Front cover reasearch

During my research i came across this particular cover, which i personally love. It breaks the rules of your average magazine convention because it is so simple!
I find it still works as you can obviously see the intentions, which are basically keeping it simple to make the readers question what is the magazine hiding? What is making it feel mysterious?
Your average magazine front cover would contain loads of fonts, subtitles, bold eye catching colours, medium long shot of the main artist featured and most important of all the cover story.
This magazine has none of them, it has sublte colours, medium close up, minimul writing, and just the artists name as a subtitle.