Blood on the Canvas

In his Northern Liberties studio, Paul Romano is upping the ante on cover art for underground metal albums.

by Andrew Parks

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Published: Oct 11, 2006

 

 

"Whenever I have dreams of her, they stick with me," says Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor, whose sister passed away when he was 15. "But this one time, I woke up and was like, 'Holy shit, that horse, its eyes, they were staring at me, a nuclear missile went up in the air, came down, it's on fire, they're all on fire.'"

It only took a few pints during a rock show at the Pontiac Grille before Dailor was sharing this vision with artist Paul Romano. At the time, Mastodon wasn't a prized insta-cred signing at Warner Music or opening for Tool; they were scrappy, rotten Georgia peaches on Relapse's respected but decidedly underground roster and opening for ... Dying Fetus. And Romano, well, he wasn't one of the most sought-after album artists around yet; rather, he had recently taken on a consulting role at Relapse Records and given up a lucrative but boring design business that counted Mattel and RCA — the plugs-and-wires company, not the music label — among its primary clients. You could say the pair was meant for one another in such sensitive, transient states.

"No one was there for Mastodon but me and the Relapse folks," recalls Romano of that fateful night, as he takes me on a tour of his studio and longtime Northern Liberties home. "It was weird; once Dying Fetus came on, the place was filled with hockey and football jerseys."

Which gave the two the perfect opportunity to discuss the ripping Mastodon demo Romano'd heard at Relapse and Dailor's horrible, haunting dreams about dead sisters and burning horses. Romano was actually so struck by the dreamscape story he decided to turn it into the cover of Remission, Mastodon's full-length Relapse debut. A poignant, creepy portrait of a pale blue horse in a contorted pose, on fire and in the throes of ungodly painful ecstasy, the cover immediately caught the attention of metalheads who appreciate fine sleeve art. As Romano explains, "I didn't understand its place in the world until I started getting e-mails from people with the horse as their new tattoo."

"I want people to look at our album covers and feel like the concepts are ambiguous," explains Dailor. "Paul is able to do that, something that looks classic artistically with a lot of symbolism. If nothing else, it makes for awesome T-shirt designs."

In the case of Mastodon, Romano's been much more than a simple go-to guy for consistent album art. He's in many ways an honorary fifth member, fully involved in the band's creative process from the writing stages on, whether it's the metallic Moby Dick narrative of Mastodon's 2004 breakthrough, Leviathan, or the mythology-laced mysticism of the recently released Blood Mountain. Romano has also guided the underlying five-elements feel that began with Mastodon's flame-licked logo and continued with fire (Remission), water (Leviathan) and earth (Blood Mountain) themed records.

Looking at the still-unfinished painting from which Blood Mountain clipped its cover — the central three-headed stag figure is but a panel or two in a piece as tall as most mothers —I can't help but be floored by the borderline-obsessive care Romano took in developing it. More than musical ideas transferred onto linen with oil paints or a welcome respite from the bones-and-blood imagery and stressed typefaces of typical heavy-metal albums, this thing is a work of art, the kind of painting that could fetch big bids at auctions frequented by upper-class collectors (well, ones who also happen to have tattoos and tattered copies of Paranoid and Reign in Blood). No wonder some kid wrote Romano the day after Blood Mountain came out, asking for a hi-res image of the cover for a tattoo he had to get, like, now.

"I told him to think about it for 24 hours first," says Romano. "He probably thought I was a jerk."

Which is a far cry. He talks softly, waits for responses patiently and gives me the same "heavy metal bed-and-breakfast" (sans bed) treatment he's given bands like High on Fire, The Red Chord and Mastodon when they pass through town. This entails such things as a tart salad of fresh strawberries and fennel and "Mexican lasagna" made of tortillas, ricotta and seitan, all of which prove that Romano could be a chef if this whole multimedium artist thing doesn't work out. (Having attended the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of the Arts, Romano is just shy of his master's, and has hopes of someday teaching the sculpture, illustration, photography, design and music-video skills he employs when creating distinctive pieces for bands like Trivium, A Life Once Lost, Godflesh and Earth.)

Time to do that isn't likely to surface anytime soon, however. As Dailor puts it simply, "Paul is the man now, everyone wants his look."

"Some of these young bands definitely come to me saying, 'We want to look like Mastodon!' Well, one, that's what Mastodon looks like, and, two, I only have two weeks for your project and something like Mastodon takes six, seven months," says Romano. Two particularly challenging projects of the past year were the extreme death metal of Hate Eternal and the oppressive, pitch-dark hip-hop of Dälek. Both artists were so happy with their initial meetings they decided to take Romano on as an unofficial art director, working on videos, DVDs and albums.

"When he started working on I, Monarch, he nailed it immediately," says Erik Rutan, frontman of Hate Eternal and former member of death-metal legends Morbid Angel. "The concept of his painting was eerily similar to the lyrics of the first song, which he didn't even have yet. I put my heart and soul into music, so as soon as I realized he does the same with art, I said I wouldn't work with anyone else again."

"Our art's never been what it could be because we're always concentrating on the music," adds Dälek, who's currently finishing his first album featuring Romano artwork (he's also working on single sleeves and videos for the duo, which also features DJ Oktopus). "It's nice to have someone on board to make that happen, a third mind in on the process. We hate most outside artists because they can't capture our music in a visual form, but everything Paul does is ill."

(a_parks@citypaper.net)

 

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