Behind The Artwork: One Step Beyond - In The Shadow Of The Beast (2018)

The cover was a consigned painting by South Australian artist Cam Smith. 

First and foremost, as with the album itself, we wanted an image that wouldn't date itself to an obvious era. Ideally in twenty years people could see the cover and not straight away think 'oh that album came out around 2018'. Ideally it would look like a metal album, but not of any obvious sub genre. The music draws from nearly every corner of the extreme metal world, so we didn't want the cover to create narrow or obvious expectations from potential listeners. 

We also requested the image be in shades of deep and dark blue's. We hadn't had a cover of that shade before and it just felt right.

Finally we asked the artist to consider inspiration from the vibe of 3 computer games from the 1980s and early 90's. As every track on the album drew lyrical inspiration from certain games of this era, there were 3 in particular that had such strong vibes that we wanted something of them captured in the cover, but not so that anyone would easily draw the comparison unprovoked. These games were Shadow of the beast, Unreal (1990, not the later game of the same title) and Druid 2: Enlightenment. They all had something of a medieval or fantasy vibe and all had a sense of danger about them.

I think the cover is pretty successful in doing all these things. Maybe it's not the boldest image to stick on a t shirt or similar, but I think it's effective.