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H.R. Giger’s Greatest Hits: A Legacy of Surreal Album Art

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In preparation for Alien Day, you can expect a surge of H.R. Giger’s surrealistic Xenomorph artwork to be celebrated along with the legacy of the 1979 film. But Giger had done more than just Ridley Scott’s film. He also worked very closely with another genre very close to my heart: Rock and roll.

While many of these fall into the category of more extreme heavy metal, you’d be surprised at the true span of the relationship between H.R. Giger and music. The artist would retain a very close working relationship with legendary guitarist and singer Tom G. Warrior, who would use Giger’s art in numerous projects of his, but not everything has been so dark and distorted. Progressive rock band Emerson, Lake, and Palmer would feature his artwork as well on an album that traded electric guitars for synthesizers.

metalinjection.net

Giger and Warrior.

While this is just a sample of what I personally find to be his best and most enduring artwork, a deeper search will reveal even more of his powerful and surrealistic art. Read on for my picks of his six best pieces of album art.

Carcass – Heartwork (1993)

Courtesy of Metal-Archives.com

“Heartwork” differs from most of the albums on this list due to the fact that it featured one of H.R. Giger’s sculptures as opposed to his paintings. There is a cold, ambiguous feeling to this specific piece. The juxtaposition between the peace sign and the open, spiked arms creates something that is highly unsettling yet unusually simple for the artist.

Steve Stevens – Atomic Playboys (1989)

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Definitely his most tame, I chose to include this one simply for the fact that I loved how it contained an electric guitar. This is highly unusual for Giger and is one of his least controversial paintings. While many would depict reproductive organs and explicit sex acts, the art for “Atomic Playboys” depicts a fretboard instead. A more mainstream approach without a doubt.

Danzig III: How The Gods Kill (1992)

Courtesy of Escapistmagazine.com

The influence of the Xenomorph is strong here. I find this to be one of Giger’s most appealing works – and that undoubtedly has to do with my love and appreciation for the music on what is my favorite album by Glenn Danzig. There seems to be a relationship between the woman’s mouth, the serpent, and the two creatures approaching from the side; one that feels unsettling and sexual being committed by four members of the same being. But isn’t that exactly what you’d expect from something from Giger?

Tryptykon – Eparistera Daimones (2010)

Courtesy of Tryptykon.com

The first album by the Tom G. Warrior-fronted Tryptykon features on of the artist’s most hellish depictions. Giger and Warrior, as stated above, would collaborate often. Though this is not the most popular of their partnerships – that can be found as the next one down on this list – it’s certainly one of his more extreme and aesthetically involved.

Celtic Frost – To Mega Therion (1985)

Courtesy of Discogs.com

And here, we have an immortal album cover by one of the most legendary heavy metal bands of all time: Celtic Frost. Offensive and sacrilegious, this is one of the most enduring album covers in all of heavy metal. Despite this, the phrase I most commonly attach to this piece of art is something very un-metal – a quote from one of my favorite Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Story. “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”

Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery (1973)

Courtesy of Amazon.com

Anyone who has ever turned on a classic rock radio station has encountered a song by this group. With swirling keyboards, frenetic drums, and some of the most phenomenal synthesizer playing of all time, “Brain Salad Surgery” is nothing short of a masterpiece. The dark and brooding album cover is synthetic and mechanical, inorganic and indifferent to the emotions integral to the human condition.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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