dawn of the black hearts is a total bootleg and not band-sanctioned at all. the picture was taken by euronymous and not by the police, and spread around by him to contacts everywhere, one of which decided to put it on the bootleg LP he released. in fact e.g. necrobutcher, as well as dead's relatives, are still pissed at the record and the cover. just to set the facts straight.

wtf is wrong with you people and your stupid moralizing? mutantclannfear has the strongest point here about human aversion toward death. what about artistic use of pictures of dead bodies outside of extreme metal? what about scientific use of these pictures? depiction of dead bodies in historic presentations? where do you folks draw the line?
FYI, since you seem to care so much about these beloved euro-/anglocentrist traditions, are you aware that we've had a tradition of non-consensual use of dead bodies for all kinds of reason for basically centuries if not millennia, beyond all official christian hypocrisy.
also, consensual agreement by dead people? illogical much? seriously, how unlikely is a scenario in which someone *contractually* agrees to have a picture of them used artistically after their death? is that a way you guys would accept this morally? wouldn't it be even more "despicable" if people then waited for somebody to die in order to be able to use the pic? these are serious and not rhetorical questions.

so, to put this short, I'm fine with this. let people decide for themselves what's okay and what's not, whether it's war correspondents, underground goregrind bands, or medical historians. for the record, I didn't know numenorean and their cover art before, but that's a great example how such an image can be used in an aesthetic way.

edit: also, why do you guys think that the surviving family members have any right to decide what's OK to do to a dead person? I daresay more dead persons' views and wishes have been neglected, ignored, betrayed and outright perverted by surviving family members than by "shitty brutal death metal bands" - in the most distasteful and disrespectful ways possible, mind you.

I don't think I ever expected to see someone so outraged that most people aren't okay with a band making money off of a random person's dead body.


And are you aware that most cultures had a tradition of locking up and safeguarding a person's remains to prevent desecration? Making money off of someone's dead body without the consent of that person and/or their family would qualify as desecration in most cultures.


What's so illogical here?


Yes.


No. Why would it be more despicable?

I have never understood why this bootleg is allowed on the Archives. I do not get why this is "historically significant". I have also never heard a reasonable explanation as to why it is "historically significant".

I thought they were samples from like kink / hardcore BDSM videos?

I'm not sure where I stand on this as luckily, I haven't really had much interaction with those subgenres and aesthetics, but I wonder if people's feelings change if certain photos are more medical-esque or if the person is so over-the-top harmed that the odds of positive identification is very minimal?

Dead's photo is a good cautionary tale though. That experience must be horrible.

Don't think the dead folk would mind, so why would I? Really don't care one way or the other.

The reactions in this thread are the most entertaining thing I've read on this forum in a while. Thanks everyone.

This. Also, here where I live it's common for old people to have death insurance. 47% of the people that live in my country pay small sums of money in advance so that once they are dead, the whole funeral/obituary is taken care of without their families having to pay any more money. This is all done according to the tradition of the community they lived in or the place where they wanted to be buried.


You complain about your posts being labelled as "whataboutism", yet all your posts are literally "what about..."

"What about realistic horror movies?" Not real people, what is wrong with you?
"What about any horror movie that takes influence from an actual serial killer trivializing or commodifying death?" Yes, of course.
"What about a drawing of a real dead person acceptable?" Same as with a photo.
"What about The Passion of the Christ?" Are you really asking me "what about this religious tale that supposedly happened more than 2000 years ago that probably isn't even true"?

Honestly, none of this should be difficult for someone with empathy and basic social skills.

"Do you think the depiction of a dead body "devalues" a person or ashames them somehow? Why?" Context is everything here. Not all depictions of a dead body devalues a person. If you donated your corpse to science and photos of it were taken in that context and were used with respect, there's nothing wrong with that. You agreed to this and there's a very strong Deontological Code behind it. Using a photo of someone that was brutally naked and then dismembered without their consent, that's fucked up.

Yeah, its super funny to laugh at people for their personal feelings about death and the displaying of death in media. What fucking comedy that we all dont think exactly the same about such personal shit!!

Quite an interesting topic this one.

Personally I'm not a fan of "people" in art covers, live or otherwise. It's one of the reasons why I think Cradle's album covers are all horrible.

