Soiled Work

The artwork for Soilwork’s new album, Sworn to A Great Divide (Nuclear Blast, 2007), is a complete rip-off of Stephen Kasner. At first, I thought he did the cover, but I emailed him and found out this was not so. It straight-up bites Kasner’s artwork for Himsa’s Hail Horror (Prosthetic, 2006), down to the serpentine theme. This isn’t homage, it’s theft. Why haven’t more people flagged this? In other venues, plagiarism is grounds for expulsion, decertification, etc.

Maybe this is karmic “payback” for having been ripped off before. Delphian’s Unravel (Lion Music, 2007) steals the stream of butterflies of 2002’s Natural Born Chaos. Who OK’s these decisions??? What self-respecting artist would want to take another’s style? What band would want their album to look like another’s? Absolutely shameful.