History of “Aeons of Carnage” Cover Art

Original drawing by Kārlis Padegs

The artwork for Death Island’s debut EP “Aeons of Carnage” features a design by Latvian painter and artist Kārlis Padegs (1911-1940), who was the cousin of Mik and Kārlis Grendze of Death Island’s Grandfather. The brothers had seen the sketch regularly growing up whenever they visited their grandparents apartment in Rīga, Latvia where the sketch is framed in the hallway.

In his lifetime, Padegs witnessed the first World War, and the birth of his country with Latvia declaring independence in 1918. Painting with passion and emotion, his Expressionist paintings convey feelings of sadness and show the chaos left behind after the first world war. Padegs was known in Rīga as Rīgas Dandy, he dressed very seriously and took the world around him seriously as can be depicted in his art.

The drawing by Kārlis Padegs used for the Aeons of Carnage album cover shows a soldier carrying his fallen friend on his shoulder, leading an army with a Latvian flag waving in the distance. The Grendze brothers felt that this drawing really conveyed similar emotions as what they hoped to convey with Aeons of Carnage. The drawing conveys a feeling of proudness, showing how Latvia’s independence was fought for, and eventually won. The EP contained both rerecordings of songs that Death Island had written when the band first started, and new songs that had not yet been released, it showed the hard work that the band had put in over the years to get where they are today.