A new artwork for a very cool new record; Swedish band Angel Blake's second album "The Descended".

The concept this time, is a tricky one. The voyage from this life to the next one... the transition from the plane of the living to the plane of the dead. How we as culture and in our minds deal with that concept; with that permanent situation that generate infinite questions and very few answers.

The idea was to approach the subject as poetically as possible but with a very blant modern aesthetic.

For that purpose I took inspiration from ancient greek mythology (that's a new one uh?). Greeks believed that Charon took the newly dead across the river Styx (or Acheron in christian mytholgy). A river that separates the world of the living from the underworld or Hades. Styx it is said winds around Hades nine times. Despite modern connotations about Hades being Hell or evil, in greek mythology was a place where all mortals go to be judged after death and are either rewarded or cursed. A place of contemplation if you will... I like that idea.

Charon (Caronte in latin) is the first character to appear in Dante's Inferno (Divina Comedia, Canto Dell'Inferno, 1308). King Diamond wrote a song about him in his album "Fatal Portrait" (1986).

This image however, is a very personal approach to the mythos. I combined several ancient concepts, placed them in a modern everyday enviroment and played with the idea of both planes being on top of each other or using the same space, but in different frecuencies. The dead can see the living, but not the other way around. For some reason that idea send shivers down my spine.

For Charon, I used the modern archetypical representation of the Angel of death or Grim Reaper (although it might represent The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come to some of you) just because I knew no one would've been familiar with the greek's or christian's original depictions of Charon... not even Dante's version of him. Besides this is a METAL cover... XD.

The design for the boat is greek (1500 BC), and historically acurate... you can check on that.

So I guess all of this is my way of saying that death being just a transition, it's something I will face alone... this is true today as it was 3000 years ago.




"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." - Isaac Asimov