Metal Enterprises put some of the most half-assed artwork ever on albums.


(this one didn't even have song titles)

I can't put my finger on it, but there's something somewhat endearing about a few of those covers, especially the bottom three. It's like someone completely incompetent really trying to create a work of mystique (kind of like their "fake" albums); we can at least smile at the effort.

Don't laugh at me but I had never seen the "Origin of the Feces" artwork close-up and I always thought that was a guy's belly-button

Your anatomy is way off.

Despite the fact that the type used in the title(?) makes it look like they just copied the cover from a 70's hardback horror novel (actually, they probably did), the image itself is pretty awesome.

The Stormtrooper cover's pretty cool, too. Very old-school.

Anyway, I can't believe I forgot about Metal Enterprises!

The cover of Extreme Napalm Terror's second album is infinitely worse, too:
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/8/3/4/4/83444.jpg

I mean... half the images look like they came from a textbook (seriously, the food displays are like the images seen in every science and nutrition textbook from my years in middle/high school). It's such a phoned-in coffee table "grindcore collage" album cover that it's just embarrassing.
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Also, that Pungent Stench cover is great! Tasteless, yeah, but also effective... it has a genuine ugliness that saves it from being just plain old tacky, and I can appreciate that.
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Even though I like Nuit Noire a lot, this album art is incredibly cheap-looking:


I guess it's reminiscent of LLN/French BM with its photocopied appearance, but it literally looks like the images were laid out on spreadsheet paper... um, wat.

The photos themselves are pretty silly, too... though I suppose they are fitting, considering the bands image/themes.

I don't know, but on the other hand it definitely made want to listen to it. It's hilariously brilliant and it made me curious about the actual music.



Glad I'm not the only one



These three did too, especially the last one. The "Random" writing/logo sells the deal

Totally this one

it's nonsense

I don't want to go looking for any examples of this, but I think you all know them well enough: those countless goregrind/pornogrind album covers that are just goatse or tubgirl or 2girls1cup etc with the band's illegible logo copied and pasted onto it. I can't criticize them for being disgusting/offensive, because that's kind of the point, but I can criticize them for being fucking lazy.

The worst kind I've seen in gore/pornogrind are pictures of real dead people or actual rapes or abortions or anything like that. That's just tasteless and pointless.

^to be fair, the point is to be tasteless, so it cannot be called "pointless", even if it is trite and boring and lazy and distasteful.
It serves a purpose, however "good" or "bad" it is.

I think it's the best black metal album cover ever released, without taking the bootleg aspect into consideration. And I think Dead would have loved to know that his body would be pictured in such a position. I hate gore pictures, but for some reason, the disgusting aspect is transcended on this cover. Death is plainly aetheticized, and that's what about original Mayhem was all about.

Strange that no one has mentioned yet this cover
and again, never would buy an album with a cover like that?

No way! I love this cover. Especially when it's faded or discoloured.

Some personal "favorites"...



Weirdness for weirdness' sake... I enjoy their albums immensely, but their coverart always sucked. It ranged from "pretty unremarkable and nondescript" (on "Expositionsprophylaxe") to, well, this. It's almost as if the label doesn't want you to buy this, it's that ugly...



This could be good, but the framing of the pic and the choice of awful title-font and -color ruin it completely...



It's... red. I'm not even shure what I'm looking at there. Puked genitals? I couldn't tell.



Sorry.

That dude's about to become double-dead.



Seems like a ham-handed attempt for the band to create a mascot.



Good music inside, but a definitive example of how ludicrous trends from 25+ years ago look today. I had a friend who what a shirt of this album, really confused me why he would want something so ugly on his body.



This one is more confusing than ugly. It took me forever to figure out exactly what the picture was depicting, and finding out that they were severed hands didn't really bring any peace of mind. Is this some sort of medieval torture? Being hung by your hands and then they're cut off and left swinging in the wind? Seriously, if someone knows what this is supposed to be, tell me.



