You never asked, but here's a list of some album covers I don't like anyway! Some of the picks in this post don't necessarily reflect the quality of the music of course - in fact, I think some of these choices are great albums. Doesn't make the artwork great too, though! I've deliberately stayed away from some of the obvious choices - Black Sabbath's Born Again (which I've always loved), Iron Maiden's Dance of Death, Manowar's Into Glory Ride, anything by Riot etc., because these have been talked about a million times all over the internet.
AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)
This album kicks arse, definitely one of my favourite AC/DC records of all time. But the cover always bugged me - it was done by Hipgnosis, who were responsible for some pretty legendary album covers. But they didn't
always hit the mark! I don't necessarily hate
Dirty Deeds' cover, I just always thought it looked out of place for this particular album! Looks more like something a new wave or post-punk group would use to me. Certainly not a raw rock n' roll/boogie band like early-career AC/DC were back in the '70s! The pink font used for the band is totally unfitting, and a far cry from the classic logo they used on
Highway to Hell and everything that came afterwards. Either way, fantastic record - but silly cover! Interestingly enough, the Australian version came with even uglier artwork!
ANNIHILATOR - Remains (1997)
I almost picked 1999's
Criteria for a Black Widow, but it's cover art does at least remind me of
Alice in Hell, so
Remains it is! Annihilator boast one of the greatest band logos in metal (in my opinion of course), but there's far too much RED going on here! Red logo, red background, red cubes... just look at it. At least it kind of suits the industrial experimentation within the music I suppose, but who wants this thing on a t-shirt? This album was reissued on vinyl last year... the fanboy in me
almost picked it up, but I'm not paying 30 or so quid for artwork as lame as this, so my old CD will have to do!
BLACKFOOT - No Reservations (1975)
I'm no southern rock connoisseur by any means, but I've always really liked Blackfoot. However, I don't think many people would disagree with me when I say that their 1975 debut,
No Reservations, does not look like the product of a southern rock band! Looks more at home on a Kraftwerk album! I actually quite enjoy this record even if it lacks the balls of albums like
Strikes,
Marauder,
Tomcattin' etc.. I doubt
No Reservations caught the eye of many rock fans back in 1975, the album cover presumably having something to do with this.
DEEP PURPLE - Slaves and Masters (1990)
I feel like I've talked about this album a lot on this blog. I said in my review that
Slaves and Masters' album cover looks like something taken from Microsoft Clip Art. There
has to be some computer tampering going on here, right?! Early '90s computer art! I get what it's achieve, what with the crystal ball - but the execution is terrible. To be fair, as much as I LOVE Deep Purple, they're not the first band I think of when it comes to great album covers, but
Slaves and Masters is the worst culprit. On the plus side, it's no longer my least favourite Deep Purple album from a songs-perspective.
House of Blue Light has taken that slot now. But I can't ignore the fact
Slaves and Masters will always be terrible in terms of it's art.
DEF LEPPARD - High 'n' Dry (1981)
Another Hipgnosis misfire, I've never liked the cover to the Lepp's
High 'n' Dry. The album itself is fantastic of course - one of their best - but this is some ugly-ass artwork! The centre picture fits the title of the album, sure - a bloke diving into an empty swimming pool. But what's the deal with the black and white border of guys all looking upwards? What's that all about?! Is it incredibly obvious and I'm just an idiot?! Or is there genuinely no real correlation between the border and the picture in the middle?
DEICIDE - Banished by Sin (2024)
Lets be honest here - most people are not in favour of AI generated album covers. If an album came with 2 covers as an option, nobody is ever gonna pick the AI version even if the real deal looks awful. Well, except for Glen Benton that is, hence why Deicide's
Banished by Sin has made this list. At the very least this cover does kinda look like something Deicide would use, but why they didn't just use it as a template and then paint a real-life version of this demonic face (or whatever the hell it's supposed to be) is baffling. Anyway, using AI is just lazy, and considering Deicide are one of death metal's biggest bands, there's no way in hell they couldn't afford to hire a proper artist. Oh by the way, the music on this CD is actually really good!
