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Monday, 8 July 2013

Terrible Metal Album Covers Chapter 17

  I was originally planning to do a piece on the Bollwood movie I just watched but I think I'll have to leave that until I'm slightly less bewildered.
 So in the meantime, how's about I break out another tasty helping of poor artwork, indifferent design and generally weak understanding of aesthetics?
 My usual warning applies: Bad album cover does not always equal terrible band. If a band really are shite I'll let you know, ok?
 Now grab a tasty beverage and a snack of your choice and let's appreciate some "art"

Axis Powers - Pure Slaughter (Sweden 2005)

awful heavy metal album cover 
 This Swedish Death Metal crew may be attempting to update the works of Hieronymous Bosch and Breugel. Or they could have just asked the artist to "Just put some cool shit on there."   I'm hoping this isn't what the artist sees every time he closes his eyes. 


Brainfever - Capture The Night (Germany 1984)

Giant nudist has a painful collision with a curiously small stray moon. 
Call me picky but any album cover that features a man's asscrack automatically goes into the category "Terrible" 
I could do an entire post devoted to artistic man-butts on album covers but frankly I can only cope with one at a time.

Tegen Hart - Noise Underground (Italy 1990)

So we have a clock and...some sort of ruined building that's clearly a huge safety risk - that chunk of wall is going to come down any day now. Think of the children!
And if you enlarge the cover you will see that the strange object standing in the doorway is a monk with- apparently - a bin liner over his head. 
That's Early 80s Music Video levels of WTF? right there. 
Don't do drugs, kids. They are bad for you and make you pretentious as F***

Gehenna- En Busca Del Valle De Gehenna (Mexico 1987)

At least he's wearing pants.Please don't ask me why he has a jug for a face.

V/A - Italian Metal (1985)

Can you work out whether she's supposed to be rally big or just quite close? Me neither. 
Also, Human anatomy does not work like that.
Her head is too big for the rest of her, she seems to have dislocated a hip and her arms are different sizes.
The small matter of her navel being absent is trifling in comparison. 

 

Mama - Heavy Rock And Roll (Poland 1987)


To me this album cover does not say "Heavy Metal" 
This says "Pretentious art-rock bollocks played by unsmiling men in sharp suits" 
and probably as much fun to listen to as hearing your boss in the cubicle next door getting rid of last night's curry the hard way.

And finally...
Two bands, one badly drawn album cover.

Cobra (Peru) & Skull (Colombia) - Poison In The Bones (Split album 2009)

And the obvious question is...Who do the hands belong to?
Whoever he may be, he needs to trim his nails and get the frig away from the damn poisonous snake!

That's all folks.

3 comments:

  1. On the Gehenna cover, I first thought that was a little kid humping an alligator. Turns out it's just a tree. Well, I guess that's kinda better...

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  2. Album covers are very important actually. Years ago when I was just looking for different types of music to buy and listen to, I based a lot of my choices on the album covers. Very bad looking covers made me think that the artist or singer was rubbish. Not the right thing to think, but a good quality album cover does help. I mean, look at the last picture of the scull and hand - it looks as if a child drew it for school homework about having a nightmare or something (not suitable for professional stuff) I wouldn't buy it based on that, but it just might be a brilliant album.

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  3. You never disappoint BigD, but I sometimes wonder whether there'll be any permanent damage.

    I guess my favourite here is Italian Metal, even without the navel. I just love spagetti & I've always liked the Italians; so damn down to earth!
    Cheers, ic

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