10 Classic Albums With Terrible Album Covers
9. Hemispheres - Rush
After conquering the prog rock world with 2112, Rush used the next few years to get really weird. Starting with A Farewell to Kings, the band's sound ended up getting too overblown for its own good, with the band themselves complaining about how complicated their own tunes were. These albums still hold up in retrospect, but Hemispheres marks the height of weird Rush.
Though the album already has a high bar for your average rock fan to clear, it doesn't really let up when it comes to the cover. While the band have always picked more outlandish artwork for their covers, this piece of surrealism was a lot to digest, complete with a naked man pointing to a well-dressed gentleman while standing on top of a brain. Given the amount of subtext you need for some Rush songs, this album will either make all the sense in the world or just baffle the hell out of you whenever you see it.
It also doesn't help matters when you see the mammoth lengths of some of the songs and even an instrumental which admits in its title to being self indulgent. Many may not have understood this album's brilliance back in the day, but it was hard enough understanding the artwork itself, much less the actual music inside.