GAMMA RAY - Sigh No More (1991)
Gamma Ray have some great album covers, but it took a few years for them to really up their game in this department. I mean, what's going on here?! The skeleton looks kinda plastic to me, and the backdrop combined with the colours is just ugly as hell. The original logo is... okay I guess? But it's completely overshadowed by the one they'd use on 1995's
Land of the Free, which they'd stick with for the rest of the career (for good reason). Unlike a lot of these picks,
Sigh No More just happens to be the worst Gamma Ray album in terms of music as well. How unfortunate! It's not a bad album per se, just "meh"!
GILLAN - Mr. Universe (1979)
I stand by the fact this is one of the best albums any member of Deep Purple released outside of said band. It's a really fun, manic and eccentric slab of wild hard rock/heavy metal, yet the photo of Ian himself on the cover makes it look like some sort of pop/easy-listening kind of affair! The man himself all dressed up, stood in front of the ocean? It gives me the impression that this is an album full of smooth ballads, when it's really not!
GRAVE DIGGER - Bone Collector (2025)
More AI bullshit, although this one isn't quite as offensive to my eyes as Deicide's
Banished by Sin.
Bone Collector's artwork never fails to disappoint, especially considering how many great covers Grave Digger have had in the past. The layout/concept is okay I guess; it does at least
look like a Grave Digger album with a quick glance, but as soon as you look at it for more than 10 seconds and notice odd details like the weird skeleton fingers, it's quite obviously been created with AI. Thankfully the music is pretty awesome here as always from Grave Digger.
JUDAS PRIEST - Priest... Live! (1987)
Demolition probably has the worst cover from their studio output, but
Priest... Live! is easily the worst Judas Priest album cover if we're counting live albums too. It doesn't even look official! If I knew nothing about this release, I'd assume it was a bootleg. Just look at the font - it's all lowercase, let alone the fact it doesn't even say 'JUDAS' anywhere!! Where's their iconic logo?! Hell, they didn't even use the old-school gothic text logo from the first 3 albums! The shitty font combined with the horrible beige colours and random smattering of hands makes me think this was thrown together by the record label at the last minute, without the band's approval. The actual album itself isn't one of their best live efforts either, although the music is still far better than the artwork, luckily.
MAGNUM - Magnum II (1979)
Ironically, Magnum boast some of the best album covers in the game - overall they're pretty damn reliable in that regard thanks to their usage of Rodney Matthews' outstanding fantasy art. But it wasn't until 1982's
Chase the Dragon when their healthy working relationship with Matthews began. About
Magnum II though, it failed to chart and I genuinely think this uninspired, boring album cover may have had something to do with that. It's not horrible to look at by any means, but if you were flicking through LPs in a record store back in '79, would this have really caught your eye? Shame, because the album itself is great - a fine continuation of their debut,
Kingdom of Madness. There's an updated 1988 reissue out there featuring Rodney Matthews artwork with a spaceship on the cover. It looks a million times cooler.
METAL CHURCH - Hanging in the Balance (1993)
Possibly one of the worst metal album covers of all time. Just look at it!! It's so bad that it even apparently played a part in Mike Howe's (RIP) decision to leave the band! Even the band's usually-cool logo looks unfinished, let alone the rest of this abomination!! It's crazy to me how some album covers get the go-ahead. Like, who the fuck sat down and approved this thing?! Again, the whole thing just screams "management-related miscommunication" to me. As for the music, don't skimp on this one. Prime Metal Church indeed! In fact, on Metal Archives, it's the second-highest rated album behind the debut! I don't agree with that personally, but the music is a trillion times better than the cover for sure!
MOTORHEAD - March or Die (1992)
Considering Motorhead have one of the all-time greatest mascots in music, Snaggletooth, I'm not too sure what happened here. It looks like a rough draft - like something the artist initially submitted before starting work on the final product. I guess it's not awful... but out of every incarnation of Snaggletooth we've seen,
March or Die is easily guilty of the worst rendition. Coincidentally, it's also my least favourite Motorhead album in general thanks to all the guest appearances and lacklustre production.
