Michael Moorcock - Elric von Melnibone.jpg

Today is the seventy-fifth birthday of fantasy artist extraordinaire Rodney Matthews. With hundreds of album covers and book covers to his credit, you’d think he’d be a perfect subject for a Metallic Mirrors post. As it turns out, only three of his works have appeared on both a book cover and an album cover—and two of those albums only came out this year. Hell, that’s good enough for me!

Matthews created a considerable amount of artwork depicting Elric and various other characters from Michael Moorcock’s stories. Moorcock said that “Rodney captured the images and invention, having a larger space to work with on the posters and calendars. He was brilliant, for instance, on the quirky End of Time stories and I love his inventiveness.”

Among the works of Moorcock that featured Matthews’ art were the German translations of the Elric series in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The first of these, Elric von Melniboné, used a piece entitled “The Dragon Lord” for its cover. This artwork would also grace the covers of two heavy metal albums: first in 1987 for Magos y Dragones, the sole album by obscure Mexican band Caronte, and in 2011 for Roxxcalibur’s Lords of the NWOBHM.

Up until this spring, that was it as far as Matthews’ “Metallic Mirrors” went. In April, Atkins/May Project (featuring Al Atkins, Judas Priest’s vocalist in their very early days before Rob Halford joined) released their fourth album The Final Cut. The cover art depicted Corum, another incarnation of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion, which originally appeared on the novel The Bull and the Spear.

Michael Moorcock - The Bull and the Spear.jpg

Just two weeks ago Australian heavy retro-rockers Butterfly released their debut album, Doorways of Time. Sporting artwork from the Andre Norton novel Witch World, it arrived just in time to help fill out this post!

Since this is a little light on content (a “Painting Metal” post about Matthews would surely be more substantial), here’s one oddball bit of trivia connecting Matthews’ art to a heavy metal album cover. In 1978, Pierrot Publishing commissioned a piece from Matthews for a book entitled Heroic Dreams. The book was never released, so the artwork, entitled “Skellnag’s Promise,” was made into a poster instead. A decade later, two of the goblins from the poster apparently teleported their way onto the cover of Tale of Goblins’ Breed by Salem’s Law! (More trivia: Tale of Goblins’ Breed is one of my all-time favorite albums. If you haven’t heard it, check it out!)

Rodney Matthews - Skellnag's Promise.jpg

Salem's Law - Tale of Goblins' Breed.jpg

To see more of Rodney Matthew’s incredible art, check out his official website here.

More posts in the Metallic Mirrors series:

Michael Whelan (Cirith Ungol, Elric, H.P. Lovecraft, etc.)

Ken Kelly (Robert E. Howard, Gates of Slumber, etc.)

Bruce Pennington (Blood Incantation, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.)

Heavy metal and fantasy don’t only cross over on the covers of books, but in the pages as well! The Swords of Steel Omnibus contains 24 tales of swords, sorcery and horror written by members of heavy metal bands. Featured authors include E.C. Hellwell (MANILLA ROAD), Byron A. Roberts (BAL-SAGOTH), Howie K. Bentley (CAULDRON BORN/BRITON RITES), Jason Tarpey (ETERNAL CHAMPION), Mike Scalzi (SLOUGH FEG), Mike Browning (NOCTURNUS), and more. Click the cover to the left to see all of our releases by metal musicians.