Reign In Art

Philly/New York City artist / vocalist Mike Hrubovcak specializes in album cover illustrations & packaging design and has been heavily involved in the worldwide Metal underground musically and artistically since 1992. He works as a graphic designer for the adult entertainment industry by day and by night spends all his time on VISUALDARKNESS@ artwork and pursuing his many musical ventures, such as Monstrosity, Vile, Abraxas, Azure Emote, and others. Over the years Mike has worked with many great bands, record labels and festivals worldwide creating artwork for Mortician, Sinister, Grave, Cattle Decapitation, Hate Eternal, Avulsed, Inhume, The Maryland Death Fest, Party.san Open Air, Relapse Records, Revolver Magazine and many others. With such a prolific body of work we asked Mike what his 5 favorite covers are that he has given birth to and why. Make sure and check out his work at www.visualdarkness.com

1.) XXX Maniak – Harvesting the Cunt Nectar
This album cover illustration is really what started the whole wave of goregrind artwork for me. This was a lot of fun to work on at the time, because really, it was one of my first super graphic or more “controversial” pieces. This album blew up in the underground, and it was fun working with them cause they’re good friends of mine, but i never expected the huge wave of emails from other goregrind bands wanting similar artwork to what i’ve done for XXX Maniak. Over the years of doing so many gore covers, I guess i’ve become more known for those, even though I do work for all sorts of different genres.

2.) Imperial Crystalline Entombment – Apocalyptic End in White
This Black Metal cover was a lot of fun to work on because it was so different with the whole theme of it so i really took a lot of time with this one, even taking photo reference pictures of snow and winter storm clouds (it was actually winter out when i made this, so that helped me when I was snowed in at home soaking in the whole vibe of it all, sitting on my balcony envisioning the end of all life from a demonic ice age).

3.) Mortician – Re-Animated Dead Flesh
I had a lot of fun making this cover too, not only cause it was awesome doing it for a band i loved as a kid, but also cause of how much i love zombies. You can tell that i was watching “Day of the Dead” the whole time i was working on this cover. It was cool to get my friends involved too, by taking photo reference pictures of them posing as zombies. Each of the zombies in the background are actually good friends of mine, just mutilated and zombified haha.

4.) Malodorous – Amaranthine Redolence
I liked working on this cover a lot not only because i love zombies, but i also am big into Aliens and this concept had me creating zombie aliens which was really cool to do. I was watching the movie “Undead” at the time as well, which is one of the few movies that morphs the idea of aliens bringing the zombie outbreak. In the movie they had build this giant wall around the city, so in my artwork i subliminally put a giant wall in the background, as if there were no escape and the zombie outbreak took over everyone and everything, humans AND the aliens.

5.) Aurora Borealis – Relinquish
This cover is one of my favorites, because of the whole mystical aspect to it. Its different, yet still dark and foreboding. I did a lot of research into the aztec culture and the temples in mexico, I also found it interesting that the Aurora Borealis can actually be seen at times as far south as mexico, and not just the northern territories, so there’s actually some truth in this fantasy illustration.