Portugal the Man Conjure Creative 'Satanic' Artwork

With a new album titled 'The Satanic Satanist,' Portugal the Man could've gone in any number of directions with the album art. But instead of conjuring up demons and hellfire, PTM's John Baldwin Gourley decided to go a different route -- one filled with beautiful colors and psychedelic swirls that outline mountains and trees and the landscape of his home state of Alaska. Going the extra mile, as Alaskans are often forced to do -- literally, Gourley and his bandmates created CD packaging that opens and folds in unique configurations, each one presenting a different aspect of the landscape.

"Playing music, we have access to so many different sides of art," Gourley tells Spinner. "We get to work on music videos, we get to work on album art and t-shirts, and it all blends together if you choose to take advantage of that."

Gourley was reminded of this recently when he bought his mom a new record player and for the first time in years, went back to his father's album collection, pulling out gems from Elton John, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles ('Revolver'), and relishing their whole package.

But albums are arguably dead. And CDs are headed that way. So, Gourley and his bandmates decided to make use of the art form while they still can. As for his own CD collection, we got Gourley to admit that, like the rest of us, it doesn't expand as fast as the days of buying 12 CDs for the price of 1 from Columbia House. While he does make a point of buying the physical CD from certain favorites such as Grizzly Bear, "I usually just download s---," he confesses. "But when you actually go out and buy a record, there's so much more that comes with that. You become a part of it." Yeah, especially when the packaging itself is like a Lego toy that you can play with. 'The Satanic Satanist' hits stores on July 21.