10 Worst Album Covers In Rock

A lot of extracurriculars tend to go into an album's development. Aside from the massive amounts of overdubbing, songwriting, and time spent in the studio, a lot of it does also end up coming down to what catches the listener's eye before listening to it. Then again, there's definitely a right and a wrong way to catch a person's eye.

Throughout the years, there have been some truly reprehensible album covers to come out of the rock genre. No matter what kind of idea they may have had to start with, somehow these awful pictures managed to make the cut. While it's excusable for most of the more underground artists to just work with what they have, these are actual big name artists who could easily paid a better artist to make something worthwhile for them. As it stands though, this was the product that we were left with...all the disgusting pictures that you could ask for.

Granted, an album itself can withstand any bad album cover. For as much as people might like to take shots at the cover, it usually holds up so long as the music kicks ass. However, regardless of quality or even the band in question, these acts should definitely know better than letting these pieces of trash go to print.

As metal started to get its feet, Judas Priest were the ones who really set everything in motion. Whereas other acts of the time like Black Sabbath pushed the boundaries for what heavy music could be, Priest unpacked everything and gave the music the fangs and screams that it really deserved. You'd say that now...but not if you took one look at their debut record.

On the surface, most of Rocka Rolla is already way off from the metal we would get used to, instead being a bit of bluesy hard rock with Rob Halford not dialed in just yet. Though the music is already pretty contentious for what it is, the cover itself is the main antithesis of what metal should be. Up until this point, metal album covers always had a sense of dread on Sabbath albums, and yet this feels like the most generic piece of merch that Priest ever put out, complete with a bottle cap that Coca Cola might want to have a chat about.

Then again, Priest would recover from this very nicely going forward, with both a lot more dour album covers on Sad Wings of Destiny as well as trading in their threads for the leather and spikes that we all know and love today. For as much as Priest can be a religion to some people, this isn't going to inspire some metallic devotion from anyone anytime soon.