Hall of Fame Inside the Artwork: the story behind Bloc Party’s ‘Silent Alarm’

Think of ‘Silent Alarm’ and the first image to come to mind is the iconic artwork; a stark, crispy-clean sheet of white snow, with a tiny far-off line of spindly dead-grey trees. From a distance, it almost looks like a tangled length of barbed wire, spiky and hard to hold down, just like Bloc Party’s sharp-edged guitar lines. It’s an iconic album cover of the last decade, and it still covers teenagers bedroom walls worldwide in the form of tattered posters stuck up with blue-tac. It ended up on the cover of ‘Silent Alarm’ not so much through chance, but because of the focused vision of Bloc Party. It’s a determination that has stuck with the band ever since.