31/08/2025
THE TOWER OF SILENCE
The cover for "Initium Mors" (the debut album from American Death Metal act, Barbarous, a.k.a. Barbarous Activities) was illustrated by veteran British artist, Dan Seagrave.
"The concept of the album art was taken from The tower of Silence," the band collectively comments. "The Tower of Silence is an ancient Persian concept, that takes the bodies of the deceased and places them into the tower to naturally decompose, so that the sacred ground elements and minerals wouldn’t be tarnished by the rotting bodies. Which kind of ties into our album title 'Initium Mors.' Translated to “Death is the Beginning” shows that through death not everything is final, that there’s still more happening beneath the surface. We approached Dan Seagrave with the concept, and what he did with our vision, and making it his own blew us away. The artwork embodies everything we’re hoping to accomplish with this record, and hopefully the listener feels the same way."
Seagrave says that he "took notes from [vocalist] Travis [La Berge] from the band who had ideas about a ‘tower of silence’ and with a certain medieval feeling. I saw in my mind an image in almost black and white, and with a design structure that suggests many generations of repurposing older buildings and stonework, re-use and reconstruction, whilst simultaneously in a state of decay and ruin. Reminiscent of a Piranesi etching of a Roman tomb, but still with a remaining age-old purpose as this somewhat mysterious tower of silence. Where individuals are ultimately drawn to, as if by some innate sense of fate or inescapable destiny. The sunken tombstones and flooded foreground add stillness with a foreshadowing of what lay ahead."
Barbarous' "Initium Mors" has been released by Creator-Destructor Records and is available at https://creatordestructor.com/products/preorder-barbarous-initium-mors-lp and
https://barbarousband.bandcamp.com/album/initium-mors
See more of Dan Seagrave's work at https://www.danseagrave.com/
