Behind The Artworks: Parius - The Signal Heard Throughout Space (2022)

When we start conceptualizing artwork for our record we tend to like to capture the “pivotal moment” of the record as well as some nods to elements of the story. In this case the artwork depicts the main character of the story, The Captain, after he has crash landed on Ganymede (in “The Acid Lakes of Ganymede”). At this point in the album The Captain’s journey seems as though it’s come to an end and artist Stephen Andrade did an amazing job capturing the hopelessness he feels at that moment. Front and center we see The Formulator, the antagonist of the story. To his left we see the Formulons, the henchmen of The Formulator, flying by. They show up in the track “Contact!”. We always thought band mascots like Eddie from Iron Maiden and Vic Rattlehead from Megadeth were a neat way to personalize the overall image of the band and we’ve attempted to do something similar with the Parius ouroboros, which can be seen as a constellation in the sky in the upper right corner.