This book gives a fairly comprehensive tour of the art related to Metal, album art mainly but also concert posters, logos groups, etc ...
Lectured by style (the black, stoner, prog, NWOBHM, etc ...), the book takes us into this art rather unfairly underestimated through the most representative album covers of the genre. Colorful (Glam Metal) or rather austere black and white (Black), macabre (Death) or psychedelic (Stoner), each genre has its codes. Authors fly each style making us a little rundown and sliding anecdotes and comments musicians or artists themselves about their work.
There are, unfortunately, some shortcomings. Notably absent are noted as Andreas Marschall, many designer bags for metal bands (Running Wild, Blind Guardian, Immolation, Obituary, In Flames ...) which is here represented by a single work so that he deserved a good spread on its own. Others are squarely left to rot as, among others, Seth Siro Anton Septicflesh whose work is quite big now (Serenity, Moonspell, Kamelot, Paradise Lost) and Felipe Machado Franco (Iced Earth, Rhapsody) that we do not talk not at all. But hey, the authors wanted to try to make a full turn of the question, so they are sometimes a little remained on the surface of things by now and they forgot some major artists. We also note some errors that made the cover of "In War And Pieces" Sodom in the part dedicated to Black Metal? And it does not seem to me that we had made a Amorphis album Doom or Stoner at the time of "Karelian Isthmus" ... not to mention some translation errors (one even has two articles not translated at all !!!)
That said, this book, the first of its kind, runs with pleasure and makes us (re) discover the album art from a different angle, that of the work for what it is and not as the simple dressing a disc.
A little pricey perhaps, but a good gift idea, for as Lemmy says in the preface: "If you can not pay you, try to do it by offering a pal."
