The Art of Metal: Mark Wilkinson
Recently, I got lazy, and I still don't have the mojo back, so for this week exclusively, I will release another batch (in english only, to save time) about the greatest Metal artists of all time.
The name Mark Wilkinson will probably mean nothing to majority of people, especially here. But if you listen to Marillion, Fish, enjoyed Iron Maiden's "Live at Donington", or The Darkness (yeah, THEM), then you'll probably recognize his style.
To be fair, I initially wanted to write about Doug Johnson, who created art for seminal Judas Priest albums, namely "Screaming for Vengeance", "Defenders of the Faith", "Turbo"... but that was it, so there wasn't much more to write about, so I had to pick the next iconic Priest's artist. Starting with "Ram It Down", he became their go-to illustrator. And yeah, that's the true reason I picked Mr. Wilkinson for today's post, as I'm not really fan of the artists he usually worked with.
For Wilkinson, his breakthrough was obviously with Marillion, which catapulted his career to the point, that he also worked with such pop artists, like Bon Jovi, The Who, or Kyle Minogue (among others). Me, as a comic book fan, I do appreciate the fact that he drew one (literally) Judge Dredd story, as well as some covers for the magazine. He certainly should had done more work for comics.
Anyway, going back to Judas Priest, while he wasn't as psychedelic as Johnson, he did continue the abstract, futuristic feel that defined the Priests. "Painkiller" is my personal favorite, but let's talk about "Jugulator".
That album got the short end of the stick, because Halford was replaced with Tim "Ripper" Owens (long story), and as anyone can guess, not many people appreciate that era ("not muh Priests"). While I can understand the hatred for the albums that followed this one, "Jugulator" itself is actually very good, and might be the most extreme album that Priest's have ever made.
Thing is, because there wasn't much faith in this project, and because the band downgraded itself from being signed to Columbia to SPV, the promotion and everything related kinda plummeted, and felt like an afterthought. It's like the label itself didn't believe in what they were releasing, so they did not even bother to include the complete picture, but rather, they released a low-res fragment of the piece. For god sake, you can even see the pixels! It's hard to believe that such a legendary band was treated worse than some newbies.
Bah, the material itself seems to be cursed, as it wasn't even re-released properly, nor included on any streaming platforms (AFAIK). I don't know if there was any other album in history that was this unfairly mistreated... #JusticeForJugulator!
OH, and below is the full art, so you can see what I'm talking about:
When Halford returned to the band, so did Wilkinson, so the next cover he did was for another seminal classic "Angel of Retribution". And except of "Firepower", he stayed with the band forever since. So everyone lived happily ever after. I like good endings.
Yeah, I obviously wanted to talk about Judas Priest today, and needed an excuse. You're welcome! I do recommend checking Wilkinson's stuff, as it's very impressive and moody. It seems like he's a pretty diversified artist, who is capable of different subjects and themes. As usual...
...Links:
Komentarze
Prześlij komentarz