I just discovered the British Heavy Metal group Praying Mantis while watching a video about musicians who had been kicked out of bands before those said bands became famous.
One such musician, was Paul Di'anno, formerly the lead singer of Iron Maiden.
Yeah I was pretty surprised to find out Bruce Dickinson was not the band's original lead singer too.
Anyways Di'anno has been in quite a few bands after he was kicked out of Iron Maiden, with one such band being Praying Mantis.
Again, I'd never heard of them until today, but after seeing an example of the artwork of one of their albums, I wanted to see more. So I went to Google, and tho and behold I found these beauties:
The artist behind these beautiful-looking albums is an artist by the name Rodney Matthews. Apparently he was designed and drew the bands first 3 albums, 2 singles and various other works and logos for them.
You can check out his work for them and other at his very own website here:
https://www.rodneymatthewsstudios.com/
Such a lost art that is.
And really that's I love and enjoy looking at album cover art for old vinyl records because they were so well-crafted and thought out, designed to grab your eye and make you pick up the record. Really no different from how comic book covers used to be designed to grab potential buyers' attention.
As for the music inside...it's not bad, but honestly they're peers/contemporaries are better.
But goddamn those album covers rock....
2 comments:
You're right, those are some awesome covers.
I was a big Maiden fan up until Seventh Son so yeah, knew about Paul Dianno - the second Maiden album, Killers, which was Dianno's last with the band, is probably my favourite.
Never heard about Praying Mantis, though - I thought he went from Maiden to forming his own solo band called Dianno. Then got involved in crime and did some time in prison, I believe.
I didn't even know Bruce Dickenson WASN'T the original frontman for Iron Maiden. #Shocked
Post a Comment