Cute girls + human entrails = hot album art trend!

Normally, it takes three instances of any given event to constitute a trend in media-land fluffery, but this particular recent double-take in album art is too gnarly to avoid comment. Scuzz-rockers Eagles of Death Metal and the British metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon have inadvertently shared a formula for a successful album cover. Take either a doe-eyed schoolgirl or a crimson-nailed vixen, give her some blood-dripping human viscera to hold (and, in EoDM's case, plug a guitar cable into) and voilà: a vaguely misogynist, vaguely menacing and totally gross LP sleeve!

But! Beneath all that organ-mangling femininity (which, we suspect, various scholars would have no trouble unpacking for us), how do the tunes stack up?

Eagles of Death Metal is the band that Matthew McConaughey's character in "Dazed and Confused" would have started if he'd packed up the Chevelle and fallen in with the MC5. Which means that when you've got some dudes around and some beers that aren't gonna drink themselves, "Heart On" is pretty solid mood music (and a pretty awesome album title to boot). Plus, they have a song about how rad it is to move to L.A. and start a band, which is always welcome around camp Pop & Hiss.

Bring Me the Horizon's "Suicide Season" is probably not meant for my ears, but they've obviously spent some time learning Dillinger Escape Plan and Bane records back to front on B.C. Rich Warlocks, and there are far worse influences to have. If I were an angry and floppy-haired British teenager with a lifetime Kerrang! subscription, this would be right up my alley. But then, I would also have free healthcare and a government that seems to know how to solve the banking crisis, so I would have much less to be angry about. Ahh, teenagers.

Any other suggestions of album covers that combine comely lasses with human entrails? Pour your heart and guts out in the comments!

-- August Brown

Comments

[Ali]

The new Eagles of Death Metal isn't as awesome as their previous albums, but still very listenable. They also seem to be the only ones who still embody the LA rock n' roll ethos. My favorite rock band (still recording) to date.