Illustrator and Inner Sanctum’s Gaurav Basu on Art in Metal

(clockwise from top left) Acid Toad’s artwork for Inner Sanctum, Demonic Resurrection, The Algorithm, Theorized, Devoid, Cheisrah and Goddess Gagged. All images courtesy of Gaurav Basu

Gaurav Basu/Acid Toad, Bengaluru

Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad. Photo: Samuel Bushi/Bushi Film Co

Projects:

Basu also started off his career as an artist by designing art­work for his own band, thrash/ death metallers Inner Sanc­tum, but has moved on from using digital photography to hand-drawn illustrations. In the last three years, Basu aka Acid Toad has created artwork for alt metal band Goddess Gagged, thrash metallers The­orized and Mumbai extreme metallers Demonic Resurrec­tion, French electro-metal art­ist The Algorithm and thrash/ death metal band Devoid. Says Basu about metal having a parallel visual culture along­side the music, “People tend to take it more seriously. I think metal, especially stoner and sludge, has spurned a parallel visual art culture and now ev­eryone wants cool merch and big prints.”

Favorites:

Comic books and graphic nov­els artists such as Mike Mi­gnola were Basu’s first influ­ences, and he began getting into Swedish death metal bands like Edge of Sanity in the mid-2000s, and later into sludge and stoner metal bands like Baronness, Mastodon and Kvelertak for both music and art.

From the drawing board:

Says Basu, “I love to have that organic feel in my artwork, which is why I like hand-drawn stuff. There’s no undo button, so you have to be that much more careful.”

Coming up:

Acid Toad is currently racking his brains “going crazy” work­ing on the artwork for Inner Sanctum’s debut full-length album, due later this year. “I’m only 20 or 30 percent done. It’s going to be pretty big.”