"Hello Herr Neyer,
First off thank you very much for the kind words there. Much appreciated.
Regarding your question - both camps were both right to a certain degree, it is entirely manually-painted brush strokes, but indeed all done on a PC using a tablet and not on live canvas. The band and I tried many versions of the cover : different gas masks and helmets / different body positions / background details etc (even down to the color of the clouds) in order to make sure everything is just like we want it - and if it was done on a canvas I'd probably be still working on it today and either risk the release date or end up with a rushed cover that we'd wont be satisfied with at all.
With that being said, I'm an avid old-school thrash fan myself, and wouldn't want to see something totally unfitting on a Sodom record, so every step was made in order to keep the tradition and classic look as this is what us as metal fans would like to see.
Hope you will enjoy seeing all the details up close once the vinyl is out in stores , meantime here's a version of the cover that is a touch bigger than the one on the press release - http://www.elirankantor.com/index.php?page=sodom-iwap "