10 Highly Underrated Rock Music Album Covers
2. Leviathan - Mastodon
If you're going to name an album after a biblical sea monster, you'd better be prepared with a kickass cover to go with it.
The masters of sludge metal Mastodon got seriously weird with their 2004 sophomore release. Leviathan is a concept album, but not just any concept album; one that tells the story of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.
For those who don't know, the book is the story of a fanatical sea captain on a relentless pursuit to capture the giant white whale that took his leg.
Drawing inspiration from this, the Leviathan cover shows an epic battle between a similarly-shaded whale and a mighty ship. The beast bursts through the waters in dramatic fashion, as the ship is left in splinters and tatters behind it.
Created by artist Paul Romano, the cover art for Leviathan is timeless. It looks like its right out of the 18th century and could easily have been commissioned to detail a real battle between man and nature.
It's big, it's bombastic, and it's utterly mesmerising; exactly like Mastodon themselves.