Exodus guitarist Gary Holt shared a post on Instagram mocking Nirvana’s recent lawsuit regarding ‘Nevermind’s album cover. While sharing a meme including their album cover of ‘Bonded by Blood,’ Holt made a joke based on the resemblance of both artworks, including the babies.
As many of you know, when Nirvana released its second studio album, ‘Nevermind‘ on September 24, 1991, it achieved unexpected critical and commercial success. Often considered a cornerstone of the grunge genre, the record is one of the best-selling albums of all time.
The album cover is as legendary as the record itself because it shows a naked baby boy named Spencer Elden, swimming underwater with a U.S. dollar bill on a fishhook, in front of him, just out of his reach. The idea emerged from lead singer Kurt Cobain who wanted to create an artwork based on underwater births.
Since they were too graphic for the record company to use, the band settled on the image of four-month-old Spencer Elden. To this day, the artwork of ‘Nevermind’ has been recognized as one of the most famous album covers in the history of rock music.
In August 2021, now grown-up Spencer Elden filed a lawsuit against Cobain’s estate and the surviving members of Nirvana, claiming that the album cover was done without his or his legal guardians’ consent. According to Elden, the artwork resulted in lifelong damages and violated federal child pornography statutes by refusing to censor the cover.
Just like the album cover of ‘Nevermind,’ Exodus’ debut studio album’s artwork features an illustration of babies that are good and evil conjoined twins. Since ‘Bonded by Blood‘ has drawings of infants rather than the actual picture of a baby, it didn’t create controversy like the Nirvana album cover.
Recently, Gary Holt shared a meme on his official Instagram page on which there was the artwork of ‘Bonded by Blood.’ In addition to the album cover, the meme included a joke regarding the similarity of the concept between the artworks. Furthermore, the guitarist made fun of the recent lawsuit by saying that Exodus babies did it first and that the Nirvana baby is just a poser.
The statement on the meme follows:
“Exodus babies kick Nirvana baby’s ass for being a poser.’
You can see the Instagram post below.
