Carl brief, (Insision's vocalist), was the cover should look similar to a Russion religious icon featuring a demon. The Demon here is an mix of of gods such as Shiva, Vishnu, Jehovah, Allah etc..
Many of the ideas are Carl's, some however are my own interpretation. In the left hands, (though hard to see), are The Jewish Tanakh, Christian New Testament, and Muslim Koran.
In the right hands are a dagger and chalice, while not representing any specific idea they are associated with apects of the three monoteist religions, the third finger points to hell.
While other gods were assimilated into the creation of the demon, the main focus is on the monotheist faiths as these share a specific common enemy - Satan. The stomach of the demon has a fissure which people are being sucked into, (or falling out of, depending on the viewpoint), the fissure is part mouth, part vulva, echoing phrase "The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away"
The flaming halo serves to remind us of the fall of Lucifer as one of God's angels and also to link in with ancient Sun God(s), a religion that predates the traditional monotheist faiths.
The traditional iconic figures either side of the Demon can be interpreted in many ways, but specifically they are there to worship, either they have turned to Satan in despair or they are unwittingly following a false god (or have been corrupted by him), or because they are following one of the three faiths in such a fundamental way that the work they do in god's name is inherantly evil.
The reason for so much faux sybolism is that the traditional religious icons, while generally being simplistic in thier design often carried a great deal of overt and hidden symbolism for the viewer. It is because of that symbolism that an image becomes "Iconic"
There is deeper symbolism which I will not comment upon, some things are best left for one to discover, open to individual interpretation.
The background was a texture file created in Photoshop, the bulk of the remaining artwork was "hand rendered" using a wacom tablet.

(images © Dental Records)