Features

Cirrha Niva — Enter The Future Exit

The Art Corner was a series of articles by graphic artist Mattias Norén, who was part of the DPRP team and designed the layout we had at the time. In this series, Mattias reviewed the artwork of albums. The series started in January 1999 and ran for about 18 months.

The original introduction of the series is included below and will tell you what it was all about. This category no longer runs, so information about submitting an album for review has been removed, but we're keeping the archived articles as a separate series in the Features category.

Check out Mattias Norén's company website: ProgArt!

Dear visitor of The Art Corner!

Some people say that it's just the inside that counts, but I'm actually one of those men that cares much about the outside as well! :-)

The Art Corner only concentrates on the outside. What I think about the inside, the music, I'll keep for myself in this case.

Each album has been given 1 to 5 points in seven different categories.

  • Design / Composition: Is the idea and layout good?
  • Technical skill: Is the artist good at what he is doing?
  • Connection to the music: Is the artwork inspired by the music, album title and the lyrics? Does it feel good to look at the cover at the same time you listening to the music?
  • Logotype: How good is the design of the logotype?
  • Typography: How good is the typography? (cover and backcover)
  • Booklet: How good is the typography, artwork, layout and paper quality?
  • Disc: How good is the typography, artwork, layout on the disc?

Mattias Norén

Cirrha Niva — Enter The Future Exit (Parnassus Records - CN003, June 1999)

Design

Band photo's by B. Ketelaars

Mask and live photo's by Tom

Layout/DTP by Martijn

Cover design by P. Vennema and R. Willemse

Logo design by Inge

Scores

category score
Design and composition
Technical skill
Connection to the music
Logotype
Typography
Booklet
Disc

Score: 2.6

Comments

Cirrha Niva are a progressive metal band from The Netherlands. Enter The Future Exit is a demo CD containing two studio tracks and two live tracks. The cover shows some kind of mask. It's really hard to say what it is without knowing it.

There is a nice reflection of the mask down to the right, but I can't say that I like this artwork very much. It would possibly have worked better with some darker colours. I don't like the bright blue one. It doesn't work very well together with the dark music Cirrha Niva are playing.

The lyrics from the band are a bit philosophical, about human behaving, emotions and thoughts. Their whole stage decor is about human faces and human sculptures expressing feelings like pain, fear, anger, and grief.

I'm also not very fond of the font they have used for the title. It looks too big and stiff. I can imagine that the logo looks better when it is printed big, but when it is this small and on this cover, the lines of the triangle almost disappear.

Still, I think this cover shows that the people behind it have the will to create something good. And it's not bad at all for being a demo.

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