I think that there's plenty of people who have some sort of interest or even fascination with the subject of death and all it entails, and some people who'd rather avoid thinking about it all together. As someone already wrote, we all have different moral compasses, and they're bound to clash when it comes to sensitive topics like this. Some people are vegetarian because they are against the idea of killing another living being for their own sustain; other people are mass murderers.

I also believe that, as with most things, us humans are naturally much more desensitised to things that happen to others, somewhere far away, long time ago.
Picture this: Due to a wicked twist of fate, your mother or your wife died in a gruesome way, say in a car crash. And somehow, for whatever reason, someone managed to snap a photo of her. Now imagine said photo ended up being used by some band (I don't really think what kind of music said band plays really matters that much) and you came across it. Image the photo being gruesome and yet detailed enough so that you (and your family) can positively identify her beyond any shadow of doubt (similar to the Dawn of the Black Hears situation). Now I'd like to ask all the tough guys out there who don't seem to be able/willing to understand that people might think different (on such a sensitive topic, no less) how would YOU feel? What would YOU do?

Also, people comparing open casket funerals, war footage, historical photos from mass graves, to a bunch of dudes who can't come up with a more creative and artistic way to adorn their albums are the same sort of people who add pineapple to pizzas and I want nothing to do with those people.

You clearly don't understand the power of pineapple in a pizza.

Nope, you still don't know what whataboutism is. It's not literally bringing up any other ethical scenario for consideration; I'm not distracting from the main point of discussion. It's "whataboutism" if I say that any of the other premises I brought up in the thread are wrong, and that people in this thread still believe them, ergo my position is correct BECAUSE you're being hypocritical. Not what I'm doing. This is why you shouldn't be trying to wield logical fallacies as some sort of epic takedown when you have no idea what you're talking about.

If you want to assert that there's literally no similarity between anything depicting death and an actual death, then you're just going to claim that anything I say is a whataboutism or an inaccurate comparison and doesn't do justice to the inviolability of death. Meanwhile, you haven't said anything to back up why death is an inviolable state, besides saying it's "fucked up", repeatedly (which is not proof that you're correct), or that it violates a postmortem "right to privacy" (the notion of which was mostly refuted). You're making a goofball of yourself over here because you're making charges that my position is incompatible with "empathy and basic social skills" (not relevant to whether either of us is right, BTW), using the monolith of status quo to defend your position rather than reason, and refusing to seriously engage with any of the good faith questions I've posted that put the status quo in doubt (how many more times are you going to use that "Are you SERIOUSLY asking me to ..." line? Yes, obviously I am).

EDIT: Also, for the record, the crucifixion of Jesus is generally accepted by historical scholars to have actually occurred.

I like it. In my experience, it tends to signify that an album is either going to be completely trash, or incredibly heavy and powerful, with a tiny middle ground of mediocrity between the two. Either way, a fun listen. It also brings me back to a simpler time, grossing out my friends with shock images and them doing the same to me.

Like so many other things, it's only cool when Mortuary Drape does it. (Referencing the cover of All The Witches Dance, of course).

What other things you ask? Double bass guitar line-ups. Constant line-up changes. Overblown stage shows with a pulpit, candles, smoke machine, and hooded cloaks (to be fair I love when any good band puts on a hooded cloak).

Well, to be honest, what specifically happened was, I was listening to "Exploitative Practices" on Bandcamp; I can't remember what track it was (maybe "Shot"?), but I recognized the audio as being of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver. It was at that point that I realized that any or maybe all of the samples used on the album were from real life situations. I didn't really feel like investigating to find out which was were and weren't etc, and so just stopped listening to them. The music is great, I really do like it a lot, but the samples take me out of the listening experience.

I don't care for it, simply because I don't like to look at it. But I have to laugh at the people who are standing up for the rights of corpses. "You need consent from a corpse! Corpses are entitled to privacy!" Corpses can't consent to anything, under any circumstances. It's dead, and it couldn't possibly care about its own privacy. The only people who would care are its surviving loved ones. But, that begs the question - where do these pictures come from? Many of them seem to be taken in a medical setting. I would imagine that they're in the public domain. If a medical examiner takes photos of an accident victim, and those photos appear in a textbook or become public domain, did the surviving loved ones have a say in it? That's if the victim had any loved ones/family in the first place. Maybe they didn't. I'd certainly like to know more about the origin of such pictures.

