They must have followed this thread and thought "we can do worse!"

The latter is standard for italic cyrillic fonts though, and the former is at least very common.

Except that Monty Python is usually funny. What the hell is a "Dungeon Wolf" anyway? That makes about as much sense as "Falcon Hoof".

Master of Disguise was already in here. I recognized it immediately. https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/S ... guise/4720

There's just so much going on in that photo. Why does it say "Relciak???"

As Atrocity's music worsened, so too did their album art. Naturally this pile of garbage was released by Napalm.

I guess that might be the pseudonym of the artist who made the cover? Normally it shouldn't be that prominent on an album cover, but there it's as big as all the other text.

OK, I DO like the hot woman in armor, but the rest DOES look like shit.

Is she going to KILL the guy in front of her? Why is she sitting down? What's with the roses, coins, and glass of wine?

Are the coins a reference to the "Thirty Pieces of Silver"/Judas story? And, of so, what does that have to do with a bunch of Knights?

True!

He looks more like a "Dungeon Bear", anyway.

"If it's a Hot Woman on a CD cover for no reason, it must be Napalm!"

Unless I'm mistaken, that's Dita Von Teese, who was Marilyn Manson's wife for a time. Regardless of who she married though, she was a pretty prolific gothic cheesecake model and having her on a cover of an album comprised of pop cover tunes with a gothic twist....is actually pretty on target I think.

I actually have this album, although when I picked it up I was actually looking for Blut or Hallucinations, but could find neither, just that one. It's not a bad album, but it's not the death metal I was looking for.

Putting hot women who have nothing to do with the artist on album covers is a trend that took off in the 1950s. Based on my RateYourMusic ratings, it's rare for it to coincide with music I consider great.

Why does the cover have to relate to the artist? Can't it relate to the content of the music? Why can't an album with songs about sex and women have a sexy woman on the cover?

There's nothing that say you have to have the cover relate to one thing or another. Unless you want to complain about Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" not being about the band? Or the Content? And while Motley Crue could have put a hot woman on the cover of "Girls, Girls, Girls", they did just fine without.

Because if that is your only qualifier, you can't complain about The Red Hot Chilli Peppers "Abbey Road" EP. You know, the one where they recreate the Beatle's iconic cover....but only while wearing a single tube sock each? That's a 'sexy' cover that has everything to do with the artists!

And claiming this took off in the 50's is a straw man argument. Before 1948 the 'album' as we know it now, simply didn't exist yet. So based on your conjecture, we can just simplify things by saying putting hot women on album has existed ever since it was possible to put a hot woman on an album.

Getting back to the topic though, putting something sexy on the cover of the album can be part of an artists vision, some sleazy record execs attempt to do a bait and switch or just try to game a few extra sales, but that doesn't mean it fits the topic unless it's a serious "Bad, Ugly or WTF?" and the qualifier 'sexy' tends to negate the application of the first two of those unless it's so far outside the norm as to be a "WTF?!".

So something like Atrocity's two "Werk" albums, don't count. The cover does reflect the content and the models are in no way bad or ugly. Nor does it count as offtopic or extreme enough to be a WTF?! The Scorpion's "Virgin Killer" or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers "Abbery Road" EP both however are outside the usual bounds of public taste and do more or less qualify as "WTF?!" even if they aren't exactly BAD or UGLY. Jane's Addiction's "Ritual De Lo Habitual" (The original cover) would also meet that definition.

Some argument could be made for something like the Chilli Pepper's "Mother's Milk" album, but I think that's so mild that it doesn't really qualify in s reasonable persons view. (Although I'm not going to say there aren't a ton of unreasonable people out there, the PMRC's existence is good enough proof of that.)

It doesn't. I was just making observations in response to the crack about it having to be from Napalm Records. When they first started printing picture sleeves with people on them, there weren't many albums, sure, but for a significant amount of time the people pictured were almost exclusively the artists themselves. That's all I was referring to.

