Beef Dealers

I don't really know much about any of these bands, except The Subtones, who... is it my imagination or do they play like, every week? Anyway, I liked not knowing the bands because I like not having any preconceived stylistic leanings going into this flyer. Sometimes if I know a band is a metal band, or a hardcore band I’ll get the urge to do something genre specific, or on the other hand try and do something completely opposite from what anybody would expect from a flyer for that particular band. Either way, the art is influenced by the genre of the bands playing, which isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s just something I consider. The one thing I definitely did not want to do was anything having to do with “beef” as in “meat” or “cows”. Doing a literal graphic for a band has a time and place, but it usually just exemplifies a complete and total lack of any creativity or imagination on behalf of the artist. I’ve been guilty of it in the past, but at this stage in my “career”, if I’m going to reference a word from a band’s name, it had better be funny as hell.

I just decided to run with a visual image I've had in mind for a long time. I wanted to use this for a Skullface thing, but I think this works a lot better. I had this idea for a guy sitting on a pile of bodies with a machine gun propped on his shoulder and straps of bullets hanging all over him. I didn't really even intend to make it an insurgent type guy until I had roughed it out, and it just sort of became that. It was only after the fact, after I was done with the final art, that I realized in a certain context this could apply to the term “beef”, as in “conflict” or “a grudge”. What could possibly be a more profound statement than art depicting the current beef in the Middle East, and more specifically, in Iraq? On a more general scope, the conflict between The Western World and The Middle East? I highly doubt The Beef Dealers, as a band, had this in mind when they named themselves, and I really didn’t derive this meaning from their name to come up with this piece, but it is kind of universal, I suppose.