I'm also not sure what death insurance has to do with the topic at hand. It's an entirely separate matter. It's a person making sure that finances related to their death are taken care of after they're gone. What does it have to do with pictures? Or is there a clause written into death insurance that says no pictures of my corpse allowed?

"Using a photo of someone that was brutally naked and then dismembered without their consent, that's fucked up."

I would think the fucked up part is that someone was murdered and dismembered. Pictures taken after the fact seem rather trivial by comparison. And, again, how is a dismembered corpse supposed to consent to photographs?

I've never heard of this band before - let alone ever listened to them, but I got a bit curious and found an interview:

All of you who are so gleefully posting "corpses can't consent lol" and think that it only matters to surviving family: think about whether you'd seriously be okay with necrophilia. (And if your only objection is the feelings of the surviving family, assume the corpse is an orphan.) Because if you're not okay with necrophilia, then you, too, believe that corpses can consent.

"If you're not okay with the idea of somebody rubbing their genitals on their friend's couch, then you, too, believe that couches can consent."

You can object to necrophilia for reasons that don't involve the lack of a required consent. It's performing a sexual act on an object that has inherent value to other people. It's wrong in the same way that rubbing your genitals on your friend's couch is wrong, although of course much more wrong/disrespectful since a human body has much more value to people than a couch.

Your logic is flawed. "I'm not okay with necrophila" doesn't = corpses are capable of consent. That's quite a leap.

I'm not okay with necrophila, but not because I'm worried about the corpse's feelings. I'm worried about the perpetrator of the necrophilia. I doubt that someone who commits necrophilia is well balanced, and you probably wouldn't want them running free in your society. They need to be apprehended, locked up and/or given help. And, while it pales in comparison to the necrophilia itself, other crimes are typically committed in the commission of necrophilia; such as unlawful entry, breaking and entering, destruction of property - all stuff that effects the living. I don't really care about the corpse in this scenario.

Tottally ok with necrophilia. No waste. Let's end world hunger.

I for once am happy to have a shaft through the ass and out the mouth, just let me spin over the fire and have a nice bbq everyone.

Im pretty sure necrophilia involves sex with corpses.

Necrophagia, on the other hand, I am ALL for.

yeah, you're right, my bad, got them mixed up

The difference is the couch is owned by your friend. So it's their consent that's necessary. Though this brings up an excellent point regarding that whole "the family is unlikely to see their loved one's corpse displayed on some brutal death metal album, so it doesn't really harm anyone." Well, the same reason why it's immoral to rub your genitals on your friend's couch while they're not looking, is the reason why it's still immoral to display somebody's loved one on their album cover.

An argument can be made that the dead body is owned by the family, but if that's the only reason why you can't interfere with the dead, it means that if the deceased is an orphan, grave-robbers and deviants have this absurd loophole.


Okay, well about medical researchers? There's a very long and storied history of surgeons grave robbing to study the human body. Somehow, most cultures found that to be wrong. And these days, if you want to donate your body for science (e.g. the body farm), you have to explicitly consent, while alive.

There are generally two approaches to the treatment of the dead among most cultures worldwide:
1) the body belongs to the family and is their property
and 2) the body belongs to the deceased individual and after he or she cannot actually make decisions regarding that property (i.e. is dead), their last wishes should be honored. They also have widely-recognized rights that are often legally enforced (e.g., you cannot dig up a dead body, not because you are harming the family, but because you are violating the rights of the deceased individual.)

Your example involving medical researchers/surgeons doesn't seem to be at conflict with anything that I wrote in my post.

You're shifting the goal posts a little bit. The discussion was about necrophilia, but now you're bringing medical researchers into it. You said to pretend that the corpse was an orphan, but now you're bringing the family into it. No, I don't think that someone should be allowed to waltz into a cemetery, dig up the dirt, crack open the casket, and do as they like with the corpse. But not because I feel bad for the corpse. It's because of the reasons that I stated in my previous post - you're negatively impacting the living by doing all of that. And not just the family, but also whoever has to pay for and repair the damages.

Look, I'm open to the idea that images of real corpses on album covers is distasteful. But I need more context. Who took the picture? Why was the picture taken? How did the picture come into possession of the band? Is the corpse in the picture identifiable? How old is the picture? I'd need these questions and more answered before I could really make a judgement call.

But, to be perfectly honest with you - regardless of the answers to those questions, pictures of real corpses on album covers ranks pretty god damned low on my list of things to be worried about. And that's coming from someone who doesn't like to look at any of that stuff.

