Axel Hermann was an art student with a Kiss fixation living in Dortmund until a meeting with Robert Kampf -- who had just formed his own record label Century Media -- catapulted him into the world of album cover illustration. Starting his career as the in-house artist at Century Media in the second-half of the Eighties Hermann has become a highly-respected and much-in-demand freelance illustrator, and has worked with the likes of Sodom, Iced Earth and Edguy as well as more underground acts including Asphyx, Morgoth and Unleashed. In this, his first collection, Hermann pulls together the cream of his first quarter-century in the business, and with the help of some of the bands he's worked with he explains at various times the thinking, the process and/or the objective behind each cover design. Expressive, provocative and challenging Hermann's artwork is calibrated to shock -- at a number of levels -- and awe in equal measures, and even now he works hard at expanding both his horizons and his technique. It is little wonder that he is as exciting now as he was when he delivered his first album cover (for Poltergeist's debut album "Depression") back in 1989.