“‘Abandon Ship’ was the first thing i worked on for Gallows when they signed to Warner in early 2007, it was the first release coming a few months before the re-release of their album. I had worked on the previous release of the original album, but that was only as the illustrator on part of it, Alex Curtis from Thr33 design took on layout and additional illustrations. For this however the Band and label just gave me free reign to do what i wished, its based on a poster that i had screenprinted for them a few months beforehand, the band liked it so much they wanted to reuse it on the single, but i thought i could do better..and literally just went out to create the ultimate vision of sea based carnage, it was the first time my work would be released on such a huge scale, so i really poured my time into it. The single came on two 7″ vinyls, so we went with a gatefold 7″, with two inner sleeves that housed the 7″s. Basically i tried to keep text to a minimum and go all out with the illustrations. Theres a basic narrative to it as well, the beast attacks the ships on the outside, then we go under water on the inside where he is ripping the ships apart, followed by a full on close up of the beast with the inner sleeves (the two connecting to make a larger image when you put them together)
Following the album release they followed it up with another single ‘In the belly of a shark’, we all decided that the first singles format had worked really well, so we didnt deviate from that, i kept with the nautical theme and simply upped the detail in it, trying to outdo myself basically! The format and narrative is exactly the same. On both releases i tried to keep text to a minimum, all copy is on the innner sleeves, and the title of the single and barcode is on a transparent sticker on the front of the Single, meaning you can remove it to be left with basically just artwork."
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