10 Hilariously Terrible Album Covers And Why They Exist

5. Iron Maiden €“ Dance Of Death

The words "Iron Maiden" when used alongside "album artwork" tend to conjure images of epic, colourful drawings and inventive depictions of Eddie the Head, the band's incredibly expressive mascot. Yet look hard and enough you'll find a few major duds, the worst of which is the cover for Dance Of Death, the band's thirteenth studio album released in 2003. It's understandable that the band might have wanted to shake things up around the turn of the century, given the increasing use of computer graphics and the relative cheapness with which they could be produced. Seeing a hellish Iron Maiden cover depicted in glorious computer graphics is conceptually very interesting, it's just a pity that the execution was so laughably poor. Turns out there's a reason for it, however. The band asked artist David Patchett to provide the cover art, providing a few general pointers (at the end of the day, it's pretty obvious what kind of thing Iron Maiden likes visually). Unfortunately for Patchett, the band randomly decided mid-way through the artist's drafting process to use a completely unfinished version of the artwork, which was still in need of substantial work. Patchett was so mortified by this decision that he actually requested his name by removed from the album's credits so as not to be tied to such shoddy work, and he was correct to do so: the artwork was received extremely negatively by fans and critics alike.