Savage Circus - Of Doom and Death

The three elements (logo, title and picture) do not fit together at all. Plus the picture itself is fugly as uck.

Wow, that went over my head like a Chinese weather balloon....I can't say I ever really noticed that trend myself. Although I pretty much started with cassettes and went to CD's and bypassed Vinyl entirley other than a couple of 45's very early on. So if these picture sleeves were on LP's I wouldn't have payed attention to them at all.

...the only LP's I payed attention to were the classic Iron Maiden covers. And that was mainly for the incredible artwork for the albums "Number of the Beast" through "Fear Of the Dark". Once they strayed from the drawn artwork, I thought the quality dropped off and the covers got mostly boring.

Yeah, looks like the 90's horrible CGI making yet another unwelcome appearance. I never understood how anyone ever like this type of artwork. It was just as bad then as it is now.

3D video games had some value at the time, but even that looked barely tolerable at the time. (Like the original Resident Evil for example.) 3D in games had more value due to being a 3D game field/play space. It surely wasn't because it looked good. Even the best wasn't that great. (Thinking of the original X-Wing, which really was very minimal in graphics, but the 3d flight was a blast to play.)

it's barely even ART, much less COVER ART!

Low-hanging fruit, but I like that this one is in the Archives:

I guess they're going for a retro arcade style, but the execution ended up looking cheesy.


Another gold cover!

What, video games are not art, you say? It's definitely an unusual cover especially over 40 years later, but this kind of stuff was high-tech in 1981 and it's not lazily done. Looks like the "logo" and album title are actually on the same screen as the Space Invader-esque game instead of being superimposed onto the image in post. The only thing that sticks out IMO, is the red aeroplane, although it makes sense (Barón Rojo, Red Baron).

I honestly like the video game artwork, it even looks accurate to games of the era (which is definitely a compliment, considering how rare accurate depiction of games can be, especially ones with pixel art, they even got the scanlines right). It wouldn't look out of place between screenshots of other games of the time.

At least it looks a lot better than the Red Baron game from 1978!

Video games ARE art, but THAT looks like a poorly done crosstitch!

Agreed! But BARELY.

OK so it's far from being an atrocity, but I always struggled to understand the cover to Sorrow and Extinction. It wasn't until I got it on record that I figured out what it was, but then it just made even less sense. The figure is opening his robe to reveal...the night sky behind the robe, which then continues from the background into the foreground and in front of the planets surface. And also that same night sky is also where the face should be, so the robe has no back?

I get the whole "revealing a hidden door" thing, but the rest of it just gives me a headache lol

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/P ... ion/325211

That would have made a better cover for a paperback fantasy novel!

That's what video games used to look like if you took a photo of the screen.

That Pallbearer cover is awesome. I only disagree with the font choice and the placement of the text.

The worst thing about this is the band name, which gives me an aneurysm: Twilight WarBathöry

My Dying Bride - Trinity (US CD Edition)



A pretty hideous and somewhat lazy idea of putting the band's three EP covers over the grave shapes, and most of them don't even fit and show the whole image so it just doesn't work. The American flag is even more of a bizarre choice, since the band is from the UK. Maybe it was on the original photograph and they didn't want to take it out, but it almost looks added on.

The only thing I like about it is the band logo, which didn't make an appearance on the more common cover art for this compilation.

This cover is from an album released in 1981, videogames looked like this for god sake!

Replying to say that this album actually rules alot

I actually really love this cover. it's charming as fuck, and quirky.

I don't mind it either - If I came across this at a record fair at a decent price, I'd probably even pick it up on whim lol

I love Lugubrum. Especially the Barditus era stuff. But this album's art is so weak compared to their other ones.

What the fuck is this... [NSFW - Nudity]

Wow, a cover as crass, tasteless and terrible as the musician's beliefs!

Puppets are NEVER good cover art.

Notice how Master of Puppets features NO ACTUAL PUPPETS? Learn from Metallica, folks.

"What the fuck is that?"

This fucking guy loves himself.