I don't really expect anyone to know this one, they're a band from the Philippines that asked me to review the album. The music isn't too bad, but the cover... uhh.... I've realized that the album art is so bad that it makes me listen to the album less than I should be, which isn't really fair to the band.

Well, they asked me to review their album as well But it's only now that I'm looking at their artwork closely! Holyshit, that's weird.

This came out in 2008. There is no excuse for this shit.

The cover for the new album isn't much better.

Completely ludicrous, yes, but the album rocks my cock

I'm a bit lazy (and my Internet is slow) to go quote those who commented on the Post Mortem album I posted.
Heh, to each their own I guess. The music is completely the opposite to what the cover may imply by the way.

Oh! And how could I forget the beloved Immortal and their numerous covers in this style



I mean...they are definitely not good looking, they don't look badass and their imagery is not the coolest thing they have come up with (that's their music). So why do they insist in putting pictures of themselves glaring at you or someone behind?

Of course, a lot of bands have done worse, but it's specially boring when you consider they could and HAVE offered you stuff like this before.


Now, THAT'S cool cover art.

...Of course, boring cover pictures seemed to be an Abbath thing...maybe he wants to prove that his albums are all about the music inside?

Reminded this one today...

I think the I cover art is supposed to represent Abbath's corpsepaint. It does look rather similar to an I.



And if you use the Limited Edition cover art, you get a nice grey/silver I.

Now there's a man who needs to start wearing a shirt for sure.

I'm going for the dull just plain... lazy/shitty inspired by the new shit I got in the mail


Legion: Conqueror


What the fuck is this sloppy mess supposed to be? I barely make a face out in the middle but that's probably my mind matrixing making me think it's something. and it's just so pixalated. that picture looks better than the actual album in my hand.


Lowbrow: Sex. Violence. Art.


"We finished recording but we still need some cover art..."
"Just take a picture of the paneling at my house and throw the logo on it"
"fuck, works for me"

UGH


edit: There are a handful of covers in here that I actually like, some because I don't think they are bad, others because it's part of the charm cause they are so derped.
And I find it funny how people going X album rocks, I don't care about the cover... yea we know there are plenty of good albums listed... we are talking about the artwork.

Despite it being in my top three metal albums, the cover for mandylion by the gathering is a ton of crap. Don't even know what it's meant to b.

You think this is comparable to that Twilight Ophera cover or Riot artwork?

Ancient's Mad Grandiose Bloodfiends cover is awful...then I've heard some people say the music is even worse.

Going back to Immortal... They released Damned In Black with this artwork:



When the infinitely superior limited edition artwork is this:



Why Immortal? Why!?

I always thought they had some great album covers, but this one was disappointing

lol this one is just great, as if Mortis didn't looked retarded enough already

^^^I knew this reminded me of something

I went through my vinyl to find a good one for this thread. Here is one from Heavy Load

Actually, let's rip on progressive metal album covers some more.

Here's another one by Pain of Salvation:



More children. My guess is that since a lot of these prog metal bands like to be all about getting in touch with our emotions so we can all feel better about ourselves (*insert George Carlin jacking off stage motion here*), the children are supposed to represent innocence. Doesn't make it less of a crock of shit.

This one doesn't even have any effort put forth:

Maybe you'll discover emotions when you're older. That doesn't make 'em a crock of shit though.

It comes across as support group bullshit that doesn't appeal to me due to my excess of pride. In a way, it's not that dissimilar to metalcore's approach to it: whiny and angst ridden.

For the prog-metal ones; the Pain of Salvation one fits the concept, and the LTE one is just a bunch of guys jamming so they probably put as much work into the cover art as they did the song arrangements. It's still not terrible.

Yeah, the coverart on the european edition (censored ?) was actually better than the original one for once...

Always hated these artworks! always loved the albuma! shame really imo

I posted a pic of this earlier in the thread, but I put spoiler tags on it because it's borderline NSFW. I shouldn't have bothered though, lol.

what happened to his hands?


classic