To celebrate Alien Day—that is, a whole day dedicated to the Alien movie franchise—publisher Kvlt Planet enlisted some of extreme metal’s most-talented and most-recognizable artists to reimagine Xenomorph, the creature from Alien originally designed by H.R. Giger, as a project called Xenomorphic. In total, there are seven designs made by Mark Riddick, Rok, Lucas Ruggiere, Jason Wayne Barnett, Bharatadanu, Scott McPherson (Nihillustration), and Vberkvlt (Justin Bartlett).
When I saw Aliens in the theater with my dad at age nine, it made a lasting and deep impression on me,” explains project organizer Justin Bartlett. “For many of us as children, being scared by movie monsters was almost like taking a drug or akin to a religious experience. I was so freaked out by the film that I was ghostly white hours after leaving the cinema. It’s a clear vivid memory that I treasure since it put me on a path to many other grim discoveries.
“Soon after watching James Cameron’s sequel, I tracked down the original (and superior) Alien from 1979. Most importantly out of those frightening cinematic exposures, I came in contact with H.R. Giger’s art!
“Since then ALIEN and Giger have etched themselves into my psyche permanently and I wanted to express my love for the acid-blooded killing machine and its creator.”
Keep scrolling to view each artist’s reimagining below. Prints are available to purchase directly from Kvlt Planet.
“Every accomplished artist has their own visual language; the mysterious and otherworldly art of HR Giger has been a subtle influence on my own creative endeavors since my youth,” Riddick says of his piece (below). “Having collected several books, calendars and prints of Giger’s artwork over the past few decades, his fantastic creations have lurked deep in my subconscious. Giger’s visual language is a montage of occult mysteries, biomechanical textures, nightmarish creatures, lustful figures and disease-ridden infants, all encompassed in a monochrome futurescape existing in one man’s imagination. When Vberkvlt artist, Justin Bartlett, invited me to participate in the Xenomorphic extreme metal art tribute, the answer was a mandatory ‘yes.’ After a few sketches and unsatisfactory attempts to start on my submission for the tribute, I finally settled on the idea of bringing the xenomorph into my own personal artistic realm—a visual language filled with decrepit skeletal figures, oozing viscera and a melange of intertwined flesh and bone. The result is a marriage of my own artistic styling while showcasing the imaginative alien creature that was birthed from Giger’s wild imagination.”
