Is This The Most Black Metal Black Metal Album Cover Ever?

Sacred Son, a one-man atmospheric black metal project based in London, has a new album out that is causing a degree of debate in the metal community. Can you guess why?

That's right, he's one-upped Deafheaven in the record-covers-that-piss-off-the-purists stakes (in 2013 the San Francisco black metallers released Sunbather, a black metal record with a pink cover) and gone and stuck a cheery holiday photo of himself on the cover of his new album.

One could posit that he is at least still wearing a black t shirt and not a colourful Hawaiian shirt and therefore isn't really even betraying the scene in the first place, but generally speaking, people feel a few ways about it.

They either feel that he's mocking the grand tradition of the black metal aesthetic being a very specific kind of dark and sinister, and then accuse him of being a scene tourist in the same way a lot of people accuse Macklemore of not being a real rapper, or they think he's done something smart that comments on what darkness can be, or they think everyone should cheer up and remember it's all about the music anyway.

We're not really into picking sides in this sort of situation, but we wonder if everything spooky that can be done on a black metal album cover has now been done and we've broken through to the black metal equivalent of the Upside Down? It’s like a star collapsing in on itself and becoming a black hole, or a snake eating its own tail, or Alice stepping through the looking glass - you get what we mean.

However this makes you feel, you can at least respect his candour. We wish him only the best and we hope he had fun on his holiday.

Go follow him on Facebook, where he's sharing various good and bad reviews of his album and being a pretty good sport about it all. 

Also, the album is really quite good: