Even those folks who cringe at the very mention of the word “jazz” may possess some residual affection for the fun-yet-sophisticated jazz album covers of the 1950s and 1960s. In an effort to have the artwork outside match the music inside, these LPs often came complete with strikingly modern, minimalist covers that emphasized bold primary hues and basic geometric shapes. Now, artist Rafael Melandi has applied these jazzy mid-century techniques to some of the most famous albums in the heavy metal canon as part of a project he has brilliantly dubbed Metazz. Melandi has taken well-known albums by Pantera, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Slayer, and Anthrax and made them all look like discs that might conceivably have been played at a UC Berkeley faculty mixer during the Eisenhower or Kennedy years. The most endearing feature of Metazz, besides its name (a variant, perhaps, on Jazzmatazz?), is the fact that Melandi has not completely disregarded the familiar original album covers. Instead, he has taken their central images and core concepts and cleverly transported them, color scheme and all, to another time and musical genre. Metallica’s classic Master Of Puppets, for instance, still sports its iconic white crosses attached to marionette strings. They’ve just been given a faux-Cubist overhaul, daddy-o.
[via Metal Sucks]