Not gonna lie—this is somewhat of a surprising take considering how everyone in almost every industry has been shitting bullets about A.I. and how it will (and already sort of has) ruin everything. For whatever reason though, Pestilence‘s Patrizio “Patrick” Mameli is all about that A.I. life, which is funny considering the band totally ditched the idea of A.I. for an album cover earlier this year. Make up your mind, broski!
The vocalist and guitarist of the Dutch progressive metal band revealed his interesting take earlier today (Sunday, December 29) on the band’s Facebook page, saying how useful it could be to create intricate and weird heavy metal album covers affordably. Which, I guess, is a fair point to a certain degree.
“I have to get something of my chest. This constant BS about metal bands using A.I. album covers more and more. There are a few reasons. First, huge budgets for real paintings are a thing of the past. Secondly, the idea of having mutilated bodies, zombies and extreme gore are also a thing of the past for Pestilence.
“When you want to survive in the nowadays industry you have to adapt and Pestilence has always been known to look ahead and never fall back into the old habits not just music style wise but every other new release has had a new approach to our own musically, unlike most acts that rely on their older legacy.
When we released [re-recorded best-of album] Levels Of Perception that was aimed to revisited the demo style recording, that was asked for by many fans, they didn’t like the production they asked for themselves. With [the upcoming Pestilence album] ‘Portals’ we will, again, follow our own path and you could really dig it. As an example this ‘drawing’ was considered to be amazing on my personal FB site. This is also A.I., and is an amazing piece of art. Not the album cover by the way!!!“And now the real question: would you not buy and album with killer production and song just because a cover is A.I.? Then you are not listening to our compositions that are fully handmade. But rather are concerned with the 40× past you have been living in.
“Start embracing the future of music that is Pestilence.”
This is the most Steve Jobs I have ever seen a metalhead be, but if he likes it, I love it. (If you’re familiar with the phrase, it actually means I don’t love it at all.)
