Mercenary completed mixing their 7th album ”Through Our Darkest Days” on April 23rd at Hansen Studios in Ribe, Denmark, with long time collaborator Jacob Hansen once again in charge of production and mix.
The cover was created by Mircea Eftemie (guitarist of Mnemic) who have recently made covers for Soilwork, Illdisposed and others.
Mercenary comments on the cover:
“Last year when we were busy with preproductions, we considered reaching out to Mircea to ask if he’d like to give our new cover a shot, because we liked his recent stuff and wanted to try someone with a fresh approach. Against all odds, however, he actually beat us to it and contacted us first with the exact same offer, so it very much seemed as a collaboration that was meant to be.
After a few sketches, we quickly locked on to the main motive of the cover below, which we felt was both iconic, mysterious and not least, oddly disturbing. Most importantly perhaps, we also felt that Mircea’s artwork had managed in a natural way to combine something fresh with the style of our older album covers and their dark and atmospheric vibes.
As our new album is very much a combination our latest material with a lot of the more traditional melodic and melancholic elements of previous Mercenary albums, we felt that this was a perfect visual expression of Mercenary’s sound and identity in 2013.
The cover symbolizes a darkness that we have gone through as a band, which we feel that we have finally been able to put behind us. The title of the album is meant very positively and thematizes both the journey through existential darkness as a general theme and the ability to break through it. The lyrical universe is very much about making the most of life and not getting caught up in negativity.”
Cover artist Mircea Eftemie adds:
“I wanted to make something that had a direct visual relation to the album title, but also follow the design patterns of the older Mercenary album covers, to keep their identity and brand intact. After swapping ideas back and forth, we ended with a piece not too abstract, but dark and disturbing enough to portray the concept of the new album. It was absolutely a pleasure working on this piece!”
The album will be released through NoiseArt Records on July 27th in Europe and a week later in the US through Prosthetic Records.
