Original Cover Design
- Sleeve 014/100: The Divine Conspiracy (2007)
- Studio Album by Epica
- Label: Nuclear Blast
- Genre: Symphonic Metal
- Original cover design by Mattias Norén
Sleeve #14 for my project #100albumsleeves 🔥.
I was still in a symphonic metal mood this week so I picked one of my favorite metal bands: Epica. It was hard to pick an album, I virtually love them all (WTF with their most recent drop! Omega is soo good!). The way I approached it this time was based on the cover rather than the music.
I asked myself “Which of their album covers I wish was different?”, then I was between “Consign to Oblivion” and “The Divine Conspiracy“. I chose the latter because the album theme was more inspiring for me at the moment.
The concept behind the album is that God created many different religions for humanity to figure out and overcome them to discover that, in nature and essence, they were all the same one. This immediately made me think of Sacred Geometry and I got excited to draw some geometric figures.
During the process I dealt with procrastination disguised as “research”. I fell so deep into the rabbit hole of sacred geometry, reading articles and watching youtube videos. Most of the time I just felt confused and not understanding much, but I couldn’t stop. Honestly, sacred geometry is fascinating🤩.
The thing is that I felt I was being productive when in reality I was dwelling in inaction and feeling inadequate to create a cover Epica-worthy. So more than half of my time was consumed by “research”, but after recognizing I was procrastinating I had two choices:
To make excuses and give me more time to work on the cover 😅 or stand up to my promise and meeting my deadline💪🏽. I chose the second.
I don’t think I fully nailed my vision, but I know that done is better perfect and my worst work can only be the one I don’t make.
Album Cover Redesign by franzmori. This is fan art, no copyright infringement intended.
Something that I like in the original cover is the presence of the forbidden fruit, which I decided to make the central element. There are 2 hands, one female (bottom) and one male (top). It can be interpreted as either the female is giving the fruit to the male, who’s reaching out to grab it, OR that the male is tossing the apple to the female, who’s catching the blame. Talk about conspiracies 🤨
Sacred geometry is present in almost every civilization, culture, and religion worldwide, but I made emphasis on those shapes present in Abrahamic religions: The Jewish Star of David, the vesica piscis common in Christian art, and the 8-point Star common in Islamic art. A simplified Metatron’s cube is also present and a pattern of The Flower of Life adorns the background.
And everything is tied up with a golden texture because I just can’t get enough of it🤩.
Part of the process of this desing
Would you like your own Album Cover design?
I’m available for commissions!
Listen to the art! I’ll be adding a new album each week to this Spotify playlist HERE.
To know more about my personal project and see the rest of the cover designs in this series, go HERE.