Kriegshög flyer

Digital - 420x297mm - 2019

In early 2019 Jon and Amanda were having a little Australian vacation. Amanda had brought her amazing punk jewelry with her and had a little popup shop at a gig. I don’t wear a lot of punk fashion accessories aside from bracelets, but the birthday of a good friend of mine was approaching and she loves Amebix and Amanda had a pair of sweet Amebix earrings. So, I proposed a trade of my artwork for the pair of earrings thinking I could just palm off one of my frog drawings or a print of some previous artwork. Amanda asked if it would be cool if the earrings were a payment for a future drawing for some project Jon and Amanda had in the works. I was down for that arrangement. The future project ended up being the Oakland show for Kriegshög’s North American tour. I was pretty chuffed when Jon gave me the details. Chuffed and a little nervous as my style of drawing doesn’t really fit to such a frantic assault of noise as Kriegshög. I didn’t have any ideas of what to draw as well.

Jon was real keen on a Pegasus for the artwork, unusual for a hardcore punk flyer but I didn’t have any better ideas. He sent me a sketch of four pig-men reapers riding a pig-pegasus, I absolutely loved the sketch and was wondering why he needed me at all. As much as I loved the sketch it seemed a little on the silly side, I always want to do silly artwork ideas, but I always end up going in a more serious direction. However, drawing a hog skulled reaper riding a Pegasus seemed to be the concept to go with.

Never having drawn a horse before and after I few failed attempts I decided to appropriate one of Frank Frazetta’s death dealer paintings, if I’m going to rip off someone’s artwork I might as well rip off the best. Kriegshög’s newer punk sound from their General and Paint it Black / White Out releases influenced the drawing as well as their logo used on the later EP. I also tried to make aspects of the drawing frantic and pummeling like the band’s earlier sound.

I draw a lot of fire and smoke in my artwork and my good friend Blake had been suggesting for years to draw lightning instead. Kriegshög’s self titled LP always sounded like a lightning storm of punk to me (if lightning had a sound) so I thought it would be cool to have the Pegasus wings as being made of lightning. The swings were the only conscious decision I made, the rest was created listening to Kriegshög and Destino Final on repeat (the two bands pair together in my head) and seeing what came out.

Everyone was pleased with the result and it’s one of the few drawings I’m really proud of. Also thank you to Masaki for emailing me the Kriegshög logo (I really didn’t want to redraw it). My friend also loved the birthday present earrings. Thanks Amanda and Jon!

I feel I should also point out that this isn’t official Kriegshög artwork.