Behind The Artworks: MONGOL - The Return (2018)

For the album artwork on The Return we went to American artist, Dusty Peterson. Ever since I saw his work for Hoth’s Oathbreaker, I knew I wanted to work with him one day. When we decided that we wanted to take a darker approach on The Return artwork, I knew that this was going to be our best opportunity to work with Dusty. When I went to Dusty, he was excited about the offer as it would be a challenging change of pace for him. For the cover, I had this kind of Bat Out of Hell image in my head with Genghis Khan erupting out of the ground on horseback, as he does in Amongst the Dead. We gave this idea to Dusty and he returned to us with the terrifying and captivating piece you see before you. In the background you can see the silhouette of a falcon flying, which is a trend we are trying to incorporate into all our albums moving forward. We worked with Eric Dieterich of Soloman Media for the layout design of the physical album, and he created an eerie close of this falcon for the back of the album. It was a beautiful touch we never really planned but will surely land on some merchandise in the future. Eric worked with the fantastic smoky colour pallet conjured by Dusty to complete the layout resulting in a beautiful dark design that we are beyond excited to release in physical format to the masses.