Chorus of Torments: Behind the Design

Last night I finished designing this logo here. I don’t really have anything to tell about it, other than it’s portfolio piece. I just felt I needed another strong black metal logo before trying my hands on a new genre.

 

As for the name — Chorus of Torments, I remember coming across it in some book, I don’t know which one, and I figured it would make for a cool name for a band, real or imaginery. And I sketched something out on a piece of paper, which yielded the following result:

As you can see, I made some changes to the original design, hopefully for the better. The biggest change was the omission of the figures on top of the logo. Personally, I thought it would be nice to have an image of people suffering complement the logo (see the sketch below) …

But some people whose judgment I respect advised me to omit it because they felt it be too on the nose and harm the readability and printability of the design. Right now I’m inclined to agree.

 

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Throwback Time

I just posted a #Throwbackthursday image of a logo I designed for a death metal band some years ago and in doing so, it sent me on a trip down memory lane. Now as you may or may not know, I used to be a prolific logo designer in the heavy metal underground — though not as prolific as one particular other logo designer, you know who I’m talking about. Between the years of 2004 and 2008, I was actively engaged in the scene and churned out a lot of logos for bands of various renown, mostly local but some national — and the odd international one. In later years, I just designed sporadically logos for people I got to know during those years (like recently, for example, the Dauthuz logo). Today I decided to make a collage of some of those logos.

There’s a story behind all these band logos.

• First column, top: El Barejo, a band inspired by Asesino featuring none other than my girlfriend’s first boyfriend. The band went on hiatus before even releasing a demo.
• First column, middle: Cardinal, a brutal grindcore band from the Netherlands, founded and led by Dennis Jak of Nembrionic and Unlord fame. I had drawn logos before, but this was my first for a somewhat high-profile figurehead of the Dutch heavy metal scene.
• First column, bottom: Deicide, a key band in the Florida death metal scene. Glen Benton needed a new logo due to legal issues and, through a contact of mine, I got to re-design it. When the judicial dust had settled, they deciced to revert back to their old logo. And rightly so — it’s just too iconic. But I did get from them a hoodie printed with my logo on it!

• Second column, top: Fleshbound, a Swedish death metal band featuring members of Lord Belial. I was given a tight deadline for a fleshed-out (half-pun intended) design. The band never took off: they didn’t even release a single.
• Second column, middle: Hivernatum, a pretend black metal band featuring me and my girlfriend. Some people claim to have seen us live on stage.
• Second column, bottom; third column, middle: two logo designs I presented to Dauthuz; the former logo, an Old School one similar to Entombed‘s, drawn freehand, digitally; the latter, a logo in my signature style, jagged and smooth. Of course, they picked the former.

• Third column, top: Hatred, a brutal death metal band from the Netherlands. It took me about four different designs (and about the same amount of years) before they finally accepted one. Shortly after, but not before the low-key release of their long-awaited follow-up to their 2003 EP Chaos in the Flesh, they disbanded.
• Third column, bottom: Necryptic, a death metal band from Eugene, Oregon. I think this was my first or second fully digitally designed logo.

• Fourth column, top: Nelchael’s Throne, a “trve” Austrian black metal band who wanted a Darkthrone-like logo. These guys are so underground, they’re actually mainstream in China. Joking aside, I don’t know if they ever got to write some songs. But apparently, according to the Interweb, they’re still active. I’m just guessing here, but I think they’re slumbering somewhere, waiting for their summons into Hell’s Army.
• Fourth column, middle: Toxocara, yet another Dutch death metal band, this one featuring (ex-)members of The Monolith Deathcult (whose logo, by the way, I also designed), God Dethroned, Prostitute Disfigurement, and Katafalk. They also disbanded, but hey, at least they released several full-length albums before disbanding. As for the logo, it was my last traditionally (i.e., with pen and paper) drawn logo.
• Fourth column, bottom: Soul Scythe, another death metal band from… well, you guessed it, Eugene, Oregon. And yes, there were even more bands from this place called Eugene who asked me to design a logo. Which is funny, really. I wouldn’t know where to place it on a map, but for some reason I made some name for myself there — more, far more even than I ever did here in my hometown of Rotterdam!