Description

Massive Attack's darkest album has an insect on the front. A black stag beetle sits on a plain white background, every joint and antenna sharp, its mandibles spread like a weapon. The photograph was taken by the fashion photographer Nick Knight at the Natural History Museum in London, and the final image was built from several separate shots combined into one.

The idea came out of Robert Del Naja's nightmares. While the band was making the record, he became obsessed with spiders and kept dreaming about arachnids and the patterns on their backs, which led him to beetles. Mezzanine was the first collaboration between Del Naja, the art director Tom Hingston and Knight, and the stark gatefold matched an album of heavy guitars, slow beats and paranoia.

Del Naja saw the cover as a transformation. "It was a chrysalis moment where we were trying to emerge as something different," he said. "We just wanted to firmly establish our own identity and I think Mezzanine was the opportunity to do that." Released on 20 April 1998 as Britpop faded, the album went to number one in the UK, and the beetle became the band's emblem for years. For its 20th anniversary, Massive Attack became the first band to encode an album in DNA.

Credit

Photography by Nick Knight; art direction and design by Tom Hingston and Robert Del Naja