Who Should Win The VNZMA Best Album Cover Award? (And Who Had This Year's Worst Album Cover?)

Who Should Win The VNZMA Best Album Cover Award? (And Who Had This Year’s Worst Album Cover?)

September 5, 2011 by Hussein Moses

This Wednesday will see the full list of nominees for this years Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards announced at a HP pop-up venue in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter. The line-up for the Critics Choice Showcase and the Legacy Award recipient will also be announced at the event as well as the winners for the Technical awards, which include categories for Best Engineer, Best Producer and Best Album Cover. We want to get your opinion on who should take away the award for that last category – we’ve linked to versions of all the album covers below, along with the extra-impressive Beastwars gatefold cover by Nick Keller. Let us know in the comments section who you think deserves to take home the award and hit us up with a link or two to the worst local album covers you’ve seen recently so we can pretend to hold our own alternative awards. Here’s one to get you started!

The finalists in the Best Album Cover category are:

Angela Keoghan – ‘The Dusty Dream Hole’ (Bannerman)

Baly Gaudin & Thomas Young – ‘Tommy Ill’ (Tommy Ill)

Nick Keller – ‘Beastwars’ (Beastwars) – [Full gatefold image]

♦ 17 Comments

Comments To This Entry

Anyone else think the Beastwars one looks like a penis and the Bannerman one looks like a vagina? I think I’ll vote for the Tommy Ill one just to be safe!

Sam on September 5, 2011 Reply
Beastwars is hilariously overblown. Suits the album. It should win.

Tommy Ill’s makes me feel a bit sick.

James on September 5, 2011 Reply
Tommy Ill, for recognizing hip-hop’s long but unspoken relationship with Baileys and milk and exhausted 3M kitchen sponges.

Dan Taipua on September 5, 2011 Reply
“I sip the Irish Cream watching Amelie til I’m charged, and writin’ in my book of rhymes all the words past the margin”

– Ill-matic

Dan Taipua on September 5, 2011 Reply
I don’t know how they judge this competition. It’s not like the judges will be art-historians or anything. It’ll just be some record industry types looking at the covers and thinking – I reckon that would sell more units … I guess the other technical awards are the same (production that sounds commercial versus production that sounds unusual).

Or am I being too cynical?

Both the Beastwars and Tommy Ill covers look great to me (the Bannerman one is decent too, but doesn’t seem like it’ll win). They succeed for different reasons: the Tommy Ill one shows some sharp imagination and is carried out perfectly, but perhaps doesn’t require technical skill; while the Beastwars one took amazing technical skill but draws on some fairly standard metal motifs (lightning, clouds, pyramids, the night sky, tentacles). I suspect the judges will like the latter more, because they’ll think “I couldn’t have done that, so it must be worthy of the prize…”

Gareth Shute on September 5, 2011 Reply
- yeah a bit cynical on technical awards front….
  
  Production and engineering awards are awarded/voted by other engineers/producers.
  This may seem to some as a bit of back scratching, but to be honest general public/bloggers know dick about production and engineering. Sure everyone is entitled to their opinion on ‘production values’, but unusual doesnt always equate to good.
  Sometimes a slick sounding record actually means the engineer knows what they are doing and a competent at their job.
  
  Spaghett on September 6, 2011
- I’d be remiss if I didn’t repeat this post I found on twitter:
  http://bit.ly/noJk2R + http://bit.ly/qJjD0n + http://bit.ly/oRR0eP = http://bit.ly/pWnttG
  
  Dan Taipua on September 6, 2011
- http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=QZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=metal+album+artwork&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1397l2380l2l2725l6l6l0l0l0l2l781l1533l6-2l2l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1408&bih=712&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
  
  cool on September 6, 2011
- Just a metalhead.
  
  Oh yeah, nah, Weta Workshop concept artist.
  http://www.wetanz.com/nick-keller/
  
  Louie G on September 6, 2011
- Dan, I was just trying to be friends…why the hate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0h965L94X8
  
  Kelvin on September 9, 2011
- That’s not hate, that’s arithmetic?
  
  Cryptomnesia is a thing; it’s fine x x x
  
  http://bit.ly/nETTa9
  
  Dan Taipua on September 9, 2011
- me and you? http://hahaworldnews.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bff3.png
  
  Kelvin on September 9, 2011
hehehehh, the dusty dream hole, hehehe.

phone on September 5, 2011 Reply
I really like Rhian Sheehans album cover, I think that would have been deserving…

http://www.rhiansheehan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Rhian_FINAL-Cover.jpg

Shoes and Socks on September 6, 2011 Reply
Tommy Ill, for sure. best album cover I have seen in so long. Really represents his music well, and differs from all the bull shit hip hop album covers that come out of this country.

Royo boo on September 6, 2011 Reply
- Without using google, name five bullshit NZ hip-hop album covers from last year.
  
  Anon on September 6, 2011
That reminds me – the series of covers/posters for PNC’s last album were pretty good.
http://www.pncmusic.co.nz/?p=379

Hussein Moses on September 6, 2011 Reply