Metal's Most Notorious Covers

10/31/08 12:03pm

by Keith Carman (CHARTattack)

A Halloween Special: The Best Of The Worst

Heavy metal and Halloween go hand-in-hand. From early rock-inspired slasher films such as The Slumber Party Massacre, which featured a serial killer offing teens with a guitar/power drill, to Trick Or Treat's rockin' soundtrack, Rob Zombie uniting ghostly imagery with crunching guitars, and whatever Gwar do, having some kind of gory aesthetic tied in to your double-bass drums and wailin' solos is vital to heavy metal.

While most bands generally have fun uniting such extreme artistic endeavours, simple cartoonish drawings of beasties and innards just don't cut it for some. They have to take it to the next level in a bid to outdo one another, thereby creating some truly gross graphics that work perfectly with All Hallows Eve. In that spirit, let's take a closer look at some of metal's most notorious album covers.

Mayhem — Dawn Of The Black Hearts
(Warhammer) 1995
Quite possibly one of the world's most infamous bootleg albums, Dawn Of The Black Hearts is known more for its cover than the music within. The cover bears a photo of late singer Dead after his shotgun-and-knife-induced suicide as taken by bandmate Euronymous (allegedly before calling the authorities so he could also scoop up fragments of brain and skull to make a stew). Dawn Of The Black Hearts isn't just amazingly horrific artwork, it's a sadistic reality that set a new, unequalled level of notoriety for black metal.




Carcass — Symphonies Of Sickness
(Earache) 1989
As extreme and brutish as the new grind-gore genre it perfectly represented, Carcass' sophomore effort featured a most disturbing collage of autopsy and slaughterhouse photos arranged in an almost serial killer fashion (note the supplanting of eyes and teeth over almost every image). Created by the aptly named Gruesome Graphics Inc., the full-colour work was quickly banned in Great Britain and wasn't released domestically in most other countries — only being available as an import. Not even time could kill the impact of this one, either. By its 1995 reissue, Symphonies Of Sickness was still too much, and earned itself a cardboard sleeve emblazoned with "Original Artwork Inside" so it could hit shelves again. Not bad for a bunch of strict vegetarians.

Impaled — The Dead Shall Dead Remain
(Deathvomit) 2000
Doing Carcass one over, California's Impaled maximized the gross-o-meter with The Dead Shall Dead Remain. The scene of a toilet strewn with bloody intestines and feces set the pace for a succession of disgusting covers, including one of a fetus giving the finger through a severed mid-section (Medical Waste). Not only did The Dead Shall Dead Remain reinvigorate truly gory artwork and a return to realism over cartoonish drawings, but it also perfectly represented Impaled's refusal to take their beloved genre with anything more than a massive grain of blood-caked salt.

Cannibal Corpse — Eaten Back To Life
(Metal Blade) 1990
Many would select Tomb Of The Mutilated, which depicts two defiled corpses arranged in a state of cunnilingus, as the epitome of Cannibal Corpse's grossness. But were it not for the graphic depiction of a zombie eating its own rotting innards on the band's 1990 debut, the bar wouldn't have been set for artist Vincent Locke to continually outdo himself. It also started a trend for all early Cannibal Corpse albums: they were banned by various stores and/or government institutions. Germany was particularly uppity about this one, though after years of availability through import, they revoked the ban in 2006.

Brujeria — Matando Gueros
(Roadrunner) 1993
The cover of this debut album boasted a hand holding up a freshly decapitated and thoroughly abused head. A banning from, like, everywhere naturally ensued.

Slayer — Reign In Blood
(Def Jam) 1986
Sometimes inference is far more disturbing than overtness. Reign In Blood may not be instantly disgusting, but when one delves further into this cryptic collage of a Satanic Mass, it's most certainly unnerving. Artist Larry Carroll (who would create many more Slayer covers) succeeded at indelibly burning the image of a goat head-wearing black priest being carried about by a collection of demonic beings through a pool of blood in what is ostensibly hell into the brain. Gross? No. Unforgettably eerie? No doubt.

Obituary — Slowly We Rot
(Roadrunner) 1989
A lone teenage body lies decomposing in a rancid gutter as the band's piercing logo drips blood and the album title — written in slime and sinew — proudly declares that we all turn to such a putrid mess. Nice.

Misfits — Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood
(Plan 9) 1983
While not an outright metal album, the impact of Earth A.D. was so vital to the world of metal (we wouldn't have Metallica without 'em, good or bad as that is), it deserves inclusion. Not unlike Reign In Blood, Earth A.D.'s power lies in its foreshadowing over explicitness. The apocalyptic vision of zombies rising from a sludgy sewer in various states of decay and poised to attack humanity sets the mind ablaze with wonder. Yes, the artwork itsef is somewhat juvenile, but this was the early '80s, afterall.

AC/DC — If You Want Blood You've Got It
(Epic) 1978
While it may seem tame by today's standards, when put in the context of the fashionable, disco-tainted late '70s, AC/DC's first live album featured a remarkably explicit and unforgettable cover. Portraying singer Bon Scott as a maniac, sadistically eradicating guitarist Angus Young with his own "axe," the schoolboy is impaled and shocked, a motif which carries through to the back cover where we find Young's lifeless body sprawled across the stage.

The Beatles — Yesterday And Today
(Capitol) 1966
Argue it all you want, but it took serious bollocks for these pretty boys to release an album depicting themselves as butchers covered in blood, meat and severed doll parts back in 1966. Naturally, it was banned, setting the bell curve for metal bands to top, which took, oh, two decades. That's pretty fuckin' metal.