Initial idea's for Album cover

These two sheets are some of my initial ideas based on the album research, I designed 12 different ideas, some of which include my band on the front cover, although most do not. I found that metal bands mostly prefer to have emotive graphical cartoon art work as their front covers. With this in mind I narrowed my ideas to just the pictures without the band involved on my front cover because I decided that the middle and back panels would show the band (to follow genre). This still left me with more than half my original ideas So I looked into the emotive side of album art. Album art in metal genre is normally quite disturbing while the art in anti-war themed albums is saddening, depressing in some cases, sometimes edging on disturbing like with the metal genre. The design that most follows these depressing themes is number 6, I also believe that it will have the most drastic effect on the audience compared to the other designs.  

The dog tags are worn by soldiers so they can be identified after their death if they cannot be identified by other means. My idea for the dog tag was to have them laying on the ground, forgotten and covered in dirt and blood, with the album name and band name on each tag (with or without the bullet case depending how it looks). I also thought that having the edges either fade to black or out of focus would draw the audiences attention and reinforce the album title 'Dead Eyes' which references shock and reintroduction to civilian society where soldiers would not need to be on high alert all the time and could allow their senses to fade to normal levels.

Panel 2 and 3 are my current ideas. As I have not included the band on the front cover I decided they need to be sufficiently show in the other panels, the back being the most important of these as it is the panel the audience will see when they look at the track list. Panel two is very generic of metal, with the band members standing together looking at the camera, as shown by the band Slayer below, it is fairly common on album covers and magazines. To mark my new band as metal some generic signifier are needed. As the front cover is not of the band (generic) but has no graphic cartoons (not generic) it doesn't quite follow metal conventions so having a generic clue for the audience is needed.

The third panel is all three band members head shots facing a different way, implying the rebellious nature of metal and the non-uniformity but unity between the band members. (also shown in the Slayer band picture above as the members are wearing different clothes and have different hair styles but are united as a band and stand together). I think panel 3 is very significant in showing this and adding the lyrics to the song with this image reinforces this ideal.

This is the back panel, in my design idea the band members are sitting down against a black curtain and the track list is above them in white, the idea is fairly simple and elegant. I liked the idea of a less formal picture as metal genre isn't formal at all so having my band members sitting how they like in a comfortable position would appeal to the audience as it makes the band look confident and laid back. To make this back panel more involved I could superimpose pictures from the music video of the band in DPM shirts and give it an opacity so it looks like a thought or a dream. I will experiment to see if the addition of these images will enhance the overall image of the back cover.