PANTERA - Reinventing the Steel (2000)
Ehh... I guess the concept for this album cover is okay, even if it has nothing to do with "reinventing steel"! Some dude (actually a photo of a partygoer at Phil Anselmo's house in real life) jumping through a bonfire, bottle of bourbon whiskey in hand. You can't see exactly what whiskey the guy is drinking because they pixelated it (to avoid trademark infringement), but in reality it's Wild Turkey. The intentional pixilation makes this cover look 10 times worse already, but the product as a whole just looks ugly. At least it does 'sorta fit with the whole redneck vibe of the band! It's definitely one of Pantera's weaker albums too, but I've gotta say I also find it to be a tad overrated. Pantera on autopilot maybe, but Dimebag's tone and playing is always fun to listen to.
QUEEN - The Miracle (1989)
Okay, so maybe this one is quite an obvious pick. Apparently the process required to create this album was complicated back in 1989, so I'll give
The Miracle some credit for that at least. But to me this is easily Queen's worst album cover (compare this to
News of the World!!). The way the band members' faces morph together is the stuff of nightmares, and I think that's because it hasn't been done in a cartoonish way. The concept is fine, and even if the process was technically-impressive for the time, the finished result is horrid!! Of course, the album itself is a good one. The first 6 Queen albums will always be the best to me, but every one of their records have at least a handful of good tracks on them. Except maybe
Hot Space.
RADIOHEAD - The Bends (1995)
I don't know what the general consensus is regarding
The Bends' album artwork, but personally I've always hated it. Apparently it's a CPR mannequin photographed from a TV screen. I always thought it was some crappy CGI image when I was a kid, so knowing the actual story makes it slightly better to me... but I still think it sucks! As for the music, well, I'm not a fan of Radiohead. I find them overrated, and the only reason I have this and
OK Computer in my collection is because I
tried to get into them many years ago, and failed.
RAVEN - Everything Louder (1997)
Raven were always one of the coolest New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands in my opinion. And I've always thought they sported one of the coolest band logos of the entire movement... but their albums covers, not so much. 1997's
Everything Louder is a bombastic slab of high-energy heavy metal, as you'd expect from this band. The album artwork on the other hand, just looks cheap and nasty! Get a pixelated ring of fire, copy and paste 3 fists, slap the logo in the centre and voila! One album cover ready to go! One
shitty album cover that is! It's quite clear the artwork was an afterthought. I've also got 2000's
One for All... I almost picked that one instead, but I've had
Everything Louder in my collection for far longer.
SAXON - Innocence Is No Excuse (1985)
Musically
Innocence Is No Excuse isn't exactly representative of Saxon as a whole - it was released during those few years in the '80s where they were trying to break the US, meaning the songs were more radio-friendly and the production much cleaner. Even so, this is still a metal album at the end of the day, yet it looks more like something an '80s pop star would put out! A girl holding an apple with the "S" of the Saxon logo engraved in it! The good news is that of those few shiny, radio-friendly '80s Saxon albums, this is one is by far the best. Very strong melodic heavy metal!
THIN LIZZY - Shades of a Blue Orphanage (1972)
Like I said about
Magnum II, if I was flicking through LPs in a shop back in 1972, I highly doubt I'd pick up Thin Lizzy's
Shades of a Blue Orphanage. Granted, they still weren't really a hard rock act at this stage in their career, blending a lot of Irish folk into their brand of rock. So the cover isn't necessarily "unfitting" for the music... but nothing stands out about it. It does 'sorta look like it could be some traditional folk/blues record from decades earlier though. I'm guessing the children in the photo are supposed to represent Phil Lynott, Brian Downey and Eric Bell? I dunno. Funnily enough,
Shades just happens to be my least favourite Lizzy record as well. I don't think the music is bad as such, just a bit tepid.
UFO - Mechanix (1982)
Sadly, UFO have a lot of bad album covers - but this one really takes the piss. Was this album cover thrown together in 2 minutes?! I'm not against simplicity - sometimes it works rather well.
Mechanix is simplistic, yet still manages to look uglier than Ron Perlman! The whole thing kinda reminds me a little of 1940s American advertisement posters - normally that would be a compliment, but in this instance it's not. Yet again though,
Mechanix is a case of unrepresentative outer presentation, because the songs are actually very good. In general, I think this is an underrated album from the Paul Chapman guitar era.