Just giving a different example. To be clear, I do accept your point RE: necrophilia. You can be opposed to it without bringing in property rights/consent.

It's just there's a surprising number of people who seem to construe this outrage over using dead bodies for album covers as coming from some combination of Christian morality or a misguided sense of disgust.

My point is that there are two additional major factors in the outrage:
1) the property rights of the family (but that's been discussed a bit) and 2) the ownership of one's own body that continues in a limited way after death. This is why corpses of people without family continue to be protected in most countries. This is separate from any sense of disgust or Christian zealotry behind these laws.

But you are asking the right questions. Context matters. My point is that if someone consented, before death, to have an image of their corpse used for an album cover, I don't think as many people would have a problem with it. Yes, many might be disgusted and appalled. But it wouldn't feel as morally wrong as finding a random gore photo in the depths of the Internet.

So fucking a corpse is disrespectful since a body "has value". Taking photos that are disrespectful and using them for financial gain on the other hand is totally ok. This makes no sense at all. If a human body has value it has value always, not only when it suits you.

I'm sympathetic to the property rights of the family. But we're also talking about a photograph, and not the body itself. Seems like an important distinction. And I know absolutely nothing about the vast majority of the photographs in question. Don't know the origin of the photos. Don't know who did or didn't consent. Don't know how the family factored into it, if at all. I don't know if consent from anyone is even required in any given instance. Maybe it's a case by case thing, where it can't all be painted with the same brush. I don't know. Like, where did Carcass acquire all of those photos for their "meat" collages? Medical textbooks? If so, does that change anything? And is it okay for a band to use such photos in a commercial endeavor? Nobody seems to be getting in legal trouble, so I guess it is. Then it becomes a matter of personal belief.

Again, I'm open to the idea that it can be distasteful, but I felt like the way that some people were standing up for "corpse rights" was beginning to enter into the realm of the absurd, as though we're oppressing the corpses.

How is thinking corpses have rights absurd? Do you think desecrating tombs is ok? Is mutilating a corpse ok too? Either a corpse has no value and you can do whatever you want with one or they have a value and should be respected. Taking a photo of a mutilated body and using it for personal gain is disrespectful towards that person's memory and towards his/her family. Just because the family may never find out or know about it that doesn't mean it's cool to do whatever you want with a corpse. It may not be as disrespectful as necrophilia but it's still not ok.

Do I think that desecrating tombs is okay? You would already know the answer to that, and your other questions, if you actually bothered to read my posts. But it's all good. I've said my piece. Not interested in going around in circles.

I'm not even sure it's legal to disseminate photos of deceased people in the US since it could be potentially harmful to their relatives:

Under the Due Process Clause, family members generally maintain the right to control dissemination of photos of deceased relatives. Privacy rights in this context only extend to the privacy of the living relatives of the decedent, not the actual deceased. Most court rulings regarding autopsy and death scene photos have looked to the precedent set by the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which determines under which circumstances the release of such images is appropriate and not invasive of any living person's privacy.

National Archives and Records Administration v. Favish similarly found that under FOIA, the privacy rights of a decedents' relatives are both acknowledged and prioritized when disseminating autopsy/death scene photos of the deceased. This decision was made in regards to the death scene photos of Vincent Foster, a deputy counsel to Bill Clinton.

In New York Times Company v. NASA, the D.C. District Court denied the New York Times' request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for access to audio recordings of the astronauts involved in the Challenger explosion moments before the event. The major argument of the case came down to weighing public interest and the decedents' families, and the court ruled in favor of protecting the decedents' families, claiming that exposing the tapes could cause relatives of the astronauts trauma.

If a band used a dead relative death scene photo you could just sue then for causing you a trauma.

Again, I just want to clarify I'm not really interested about the legality of all this because I think this is an issue that deals mostly with morality. My point is it's not just an innocuous act that has no consequences.

Yeah, it's a photograph and not the body itself, but it's similar to the point I brought up earlier. What if someone uses their ex-partner's naked image as an album cover (without their consent) but covers up the face? What if they never find out about it? Like there's no identifying characteristics or anything for anyone to be sure it's them? It still seems pretty unethical to me. Same with using a picture of someone's dead body.

