For me, the year starts with all engines at full power and thus the second weekend of this year will bring the first big events: my first exhibition and the first concert of my band Bloodway in 2017.
Both of them will happen during a single event, the legendary festival Death Morozz. This will be the 13th edition of the festival and I already feel that this idea is right and that the stars agreed to it due to the numbers’ matching. The events will take place on the 14th of January, 2017 at Albion Territory in Chişinău, Republic of Moldavia, starting with 8 PM. The title of the exhibition is “Medium In Motion”. The exhibition will be based on a multimedia content, since this time a fine selection of animation movies that I made for bands like At The Gates, Spiritual Beggars, Mayhem, Napalm Death, Virus, Vulture Industries, Scorpion Child (and many more) will be played on several screens of the venue. The Bloodway show will be a pretty diverse one, presenting songs from our first two releases.
See you there!
I would like to wish you all a fantastic new year, full of joy and happiness, so I decided to publish this work for this special moment. This watercolor painting is fully charged with many complex feelings which I would like to spread into this world and it might do good for the few receptors out there. From the inner space, with love, Costin.
5 years after it´s release upon mankind and after 5 years of continued requests for a re-print of “Grishjärta”, HAL finally agreed to do it.
Grishjärta was released in 2011 as a signed, large format hardcover edition, followed up by a limited and unsigned paperback version with added poems and illustrations.
Both versions were sold out almost immediately.
While Grishjärta is meant “for the few” we can not ignore the impact that this book has made on the true followers and it should be looked upon in the same light as “Death – Pierce Me” and “Transformalin”.
This third and most likely final edition will be the paperback version with the extra material but this time in the larger hardcover format.
I agreed to add a few more illustrations to this edition, in order to make it stand out as the definite and final solution of the editions issued.
200 copies will be printed and all copies is to be handnumbered and signed “Grishjärta” by Il Capitano; Nattramn.
The funds we raise for this book is meant for next HAL project which will be the largest, grandest and most important thing we will ever do (not counting the departure).
HAL is sending out one more newsletter on December the 31st. Make sure not to miss it.
Looks like a tshirt design, but for me is more like a translation of a story into image. The story is pretty dark one, it is about the presence of the dead in the world of the living, it is deep-rooted mythical belief in rural northwest of Iberia: Galicia, Asturias and Northern Portugal. I tried to express Santa Compaña as best as I could, using my knowledge from my personal experiences. I put a lot of heart into this one, as I am personally very close to the subject (willing or not…) so if you like it, you can order it HERE. Basically it is a tshirt made for this website, which I personally appreciate a lot.
Also, here is a sample of the materialization…
Obviously, this is a continuation of the story presented by the illustration I created a while ago for Dread Sovereign’s LP “All Hell’s Martyrs”. I really enjoyed the crazy idea of using the same “scenery” of previous cover, while changing the story. There are the same 3 characters, just the victim, the vibe and the type of execution differs. So yep, this is the work I did for “For Doom The Bell Tolls”.
Tracklist
1. For Doom The Bell Tolls
2. Twelve Bells Toll In Salem
3. This World Is Doomed
4. Draped In Sepulchral Fog
5. The Spines Of Saturn
6. Live Like An Angel, Die Like A Devil (Venom Cover)
More info HERE.
I would like to present you the cover artwork I created for LETHE – “The First Corpse On The Moon”. Is not an easy announcement, as the story behind this cover is really strange. At the end of October 2015 I was working on the sketches for this album…and I remember very well that I was working on this project, this front cover more precisely in that horrible evening of October 30…when in a local club here in Bucharest many of my friends from rock scene died in a horrible fire. And no, this is nto that strange thing. The strange thing is that in that evening the local band Goodbye To Gravity was releasing their second album, entitled “Mantras Of War”…and if you will see that cover, now as you know how almost the entire band (except the vocalist) died …you will understand. The sketch for this piece was finished with 1 hour before the fire, while another piece was in works exactly when the phones started to ring all over….but that one is not published and it was not used for this project. Maybe one day I will show that to you. We will see.
Tor-Helge, LETHE’s mastermind, has defined this album a “snapshot in time”. Together with the talented Anna Murphy (Cellar Darling, ex-ELUVEITIE) they paint on “The First Corpse On The Moon” a melancholic, introspective and ethereal musical landscapes ready to be released via My Kingdom Music on February 24th.
The album, mixed by the same Anna Murphy, was mastered by Marco Jencarelli at Soundfarm Studio.
Here is the tracklist:
1. Night – 2. Inexorbitant Future – 3. Down Into The Sun – 4. My Doom – 5. Teaching Birds How To Fly – 6. The First Corpse On The Moon – 7. Snow – 8. Wind To Fire – 9. With You – 10. Exorcism
To end this a great contribution was offered by great special guests such as Eivind Fjøseide (Atrox, Manes) on guitars; Fredy Schnyder (Nucleus Torn, Eluveitie and Triptykon) on piano; Tor Arne Helgesen (ATROX ) and Rune Hoemsnes (MANES) on drums; Asgeir Hatlen (MANES) on vocals; K-Rip on rap voice; Shir-Ran Yinon (ELUVEITIE) on violin; Ivo Henzi (CELLAR DARLING) on additional guitars and a few others.
No human being can ever get completely free of depression, simply because we can never be completely happy. The root of this sick behaviour pattern is our need to always increase the intensity of our life’s pleasures – regardless of the issue. As long as the pleasures’ intensity doesn’t increase, the subject experiences depression. This story is pretty similar to the story of the drug addicts. This need for pleasure is indeed injected by the same society I was talking about. The society imposed this need to us, and once we get our minds trained to function according to these parameters, it is really difficult to get back to something we totally forgot or we’ve never known it existed. So, the story for “Scared And Alone” is like a complete picture of this whole, an introspection of an entire life from the perspective of a guy who has no escape. I would like to present you the animation movie I made for Crippled Black Pheonix….
The song is taken from the album “Bronze”. Released in November 2016.
Order HERE.
I made this design for a very limited round of Enslaved tshirts (only 100 copies), related to their Anniversary – “Then and Now” – Two sets, one night” show at New York. First arrived first served so act fast tonight at Gramercy Theatre! A few tickets are still available but moving fast. Get yours now HERE.
Here is one of the darkest videos I ever made. This is for Black Hole Generator of Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen with whom I have a long-standing working relationship not only in terms of album artwork, but also videos and live performance for Vulture industries. The song is taken from the new release entitled “A Requiem for Terra” which was released on Dark Essence Records last month!
Commenting on the video Nilsen said: “I find the video to be a disturbing piece. Costin Chioreanu has dived into the abyss of our collective consciousness and has emerged with images of our destruction. The joint annihilation of all life. Future generations sacrificed upon the altar of Moloch. A massacre of innocents from beyond the womb in the hope that we will be blessed with earthly pleasures in return”.
