10 Best Hard Rock Album Covers Of All Time

By the early 80's, metal was just beginning to find its feet in the mainstream. While bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath laid the foundations for what metal would become, Iron Maiden were one of the bands that helped launch the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

Since the band didn't feel exactly photogenic, each of their album's feature the lovable mascot Eddie the Head. While each of Iron Maiden's covers shows the zombified beast in prime form, nothing shows the star power of this signature humanoid quite like Number of the Beast. Each of the album's prior to this one show Eddie out for blood and ready to kill, but this one tops them by making Eddie the root of all evil.

Set against the backdrop of a black night sky, Eddie looks absolutely vicious as he operates Satan like a puppet to reek havoc on the Earth below. Since each of the songs on the album deal with atrocities in one way or another, it made sense to turn the band's face from a gnarly punk to evil incarnate. There were many great Eddie features to follow in the coming years, but metalheads would never get anything more menacing than this.