Justin Bartlett is definitely not unknown in the heavy music art world. He has created masterpieces to house the music of bands like Sunn O))), Locrian and Trap Them, and has brought his darkness to many of us in the form of album sleeves, posters and t-shirts. His lines are frenzied yet cold, and with them he draws a razor-sharp web around the viewer. His illustrations feel like they would cut through flesh, but with so many tiny grains of broken glass, a murderous sandpaper that leaves your mind raw and bleeding. Bartlett’s worlds are inhabited by a million denizens, but together they form one image with many centers. Those centers pop out at you with disturbing clarity when you contemplate one of his pieces – raking each other with their claws, tearing the life force from one another, and spewing life across the page to create death. Bartlett rips humanity’s evils open, and spreads their entrails out to divine the future of our world. What he sees is terrifying in its’ primitive anger, a place that we never were, but we are surely headed towards. After the jump, catch a glimpse of your nightmares in Justin Bartlett’s mind.
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