PESTILENCE's PATRICK MAMELI Defends Use Of Artificial Intelligence To Create Heavy Metal Album Covers

Guitarist/vocalist Patrizio "Patrick" Mameli of long-running Dutch progressive death metallers PESTILENCE has defended the use of artificial intelligence (A.I.). to create heavy metal album covers, explaining that it provides artists with unique and eye-catching pieces that can match their music while remaining easy and affordable.

Earlier today (Sunday, December 29),Mameli took to PESTILENCE's Facebook page to write: "I have to get something of my chest. This constant BS about metal bands using A.I. album covers more and more. There are a few reasons. First, huge budgets for real paintings are a thing of the past. Secondly, the idea of having mutilated bodies, zombies and extreme gore are also a thing of the past for PESTILENCE.

"When you want to survive in the nowadays industry you have to adapt and PESTILENCE has always been known to look ahead and never fall back into the old habits not just music style wise but every other new release has had a new approach to our own musically, unlike most acts that rely on their older legacy.
When we released [re-recorded best-of album] 'Levels Of Perception' that was aimed to revisited the demo style recording, that was asked for by many fans, they didn't like the production they asked for themselves. With [the upcoming PESTILENCE album] 'Portals' we will, again, follow our own path and you could really dig it. As an example this 'drawing' was considered to be amazing on my personal FB site. This is also A.I., and is an amazing piece of art. Not the album cover by the way!!!

"And now the real question: would you not buy and album with killer production and song just because a cover is A.I.? Then you are not listening to our compositions that are fully handmade. But rather are concerned with the 40× past you have been living in.

"Start embracing the future of music that is PESTILENCE."

"Levels Of Perception" was made available in April via Agonia Records. The LP features twelve tracks from across PESTILENCE's 38-year career.

PESTILENCE was established in the Netherlands in 1986 and is considered to be a progressive death metal phenom, labeled on the same genre-defying scale as DEATH, CYNIC and ATHEIST. The group is led by founder, guitarist and mastermind Mameli, who's been the band's binding factor through two breakups and reunions. Both a reinvention and a confirmation of everything the band has been standing for since 1986, PESTILENCE is more than ever breaking new grounds and exploring the further outposts of extreme metal on "Exitivm" (2021) — the band's most recent album, which landed on several Billboard charts. In 2023, the band remastered and reissued its classic catalog, and announced "Portals" to be the title of its next studio album, which is currently in the works.