I mean, you're right. There are a lot of unknowns about context. But I would hazard a guess that, in most cases, the photographs are not obtained ethically. And that goes to your second point--the legal system isn't exactly gung ho about prosecuting this kind of stuff, so I'm sure bands get away with a lot without any repercussions.

And to be clear, I'm not arguing that it has to be illegal or everyone has some moral imperative to stop listening to Carcass and whoever else, it just feels disingenuous to claim there's nothing immoral or unethical about this practice whatsoever. And I'm not saying you were making that claim, but it seems like a number of people were.

9/10 the album is garbage, so it's been a pretty useful barometer to help me avoid crap. Slapping a photo your manager found at BestGore on your album is the metal equivalent of wearing a shirt that says: "I Fuck on the First Date": it reeks of desperation.

Yes, to be honest, musicians who decide to use this kind of photo as a cover of their album don't seem to be able to imagine/understand what people with PTSD are feeling. It seems these bands either don't know/don't care about this problem at all or think that their album cover will make you "stronger", and I'm not really sure if it's possible to change their way of thinking, so I came to the conclusion that the best things to do in this situation are to take care of yourself and to avoid the certain subgenres of extreme (metal) music as far as possible.
When I want to discover more extreme and aggressive music, I ask people for recommendations and clarify that I prefer bands that "look and play safe".
I also use RYM for discovering new music because there is some censorship of "not safe for everyone" album covers on that website.

But still.., the problem is that if you have an interest in more extreme music, then there is always a risk of accidental encounter with something way too shocking and dangerous, so yes, my life would be a little easier if such albums did not exist at all.

I understand where you're coming from, and I appreciate the civil conversation. My major point of contention was with people speaking about corpses as though they have feelings. Your "naked ex-partner" example is different, because that person is living and can be hurt by the album cover. But a corpse isn't going to be hurt if it discovers an image of itself on an album cover, if you get my meaning. This stuff only effects the living. And when it comes to these medical/autopsy type photos, how do they become public in the first place? And what if, in some cases, a family doesn't even exist to be hurt by the photos?

I'll grant you that there's plenty of unethical behavior going on. And maybe it's wrong for a band to profit off such images. I'm gonna say it has to be judged on a case by case basis. But, like I said earlier, it's low on my list of things to be worried about. I can't bring myself to care all that much. Just being honest about it. But I understand that some people are gonna feel more strongly about it, and that's fine. I decided to throw in my two cents 'cause some posts were reading like parody.

i regret this thread

The thing about these albums is that they are 99% shitty BDM/Slam or goregrind that have basically zero artistic merit so you can't even use that argument. The photos have nothing to do with the music, there's no coherent theming to the actual stuff inside. It should be telling that the overwhelming majority of metal with actual artistic merit uses artwork or actually meaningful photos.

this is a really interesting thread - good job!



you're talking about two different things as if they are the same. your laptop, and the "world's best dad" coffee mug your kid made you have value. they do not have rights.

anyway, i think this is a very nuanced thing that requires taking into account the identifiability of the corpse, surviving loved ones, time passed since the photo was taken, etc.... dawn of the black hearts is a gross example of terribleness (granted it's a bootleg and all that)

saying most of the music behind those kinds of covers suck anyway is an astonishingly lazy way to approach the issue - like are you people completely incapable of abstract thought?

In what world a deceased person is the same as a mug or a laptop?

irrelevant - you missed the point.

i was pointing out where your logic failed in reply to Flem Clone's post - these things you say have no relevance to each other:
"How is thinking corpses have rights absurd?"
"Either a corpse has no value and you can do whatever you want with one or they have a value and should be respected."
...because having rights has nothing to do with having value; they are completely separate attributes

Yeah, because those were two different topics. I'm not sure why you made a connection when there isn't one. I was just following his line of thought: he said that corpses have no rights but they have value. If they have value and you can't mutilate them/have intercourse with them/etc you can't use them for financial gain or take degrading pictures of them either. I was just adhering to his logic and saying it doesn't make any sense.

I feel like you are all just playing the devils advocate. Just because we live in a fucked up society that doesn't have laws that give rights to deceased people that doesn't mean you can do whatever the fuck you want to a corpse. It's morally wrong. It doesn't matter if you call it value, rights or whatever. The truth is unless that corpse belongs to a relative you should leave it alone. And if that corpse belongs to someone from your family, the best you can do is honour his or her wishes and carry on.