My Favorite Album Covers: Charlie Rolfe (As Everything Unfolds)
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
In celebration of the sharp, emotionally charged blend of post-hardcore intensity and melodic vulnerability.
"As I've gotten older, I've appreciated the depth of anything in my life. I can never accept something for how it is on the surface, I have to understand it."
When you listen to As Everything Unfolds, the experience is never linear, and that's very much by design. On April 10th, the band released their new album, Did You Ask To Be Set Free?, via Century Media, and everything feel meticulously constructed. Every lyric, sonic texture, and visual element was placed with intent. The band's genre-blurring ambition that first turned heads on Within Each Lies the Other and Ultraviolet comes forth with a sharper sense of identity and purpose, balancing crushing heaviness with cinematic atmosphere through a seamless weaving together of towering hooks, electronic flourishes, and deeply personal lyricism. It's chaotic and carefully controlled, pivoting between vulnerability and aggression.
That same attention to detail extends beyond the music itself on Zak Pinchin's cover photograph, which mirrors the record’s emotional contradictions. It's beautiful yet fractured, capturing the tension between liberation and collapse that runs throughout the album. Much like the songs it represents, the cover invites closer inspection, revealing layers of meaning beneath its immediate visual impact. It’s the kind of presentation that reflects a band obsessed not just with how their music sounds, but how it feels and resonates as a complete artistic statement.
As Everything Unfolds frontwoman Charlie Rolfe shares a brief list of covers that have and continue to inspire her artistic trajectory:
Knocked Loose — "You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To" (2024)
"I have always been a big fan of Briscoe Park’s work, I actually have his debut photography book on order from a Kickstarter style campaign. My formal education is in photography & art, so it’s always been a big draw for me around the music I listen to. I have been a fan of Knocked Loose for many years & I was super excited to see two of my favorite artists from different worlds collide to create something unique."
My Chemical Romance — "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge" (2004)
"I’ve always really enjoyed the worldbuilding element of MCR, I often cite them as my favourite band of all time for so many reasons. Both this album & the TBP cover art is designed by vocalist Gerard Way, I feel when a band has a vision and is able to fully enact it, it creates such a synergy between the music and the art. You could completely tell what this album was going to sound like from the cover!"
Being As An Ocean — "How We Both Wondrously Perish" (2014)
"Something so decadent as this album title deserved something equally sleek and beautiful to match it. It’s one of the more simple concepts among my choices, but there’s nothing more effective than classy minimalism. It really gives it that ethereal quality that it needed. Sometimes you don’t need to overdo it."
Bring Me The Horizon — "Count Your Blessings" (2006)
"I feel like this is the album art bands over the last 15 or so years have strived to recreate in some way shape or form. Its strong visuals and collage like design was unique for its time within the genre. If a band came out with that artwork now, I wouldn’t even bat an eyelid. It's genuinely timeless... & who doesn’t like sharks."
Architects — "All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us" (2016)
"Again, I’m a sucker for simplicity used in the right way. Given this album’s context & the hardship it took to create, they didn’t need a bold, loud, & out there idea for the cover, just something thought provoking as to let the music speak for it. It's something that again, would make this such a timeless classic. It ties into the bleakness of the album title also, with its emptiness & otherworldly feeling."
Did You Ask To Be Set Free? arrives April 10th via Century Media (Listen) and you can stream the slow-burning latest single, DENIAL, below.
