Commending two decades of delivering exceptional, chilling extreme metal artwork to the metal underground, Visual Darkness: The Art Of Mike Hrubovcak unveils its new Heavy Music Artwork edition. This edition showcases artwork from 1996 to the present day, offering a rare glimpse into his portfolio. This highly exclusive book boasts a compilation of illustrations crafted for death metal luminaries such as Six Feet Under, Grave, Sinister, Mortician, Hate Eternal, Cattle Decapitation, Avulsed, Mortal Decay, Guttural Secrete, Pathology, and more. The book features 176 pages of blood-drenched, full-color artwork showcasing hundreds of art pieces and designs.
About the artist
Mike Hrubovcak is an American illustrator who lives and breathes metal. Although highly versatile in creating a broad array of fantasy and horror-themed visuals, he has become best known for his extremely graphic and gore-laden death metal album covers. Introduced to metal at a young age, Mike began his album cover ventures in 1993, drawing the demo covers for his high school death metal band Disillusion. This was also the jump-start of his extensive vocal career, which was later spring-boarded by the formation of the band Divine Rapture with his brother J.J. Hrubovcak (now in Hate Eternal). While creating artwork for his band, Mike also did pen and ink, airbrush, and oil paintings for other bands and zines. Mike's vocal and musical career also flourished over the years, featuring on many records and touring for the bands Divine Rapture, Azure Emote, I.C.E, Vile, Hypoxia, and the early 90s Tampa death metal legends Monstrosity.
Mike has created art for Relapse Records, Century Media Records, Revolver Magazine, Headbangers Ball, The Party.San, Maryland Death Fests, Hate Eternal, Sinister, Grave, Mortician, Decrepit Birth, Cattle Decapitation, InHume, Pathology, Guttural Secrete, Avulsed, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Cephalotripsy and many others. He also had a monthly feature called Nightmare Visions on MTV's Headbangers Ball Blog (taking over for the discontinuation of Paul Booth's weekly art posts). Mike's artwork even branched into illustrating B-movie DVD covers and being used as background set dressing for a Universal Pictures feature film. Mike's artwork has been displayed in many art galleries and featured in collective art books worldwide.
Book specifications
Square 210mm x210mm (8.27inch x 8.27inch)
Hardback
175gm silk paper
176 pages
Signed (pre-orders only)
Release date 21/06/2024
