Mind Bomb - Mind Bomb (1993)

No, that’s not a mistake in the liner notes of Mind Bomb’s groovy self-titled debut on Mercury. Norm Peters, a technician at the Center for Electron Microscopy of the University of Illinois, gets credit for ”Microscopy” for Mind Bomb‘s cover shot of a Demodex foliculorum (that’s ”body mite” to you and me), displayed grossly larger than Mother Nature allows. ”I thought the image was pretty spooky looking,” says Mind Bomb lead singer Matt Mercado, 25, who has been playing his dance-heavy brand of metal in Chicago for 10 years.

When label executives asked Mercado what he had in mind for art, he turned to brother Mark, a scientific illustrator who knows Peters. ”At first I thought he could do drawings of creatures,” says Matt. ”Then I saw Mark’s photos of scanning electron microscopy — and I don’t think you could draw anything weirder than that.” But, adds Matt, it’s really not that weird at all — ”It’s just a mite” — the kind we all have in every hairy region. A revelation we could have lived without.