Don't these dickheads consider if album art they are swiping from the internet (Especially from a well known artist) has already been used? This is ridiculous.

The same art being used isn't necessarily a new thing, nor is it inherently bad, check this (already linked) blog.

And really, one of the most famous DM albums of all time used the same painting as an earlier album, who really cares? Morbid Angel were certainly a bunch of ridiculous dickheads back during Blessed are the Sick, weren't they?

In 1991, it was much harder to know that one other band had used the same artwork, back in 1988. Bad example.

Back to the idiot bands at hand. All of these albums are from 2008-2011. The only exception being the Burning Witch album from 1998, but..... it originally had different artwork and only "joined the club" in 2008 when it was re-released. Most of these bands are from USA, Germany, Austria and I know for a fact that internet is widely available even at public places, and I'd bet anything that these bands took the image from the internet and not a book of Kittelsen's art. You can't compare this to old releases when it could be a simple and honest mistake. It doesn't take more than five minutes to do a little research to find out if 20 other bands just recently used the same artwork that you plan to steal. So.... yes, they're dickheads. Especially the guy in Georgia that is writing Norse themes and playing "pagan black metal". But I guess it makes more sense than the bands in Mexico that I saw with Nordic symbols all over their albums.

Which is true enough, but it really isn't as big of a deal as you're making it, nor are the bands really as stupid as you claim. I mean, obviously I don't own all these albums so I can't go check and see if they all credited the artist properly, but bands using a classic painting to convey the themes of their music visually is common, and sometimes the source material will overlap. Most people won't get bent out of shape over a grainy looking blob in the middle of a nondescript canvas like you are.

Basically just chill out, you're making mountains out of molehills. And the last two sentences are just an entirely different rant for an entirely different thread.