I decided to take a small break from custom work and wanted to do a personal art piece for fun recently. Being bombarded with goregrind requests and the usual blood-drenched horror scenes, its a fresh escape to
let my mind wonder into a more trippy and surreal environment. This piece is entitled "Confined Determination' and depicts a skeletal goat creature confined in an astral temple hovering over the earth. The vibe was meant to show the brooding desire within the creature to manifest the demolishing of worlds in the background. The entangled girls, black heart roses and bloodied dagger symbolize the sacrifice of love or compassion. The duality of the mind with the two headed fetus as his crown, and even within a confined imprisonment his passion boils and manifests destruction. This piece was not commissioned by any band and is open and available for purchase. Email mike@visualdarkness.com for more info.

It's been a minute since we've heard from our favorite demented artist, Mike Hrubovcak, vocalist for Monstrosity and Vile and owner of bad-ass design company Visual Darkness. So, to reacquaint you all with the master of the macabre (assuming that label's not already taken by someone like George Romero), here's a long-overdue Nightmare Visions entry from Hrubovcak. Click more if you want to risk a long, sleepless night. Read more...

Before we head off into the blustery night to take in Slipknot, Coheed and Cambria and Trivium at Madison Square Garden, we thought we'd leave you with a new nightmarish image from Mike Hrubovcak, vocalist for Monstrosity and Vile and macabre artist extraordinaire. Indeed, we are pround to present his first DVD cover art for the upcoming Wildeye film "Gothkill."

Click "more" to see the illustration and read Hrubovcak's commentary. Read more...

When Mike Hrubovcak isn't onstage with death metal band Monstrosity, chances are he's on his computer designing horrific cover art for some gore-grind group most people have never heard of. From time to time he'll email a file to us in an effort to make us lose our lunches, and whether he succeeds or not, we'll post the thing to see if we can make our readers lose their lunches. Call it pay it forward.

So, for the final "Nightmare Visions" column of 2008, Hrubovcak and HeadbangersBlog.com proudly present the new cover art for Chainsaw Dissection's Eviscerated by a Ravenous Cannibal.

Click "more" for Hrubovcak's twisted art work and commentary. Read more...

When he's not touring or recording with Monstrosity or Vile, vocalist Mike Hrubovcac is creating ghoulish and ghastly art work for with his company Visual Darkness and sending some of it our way for "Nightmare Visions."

This week, he emailed us some nauseating cover art he designed for Cerebral Incubation. Click "more" to view the art and read what was going on in Hrubovcac's demented mind. Read more...

With an album title like Erection Body Mutilated (Back From the Dead), who else can you count on but death metal frontman and sicko artist Mike Hrubovcac to pen art work that's repulsively appropriate? The cover rendering in question was commissioned by French hardcore industrial group Obszon Geschopf and features two mutilated corpses laying under sheets on autopsy tables in the morgue. We'll let Hrubovcac explain the rest:

Obszon Geschopf frontman Remzi Kelleci wanted something along the lines of cover art I had done for Guttural Secrete and Mortician. Apparently, he's a big fan of gore, death-metal and zombies. For distribution reasons, though, the label wanted to keep it dark and creepy without being overly graphic or gory. They didn't want to run into any the same kind of censorship problems as a lot of the bands that have commissioned me for gory artwork. (click "more" to read more commentary and see the gory art). Read more...

Here's our favorite demented heavy metal illustrator Mike Hrubovcak of Visualdarkness.com to tell us all about his latest designs for Dutch death grind band Inhume, which will launch a European tour on Halloween. Click "more" to see the merch Mike designed for their road trip: Read more...

Visual Darkness dungeon keeper Mike Hrubovcak rocking with Vile

When denizen of the Underworld, Mike Hrubovcak, isn't fronting death metal bands Monstrosity or Vile, he's hunched over a Mac in his darkened cave creating ghastly heavy metal art to sicken the world. Recently, he's been spending a fair amount of time creating t-shirts, prints and posters of his designs to sell via his online store. But he's still found time to create some new illustrations for various groups. Click "more" to see the art work he's recently done for the new album by Rumpelstiltskin Grinder and to hear his thoughts on the images. Read more...

Here's the latest nightmarish image by the guru of gore, Mike Hrubovcac. And now a brief description of what the hell he was thinking when he designed this demon for Sinister:

After completing the album cover illustration and packaging design for the new Sinister album, The Silent Howling, I was asked to also do a series of t-shirts around the new album concept as well. Sinister have always incorporated demons into their imagery. Now, with this new album having two 'sinister' looking demon creatures in a church graveyard, we decided to take the scene out of the cemetery and up onto the top of the church steeple. A demon stands clinging to the top of the burning church steeple after ripping off the cross that once adorned it, which is now mockingly displayed inverted within the grasp of the demon.

Other shirt designs are currently underway, but for now you can get your hands on the new album which was released on CD and Digipak through Massacre Records this past month.

Click "more" to stream "Summit of Sacrifice" and "Fortified Bravery" from the latest Sinister album, The Silent Howling. Read more...

Visual Darkness lairkeeper, Mike Hrubovcak checks in with his latest splatterfest. And after the spiritual Zenfest he send us last time, it's good to see him back to his old, violent self..

Its been a while since I've made any "Nightmare Visions" posts, and for this I apologize. Touring and band duties [with Monstrosity and Vile] have been consuming most of my days, but I thought I'd take some time out and share a sneak peak into the album packaging layout for the new Sinister album, which comes out August 22 on Massacre Records.

It will be a 16 page booklet, and will also be released as a special Limited Edition Digipak! I had the honor of hearing some of the new songs, and let me just tell you - this new album is massive! They have truly progressed and I think most Sinister fans will be pleasantly surprised.

Click "more" to preview more of the new album art: Read more...