Album Covers by Chris D.

When I moved into my new flat earlier this year, I thought it would be a cool idea to pin some particularly pleasing looking LPs from my collection on either side of the blocked up fireplace in my room. And frankly there’s no reason why anyone else should care what I pin to my wall, so let’s assume that I was right and that it is a cool idea.

One of those LPs is The Gun Club’s ‘Miami’:


Now I don’t know quite what it is that makes this cover so striking, but it’s GREAT, isn’t it?

I mean, on the surface it’s just a shot of some guys who look more or less like you’d expect some guys in a rock band in the ‘80s to look, standing by some palm trees, with some plain text in the corner. But the composition of the shot, the choice of (presumably) slicing it off at the shoulders, leaving acres of hungry sky and those unhealthy looking palms stretching into the heavens, the almost hallucinogenic oversaturated colours, the way the text is set out in the corner in such a low key yet curious manner, with that sinister little cross beneath the album title… how cool is that?

It’s difficult to explain why, but it’s a masterpiece – the kind of cover that draws people with no particular interest in the band to pick it out of the racks, to wonder what it sounds like, but to not doubt for a moment that whatever’s going on inside, it’s fucking cool.

Actually, my copy is slightly different from the one reproduced above. It looks like this, and I think I prefer this shot, maybe just because I’m more familiar with it:


Anyway, it wasn’t that much of a surprise to notice that this cover is the work of Chris D., who also co-produced and otherwise contributed to the first couple of Gun Club albums. Chris D. is best known as the singer/conceptualist behind LA death-punk band The Flesheaters, and a brief google search will reveal that he’s also built up a reputation as a bit of a subcultural renaissance man over the years, working as a journalist/critic (for the seminal Slash magazine amongst others), as a record producer, poet, an all-round LA punk scenester and perhaps most notably as a cult film enthusiast/expert. In that capacity, he’s worked as a cinema programmer, written several books on Japanese cinema, and in 2004 he directed his own intriguing-sounding vampire flick, “I Pass For Human”. Pretty nifty CV, huh?

The overriding interest in horror/b-movies is unsurprising, given that his lyrics and general aesthetic for The Flesheaters consist of a dense catalogue of cult references, even more so than horror-rock contemporaries such as Roky Erickson and The Cramps. What seems to be lacking from any of the online biographies/articles on the man however is an appreciation of his highly distinctive work as an artist/designer, as expressed primarily through record covers for his own bands, and those of his buddies.

Especially awesome is the iconic cover to what is usually considered The Flasheaters’ masterpiece, ‘A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die’:



Musically, the album doesn’t really click with me that much, but you’d better believe I’d pick up a vinyl copy of THAT if I ever saw one at an affordable price.

Amongst his other credits:






What I think is remarkable about these covers is both their comparative subtlety. Given his interests and the scene he emerged from, you’d reasonably expect Chris D. to indulge in a whole loada cluttered kitsch rockbilly/tiki lounge excess, but instead his images – obviously homemade, and influenced by both collage-based punk rock flyers and Warholian pop art – are bold, deliberate, striking and authentically weird, rather than contrived weird.

I’m SURE he must have turned his hand to doing movie posters in this distinctive style at some point, and I’d love to see the results. As I say, surprisingly little info is available online re: his visual art, so if you’ve got any more info or scans, pass it on. Dude’s a master.