Wuthering Heights, 'Salt' -- Album Art of the Week

Posted on Apr 11th 2010 1:00PM by Jay DiNitto Comments

Danish band Wuthering Heights are releasing their fifth studio album, 'Salt'. While the band continues the eclectic mix of progressive power metal and folk, the new album represents a departure from an album art perspective, as it is photography-based.

"Through one of my great contacts, German artist Rainer Kalwitz, we were supplied with a link to a gallery of art he was selling for some of his friends," graphic designer Claus Jensen told Noisecreep. "[Founding member and guitarist Erik Ravn] immediately fell in love with the photography called 'Dawn and a Derelict' by John Perry."

A point of interest on this cover is that Ravn, the rest of the band and the band's management all agreed on the photo -- something Ran said was a first in the band's history. "For my part it was really 'love at first sight'," Ravn told Noisecreep. "I just knew this was the picture that needed to be on the cover, when I found it at this online gallery. It was just perfect for the themes, the moods and everything on the album -- including my desire to have a very 'un-metal' kind of cover."

Both Claus and Ravn mentioned that the photographer, Perry, had disappeared with no way of contacting him. However, Wuthering Heights and Claus were able to secure the rights to the photograph through Kalwitz.

"[W]e started altering it slightly by increasing the colors (remember, this was originally a black/white picture)," Claus continued about the artwork, "adding some slight texture to it (to make it look old) and then we went on to the booklet design." Jensen made sure to keep enough room for the lyrics, and incorporated rusty and corroded texture to parallel the oceanic and transience themes of the album.

Claus spoke about the photos of the band members themselves inside the booklet, saying, "Instead of adding a typical band photo inside the booklet, we chose to integrate single pictures of each band member pictures that showed their personality, and thus had to be very close-up and in-your-face. The end result hopefully matches Erik's original vision of Wuthering Heights."

'Salt' will be released in North America on Sensory Records.

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