Mumbai Graphic Designer and Drummer Aaron Pinto on Why Art in Metal is Important

(from left) Pinto’s artwork for Providence, T-shirt designs for Gutslit, Pangea and Reverrse Polarity. Illustrations courtesy Aaron Pinto

Aaron Pinto, Mumbai

Aaron Pinto. Photo: Ashish Kamble

Projects:

The Mumbai-based drummer was always a doodler, but got serious when he took on now-former band Providence’s debut EP Vanguard’s artwork. Pinto says the anime robot-inspired Vanguard artwork was the first time he attempted album art. “Even before I did the artwork for Providence, I always want­ed to win that Best Album Art award at Rolling Stone Metal Awards [in 2012]. Reuben al­ways used to win it.” Pinto, who also works at the art and design team at MTV India, took up artwork for more bands after that win, including death grind band Gutslit, thrash/groove metallers Zygnema and hard­core band Reverrse Polarity.

Favorites:

Pinto cites death metal’s most gruesome illustrators like Mark Riddick and Dan Mumford as influences. Mumford is clearly more of a formative influence on Pinto, letting the bloody colors flow for death metallers like The Black Dahlia Murder and Whitechapel. Pinto adds, “[British artist] Godmachine also makes the most kickass artwork.”

From the drawing board:

Says Pinto about his process, “Once I get a brief from the band, I talk to them and I like to listen to their music while I do the artwork. Each one is a learning process.”

Coming up:

Pinto, who only recently set up his page on Behance, an on­line community for showcas­ing artwork, says he gets com­missioned by bands based on word-of-mouth. He’s just fin­ished working on instrumen­tal metal band Pangea’s new T-shirt and is working on artwork for Chennai prog metal band Escher’s Knot and groove metal band Asylum.”