aspects of our psyche so we can rescue ourselves from the havoc they can wreak when left unchecked.

So I appreciate the kind of horror, kind of camp look. There's a funhouse mirror yet sinister look and I do think it all has some parallel to what some people call shadow work.

I usually just lurk here and read posts - I'm usually on keyosc (rip WATMM) and reddit - but I logged back in to tell you this is my favorite theory/interpretation so far and hits on things I struggled to articulate. My pet theory is this is an overt break from their past work of hauntology - i.e. broadly speaking an aesthetic and perspective of an imagined future vision from the past, wrestling with nostalgia, revisiting old obscure yet existing media, etc. This is a vision of the future, or some other perspective defying linear space/time, where even the concepts of memory and humanity are a mystery. I think that's why there are subtle distinctions to be made of the artwork, the track listing, and the media they've previewed so far. It feels like no longer an exploration of memories and past zeitgeists but veering into more liminal ambiguity and unknown dimensions and worlds.

https://forum.keyosc.com/topic/1980-inf ... ment-56573

Den wrote:I’m really appreciating everyone’s posts. I’ve been thinking about the poster with the blue-green face that is also inside the album art and on the CD itself and how it implied something unexpected to me. People were focusing on the sense of horror evoked by some of the posters, but I think that is too weighed down by genre and that this album is way more expansive than that. Look at the images again here… horses! And riding up to this massive, unidentifiable structure. There is a photo of what looks like Scotland, similar to the since deleted website background. The image of the child inspecting the flower is so psychedelic (also, you can see a fern in the bottom left corner, in-fern-o). The ostensibly one-dimensional quality of the album cover is surprising, yet, when you open up the record there’s all of this...



I feel like the cover art intentionally shrouds what’s happening inside.

jcnporter wrote:I don't think I've seen any discussion of the inner sleeve art? Combination of the posters and other stuff.
I particularly like the hints of artist Nicolas Moulin's stuff - 'alien' brutalist superstructures dropped into landscapes.

jcnporter wrote:

jcnporter wrote:I don't think I've seen any discussion of the inner sleeve art? Combination of the posters and other stuff.
I particularly like the hints of artist Nicolas Moulin's stuff - 'alien' brutalist superstructures dropped into landscapes.

Very 'fucked up alien happenings in rural America' Area X or Close Encounters - type feel to these images as well. It always strikes me how they mainly prefer to use American imagery and references than British, even in depictions of the future.

joshu_atx wrote:

Redd Panderson wrote:Bringing in an idea I brought up in the general Inferno thread because it applies to the cover. It has to do with the idea of our past, present, and future selves being contained in this one moment and how parts of ourselves get frozen in the past.

It involves behavioral loops that get stuck on repeat in our psyches as we age and continue to manifest as similar situations in our lives over and over. It's like the negative edge of nostalgia. Not necessarily trauma, but the momentum of habit that we are often blind to while ending up in the same difficult situations time and again.

Also related to loops: feedback. The closed loop producing monstrous things with exaggerated features in our lives, dreams, and societies, frightening us until we can cultivate enough equanimity to face them head-on. I think that exaggerated, maybe even cartoonish, character of our demons when left unchecked kind of fits with the bit of camp in the design for Inferno.

I already said it somewhere else, but, to me, I'm getting the feeling this isn't strictly a dark album, but also about the process of turning to face your demons--individually and as a society--in order to transcend and move beyond them. To thaw the frozen parts inside. To befriend those exiled aspects of our psyche so we can rescue ourselves from the havoc they can wreak when left unchecked.

So I appreciate the kind of horror, kind of camp look. There's a funhouse mirror yet sinister look and I do think it all has some parallel to what some people call shadow work.

I usually just lurk here and read posts - I'm usually on keyosc (rip WATMM) and reddit - but I logged back in to tell you this is my favorite theory/interpretation so far and hits on things I struggled to articulate. My pet theory is this is an overt break from their past work of hauntology - i.e. broadly speaking an aesthetic and perspective of an imagined future vision from the past, wrestling with nostalgia, revisiting old obscure yet existing media, etc. This is a vision of the future, or some other perspective defying linear space/time, where even the concepts of memory and humanity are a mystery. I think that's why there are subtle distinctions to be made of the artwork, the track listing, and the media they've previewed so far. It feels like no longer an exploration of memories and past zeitgeists but veering into more liminal ambiguity and unknown dimensions and worlds.

https://forum.keyosc.com/topic/1980-inf ... ment-56573