Monday, March 31, 2008

Great moments in art history: More shitty record covers

Meliah Rage- Solitary Solitude
The cover is bad enough (I believe it depicts Phil Rind from Sacred Reich trying to force his way through an opening that is too small for his body to fit through). But the title is far worse, surpassing even Discharge-like levels of stupidity and redundancy.



Virus - S/T
Obviously the overall level of craft here is pretty low, which is funny enough. But let's focus specifically on his gun. I like the poorly rendered radar dish or whatever on the top. The artist couldn't even get the pokey thing centered in the saucer... and the gun in general looks like it's melting or something. Protip: use a ruler to make straight lines!





Psychic Possession - Toxin Diffusion
Now I'm not really sure what's going on here. The guy in the front shined his flashlight on something, and now he's all googly-eyed. Who knows what he saw. Maybe some kind of Lovecraftian horror, maybe it was just Shane Embury with his shirt off. But either way, I'm thinking he's a goner.



??? - Possessed
Not really sure what the name of this band is. "Assplunder" maybe? Who knows. But this guy put on his best leather pirate shirt and made a silly face for the cover of his demo. I like how he folded his arms like that kind of like how RUN-DMC used to do.




Pantera - Far Beyond Driven
Well first of all, let me just say that this is hands down one of my favorite albums of all time. "Strength Beyond Strength," "Slaughtered," "5 Minutes Alone"... this record just completely slays from beginning to end. It might be Pantera's finest moment. But the cover art... not so much. Vinnie Paul: "Hey, hey... guys! How about an X-ray of a skull, but it's got a fuckin' SCREW in it's head! Because that's what our riffs are like! A screw in right in your motherfuckin' head!!"

22 comments:

  1. the guy with the googly eyes in the best. i admire a band that can allow some humor into their otherwise deep political commentary. i miss the 80s...all metal bands were way into toxic waste.

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  2. The black metal band is Tsjuder. I have no idea why I know that.

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  3. Tsjuder, eh? I love when the band's name/logo is so wannabee-artistically gnarled, elongated and thorned that you can't even read it. I saw a poster for a metal show with 8 bands, 6 of which I couldn't f'n tell who the F they were!
    Probably "Gang Raped by Corpses" or something like that anyways. Makes up in the "hardness" dept. for having to wear a pink shirt all day working at Baskin Robbins.

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  4. for an angry teenager, that screw in the head could've stood for someone screwing with your head. eg. teachers and parents making you do homework.

    "assplunder". ha-ha!!!

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  5. Tsjuder's covers didn't get any better either (and neither did their music, but you saw that one coming.) They had a promo with an actual animated gif on the cover. No joke. An animated gif.

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  6. The Virus album was actually called Force Recon - at least it was in the UK. I might still have the vinyl knocking around somewhere. The title track had the lyrical genius chorus of
    Force Recon - Die Vietcong!!
    Their other albums "Pray for War" and "Lunacy" had equally bad cover art. You wouldn't want to mess with Henry Heston though.

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  7. A screw in the head is the very essence of deep teenage thought. But let's reflect a moment on how how old our beloved CFH were when this came out...

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  8. the meliah rage cover kinda looks like nathan explosion

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  9. Not to mention Meliah Rage were also complete shit aha!
    The Psychic Possessor album is killer, tho. I don't even know if it was ever released on Cd?

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  10. More awful Black Metal cover-art:

    http://static.metal-archives.com/images/7/0/9/2/70920.jpg

    It's terrific.

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  11. perhaps i spoke too soon. it seems like the screw in the head means something different to everyone- like all great pieces of art!

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  12. oh, and it's funny you should post that last cover, because i have that saved on my desktop for my next round of awful cover art! it's one of the worst ever. i love how you can see the part where the top of the shovel or whatever used to be on that handle was mounted to it.

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  13. i love how the dude wears a sweatshirt.

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  14. Psychic Possession >>>>>>> Pantera

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  15. Meliah Rage definitely should have stuck with the undead Indian motif. Also, that Pantera cover is actually better than the original concept (http://www.sleazeroxx.com/censored/far.shtml).

    Looking forward to the next round. I hope you remember to include Akilla (http://www.metalpage.de/bigcover/22.jpg). It's officially the worst metal album cover ever.

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  16. What about Dwarr's "Starting Over"? http://static.metal-archives.com/images/7/5/5/6/75569.jpg - right hand on left arm, right?

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  17. Phil Rind - hahahaa!! Thats great.

    The Psychic Possessor record is amazing. I always thought this cover was funny too. I don't know if anyone else has the record, you can't really see this in the scan, but his eye is actually out of the socket - just hanging there!! I love how he seems to be pretending it doesn't hurt that bad. What makes an eye just pop out of socket?? Isn't that the kind of thing the mask is there to prevent?? Also the little tube going from his mask to his chest (what would that be for anyway??) has been disconnected and there's blood pouring out!! So I don't know exactly what happened but I think it was a little more than just a shirtless Embury sighting.

    I think the Virus artwork is pretty great. Their first two records were just brutal and raw as fuck. And the artwork matched em perfectly. Word em up.

    I'm not even gonna try to defend the others..

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  18. ha ha ha
    psychic possessor and virus slay i think i have virus'lunacy LP which has some equally awesome cover art.

    yew!

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  19. I'd have to say Pantera's "Metal Magic" cover is way better than "Far Beyond Driven"

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  20. Loving the info on this website , you have done outstanding job on the blog posts.

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