Behind The Artwork: Forbidden Seasons - Promise (2018)

’Promise’ refers to all the promises made by people that are never fulfilled because of their selfishness,” proclaims Mark, vocalist of Italian metalcore crew Forbidden Seasons, regarding the title of their forthcoming debut album. Hailing from Turin, Italy writing for the follow-up to debut EP ‘Paramnesia’ began after their Russian tour in February 2017, with Mark describing the outcome as “really reflecting who we are and the direction we want to take. Both in terms of sound and composition it’s very different and heavier than our last; we wanted to create a deeper sound according to our emotional state.” Releasing on 16 th March, the album is melodically charged, beauty meeting darkness, their sound evokes Saosin and Underoath, Forbidden Seasons certainly are a promising prospect. Now the band are now here to give us an insight into the creation of the artwork… “The artwork of our new album Promise was created by MZ Design, a studio we've been working with since our first EP Paramnesia; it's a good team of trusted people, and their works are really great!

In our artwork, there's always our mascot, the moth; the moth lives an ephemeral and full of risks life, nevertheless in the short time she has, she fulfils her obligations and succeeds in her life cycle. Compared to our world, nowadays our situation is kind of the same; we have to deal with adversities of life, trying to reach our goals, spread our wings and fly, like the moth does.

We chose the style of the artwork together with MZ studio, and the graphic knowledge of our bass player helped a lot. We considered a lot of ideas, like using a female figure or the face of a baby to represent the innocence of promises made to children, but in the end we decided to use these in videoclips and other material, that are way more eloquent.

The final idea was to represent the minimal but marked contrast between the black in the background, that stands for darkness and obscurity of thoughts, and the gold of the moth, as the glimmer of light in our minds.

The background texture is like a ruined page of an ancient book, and this theme is brought to the entire booklet, also with the choice of the font.”