Since the dawn of rock and roll, there have been detractors who heard the devil in the music. Years later the offshoot “heavy metal” began to take shape and officially embraced the idea of horror in popular music, featuring disturbing lyrics, confrontational themes and Grand Guignol album covers that many well-intentioned parents wouldn’t even allow in their house. It was these albums that made metal feel dangerous to both naysayers and the avid fan base alike, and helped forged a bond between the lovers of the macabre and the lovers of banging one’s head.
The history of heavy metal is rife with these incredible album covers. Many of them are morbid, and many are willfully obscene. Today we throw up the horns in celebration of the scariest heavy metal album covers we could find in our collections. This is the artwork that even freaks us out, from instilling the basic chills to making us want to puke.
And let us commence shouting at the devil with…
13. Toxic Holocaust: ‘An Overdose of Death’
Toxic Holocaust is a thrash metal group that hails from Portland, Oregon. We don’t know if wolves are a typical daily problem up in Portland, but clearly the members of Toxic Holocaust have some anxieties about them. The radioactive greens and gloomy purples contrast sharply, almost disgustingly, making the feral faces of these beasties pop right off of this cover for the band’s third album. It’s almost hard to look at An Overdose of Death. Now just imagine that this is the last image you ever see…
12. Marilyn Manson: ‘Portrait of American Family’
Marilyn Manson’s first album, before his particular brand of freak show gothica went mainstream-ish, was originally supposed to be called The Manson Family Album. That must have been “too intense.” But that didn’t stop Manson from releasing his debut record with this unsettling diorama as its cover. Note the rictus smiles and anatomically correct baby; it’s almost whimsical in the abstract, but when you put yourself in the shoes that poor elementary school teacher who will have to call this kid’s mother, and what must be going through their mind right now, a small wave of panic may overtake you. Something is wrong here.
11. Cattle Decapitation: ‘Humanure’
Feel free to take a moment and vomit. The third album from San Diego deathgrind band Cattle Decapitation is almost cartoonishly graphic, but look at the face on that bovine. That cow has absolutely no idea why the human beings behind it are grossed out. One has to wonder who fed the cow this human flesh, and whether the poor bastard whose P.O.V. we are witnessing on the cover of Humanure actually knew these victims. Imagine, if you will, that you woke up this morning on the farm, walked off to milk Bessie and found your whole family pouring out of the livestock.
10. Black Sabbath: ‘Black Sabbath’
Now settle your stomach with a different kind of terror, the subtle kind, courtesy of heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath. This eery photograph of a mysterious woman (known only as “Louise,” even to Black Sabbath themselves) in front of the historic Mapledurham Watermill is practically overflowing with detail, dappled throughout with the reds of dying foliage. The invocation of unwholesome witchery is almost impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, the inner cover of Black Sabbath featured an inverted cross in the United Kingdom, which helped establish the band’s avid fan base of counterculture horror fans. There’s something wicked in the countryside.
9. Sodom: ‘Get What You Deserve’
The sixth album by German thrash metal band Sodom is so in your face it might as well be stabbing your eyes out. This gruesome scene – staged like a 1950s erotic magazine shoot gone horribly, horribly wrong – is exceedingly unwholesome. Even the cops who eventually stumbled onto this crime scene must have lost their lunch. The story being told here, of isolation and hoarding and filth and depravity and loneliness, would probably be too much for a LAW & ORDER episode. But it was clearly enough for the cover of Get What You Deserve.
8. Iron Maiden: ‘Fear the Dark’
Heavy metal legends Iron Maiden produced a series of iconic horror-themed album covers, all of them featuring an emaciated ghoul named “Eddie the Head.” Created by Derek Riggs, who painted many of Iron Maiden’s album covers, Eddie typically appears in a state of grinning violence, or doing something totally badass like controlling the Devil himself like a marionette (on the cover of 1982’s The Number of the Beast). But our favorite Iron Maiden cover, and in our opinion the creepiest, was actually contributed by Melvyn Grant, who reimagined Eddie as this infernal and gnarled tree monster. The inky blacks, the knotted flesh, and the easily imagined idea of looking upwards and seeing… that… just before you lose your mind (or your life), gives us the shivers.
7. Yattering: ‘Human’s Pain’
We don’t know what’s going on in this cover for Yattering’s first full length album. We don’t want to know what’s going on in this cover for Yattering’s first full length album. The Polish death metal band decided to introduce themselves to the masses with a mass of intertwined humanoid flesh. Maybe this beast was once human, maybe it was four of them, or maybe something even more vicious and unthinkable is occurring (look at the center creature’s hands on the… victim? something isn’t right there). Again, we don’t know. We just know we want NO PART OF IT.
Chris Reifert left the influential death metal band Death to form Autopsy, another important early sound in the death metal genre. Their first album was released with not one but two covers: the first a grotesque image of a man (well, half a man) torn apart by jagged metal instruments, and this second cover which, somehow, is even creepier. It’s a point of view that no human being should ever be forced to experience, looking up at your surgeons as they cut away at your flesh. Adding insult to this scarring psychological injury is the sudden realization that your doctors are eye-bulging ghouls who doubtless wish you harm, and have carte blanche to inflict it right now, as you lie helpless and dying.
5. Cannibal Corpse: ‘The Wretched Spawn’
Oh… oh gawd… BLAARGHADGKASDFJASDMFASDVMUGH…
Phew! Excuse us. We don’t know what just happened there. Anyway, this cover for New York death metal act Cannibal Corpse’s ninth album is… ugh… just… ugh. Cannibal Corpse’s album covers are all notoriously stomach churning (their third, Tomb of the Mutilated, is definitely an honorable mention). Their albums, cover art and even live performances have been banned in multiple countries. We could probably populate this list with nothing but Cannibal Corpse albums, but out of respect for these other purveyors of nightmare fuel, we’re going with this particular producer of projectile vomit as our stand in. Just… ugh…
4. Death: ‘Spiritual Healing’
“Scary” doesn’t have to mean “stomach churning.” Whereas many of the other album covers on our list resort to disgusting violence, there’s no actual violence in this image from Death’s third album. The image could even have been kind, with spiritual healers striving to cure the sick. Instead, the faces stink of malevolence. Cynicism and apathy abound as a helpless victim finds himself exploited by those who apparently have no interest in helping, and who for the most part aren’t even looking at the person in need of charity. This is horror of the human variety, and it scares the bejeezus out of us.
3. Korn: ‘Korn’
Say what you will about Korn – go ahead, we’ll wait – but the cover for their first album is absolute terror. The elongated shadow of a mysterious figure, whom this child obviously does not recognize, tilts its head slightly, as if it had never seen a little girl before. Meanwhile, look at that child’s own shadow, which appears to be hanging not from a swing but from a noose made out of the “K” in the band’s name. This is an image of starkly implied morbidity, evoking the now legendary “Slender Man,” but 15 years before that ghoulish internet meme was even created.
2. Torture Killer: ‘For Maggots to Devour’
No. No. Nonononononononononono get it away. Get it AWAYYYYYY…
1. Acid Bath: ‘When the Kite String Pops’
…AYYYYYYY… oh, this isn’t so bad. Actually, it’s almost endearingly naive. Simple colors, an amateurish lack of perspective, an innocent subject. It’s not a very GOOD painting but there’s nothing really all that scary about i… wait, whose signature is that in the lower right corner…? JOHN WAYNE GACY. “The” John Wayne Gacy, who painted this while he was awaiting execution for killing 33 people. It’s a painting of “Pogo the Clown,” the persona he adopted while performing at children’s parties. There’s scary… and then there’s that.
