So, the idea was to create a one-man black metal band with the help of AI tools to see where we are today in terms of music and technology.

In order to create a black metal band, we had to find a proper name and a theme. Name-picking was, of course, the most important part of creating any band, but metal bands take it to the next level.

What brings mystery and suffering to people and is an unstoppable force? Scabies, or šuga as we call it.

Therefore, the name is Šuga—a perfect name for a less than perfect band.

Pronounce it as sugar but leave our r.

Visual identity and artwork

Honoring the name

What’s the reason for all the great AI image generators if we’re not going to use them to create the best branding for our band? Let’s start by creating a band logotype. Ideogram, an AI image generator (text-to-image), was created by ex-Google Brain experts.

What’s the difference between them and any other tool, right? Hell, they can make accurate text on images!

No more issues with distorted and alienish typography on your generated images.

With some help of dark magic, Šuga was brought to life.

Šuga’s logotype created with Midjourney

Bringing the amotphere

After creating such an awesome logotype, the artwork should follow the grand vision.

We engaged all the CPUs that Midjourney can start and gave it some of the most omnium, dark, and grim prompts. They were so dark, we just had to use Pan+Zoom options to adjust the image once more.

This were the doomed prompts we chanted via Midjourney:

midieval, black metal cover, scabies, dark atmoshpere, raw, nocturnal atmosphere, black and white

And, since there’s still no v6.6 of the Midjourney, we used v5.1 and got the beautiful, or should I say, demonic results.

The second part of the unholy spell was done.

Šugas artwork created with Ideogram

Chants and evocations

Some would say that extreme metal lyrics are not important since they can’t be heard most of the time. To some extent, I can agree, but I was always a fan of metal lyrics. With Šuga, it was not different.

I approached the matter very carefully, in order not to disturb the evil muses of the underworld that hold the source of all the sinister words we can think of.

Mihael Tomić

Principal Designer at Mono

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The altar of spells and evocations—OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 was the right tool for making this work.

With some prompts that are forbidden for saying out loud, we got the most wrathful results, and the third piece of our unhuman act was done.

The second vile prompt we engraved in Chat GPT was:

write a short lyrics for a black metal song about plague in style of dark throne

In the shadowed veil of night,
A plague descends, unholy blight,
From the depths of darkness, it does rise,
A blackened curse, under blood-red skies.

The malevolent Šuga was born

From the dark depths of clusters and networks, we finally got to the final boss.

Suno.ai is a research-driven AI company that specializes in casting some of the most sinister spells, bringing undead music into our homeworld. We brought the lyrics and the Style of Music we wanted Suno to create, and we finally heard the thunders and roars, and stood in awe as the mighty Šuga birth was appearing right in front of our eyes. Ears?

Now, you can too.

The final and triumphant prompt for assembling this unholy trinity was:

black metal in style of dark throne

World legacy

There was one more thing, leave this legacy to both worlds—to ours and to the underworld.

Creating the video was the ultimate evil goal.

We used the RunwayML mobile app with GEN-2 image to video model to unleash the full hellish potential of Šuga.

Just listen to the album teaser.

Non-AI tools

For additional editing, I used Figma to adjust and prepare visuals. Converting bitmap to vector was done with Image Tracer plugin by David Williames, and the video editing tool was Capcut.

Prepare youself, Šuga is comming for you… Pre-Order De Mysteriis Dom Shugavis now.

Hopefully, this was fun for you, as it was for me. Šuga is a fictional BM band, and the project was done to explore what can be achieved with AI if you want to use it as a tool for taking creativity further than just humming something in your head.