Anton Maiden - Anton Gustafsson Tolkar Iron Maiden (1999)

As I was saying earlier, Photoshop has enabled damned near anyone an opportunity to make bad album covers. You can be an ugly, nerdy metalhead with a computer and a dream and all it takes is 15 pounds of Photoshop filter and some overlaid text. I really have to wonder what the point of the filter is, though. Are they supposed to be flames? Is he in Hell? Is this some sort of sunset sky? Did someone eat too much canned ravioli and barf on the camera lens?

Led Zeppelin - Coda (1982)

You know the album you're releasing is a cynical cash-in when you can't even spring for actual album artwork. Granted, stark minimalism can work sometimes (such as the iconic art for the Beatles' White Album), but that's assuming that whatever typography or lettering you're using is actually pleasing on the eyes in the first place. This looks like a weathered, bargain-basement flier for a yard sale.

Boys Town Gang - Can't Take My Eyes Off You (1997)

Well. Sometimes, I really don't need to say anything at all about these covers.

The Friends - Songs that Mom and Dad Taught Us

Mom and dad sure taught us a lot, you know. They were so important to us as a band, in fact, that once they died, well, I couldn't bear to see them buried. Instead I took them to the local taxidermist. He was a bit hesitant at first, but after I convinced him of how important they were to me, he went through with the procedure and gave them to me. Now they can sit on their favorite chairs, forever. I even took a photo of it for the album cover!

The Reverend Gusta Booker - The Day Death Died!!! (1983)

You can never use too many exclamation points!!! This goes double if you're making profoundly nonsensical statements!!! They lend your album's title that touch of class and elegance that it needs to make people want to listen to it!!! It's great!!!

Big Moe - City of Syrup (2000)

Up until now, I never realized that purple drank looked like a really lousy photoshop filter effect. Thankfully, Big Moe saw fit to demonstrate this for me while he was destroying Tokyo. Thanks Big Moe!

Sharlene Sharp - Rare and Well-Done

"Hello my dear, nice of you to drop by on my steed tonight. I know the doctors say you're not really there, but I can tell you are! You're just very crudely pasted onto this cover is all, kind of like how I think my horse is. But really, aren't we ALL just shoddy photo-collages in this great big world of ours? My flat pants leg thinks so! Anyway, have some booze, it might help you forget just how loud my suit is."

Adman - Jammin' (2002)

If this photo had only been taken a few seconds later, I think we would've witnessed the very first vehicular homicide ever committed to an album cover. You know what they say; live fast, have an image of yourself crudely superimposed over a photo of a fast car, get mocked by a guy on the internet, die young.

Dan Betzer and Louie - Tell the Bible Classics Vol. III

Let's ignore the cheap costumes and Dan's beehive-like fake beard for a second. Something bothers me about this whole thing on a fairly deep level. I mean, ventriloquist acts generally work as a visual spectacle. Without seeing the puppeteer actually manipulating the puppet, most of the appeal of seeing a ventriloquist act goes out the window. Who really wants to listen to a ventriloquist act on record? Who wants to do so badly enough that it creates a demand for a series that's actually hit its third volume? And what in the hell does a ventriloquist dummy add to bible stories anyway?

Young MC - Ain't Goin' Out Like That (2000)

You know, if I called myself Young MC, I'd have to agree with the sentiment of the album title. I mean, I wouldn't want to go out looking chubby and middle-aged either. I also wouldn't want to go out having released an album whose cover looked like it took 5 minutes to make using one of those bargain-bin "MAKE YOUR OWN CD COVERS 100s OF FREE DESIGNS" discs that you always find sitting next to the CDs that claim they have thousands of free fonts on them and the ones that have 8 billion different ways to play poker.

Having said all this, I can conclude, despite his importance as a rapper back in the 80s, that Young MC is one of the biggest failures of all time.

The Addicts Sing (1963)

Another in the realm of odd Christian arcana. After roping up disabled or deformed people to sing about Jesus and make people feel better about themselves became too boring, I guess the Christian music community hitmakers decided on another strategy. This time, they'd throw together a group of former drug addicts to sing about how the love of JESUS made them stop injecting heroin or smoke crack or whatever so that people could feel better about themselves THAT way.

Maybe my view of the music industry is flawed, given the countless collapsed veins on the likes of people like Iggy Pop and Keith Richards, but I'd think that the music industry would be the very LAST place you'd want to expose to former addicts. It'd be like making an Alcoholics Anonymous member the owner of a liquor store.

Then again, maybe cutting off the addicts' heads and crudely pasting them onto a drawing of a skyline is supposed to make sure they can never inject ever again since how are you supposed to do heroin if you don't have any hands to inject yourself with?

Milton Babbitt - Music of Milton Babbitt (2003)

When it comes to artwork, bargain-basement compilations provide an endless source of mirth, bad design choices, and eye-searing pain. Since the whole point is to shove out a product with as little effort as possible, silly things like graphics designers fall by the wayside. It doesn't matter if you're a groundbreaking composer in the field of electronic music: as long as they can slap a nasty picture of you with severe contrast problems on an album cover with some MS Comic Sans and a few doodles the record label's daughter made in the margins of her notebook, then drench it all in colors that would make Lisa Frank vomit, it's all good. I mean, if NOFX can have a man and sheep having sexual relations on an album cover, certainly we can have Milton Babbitt cavorting in a weird checkered universe with some flowers, butterflies, and floating text bubbles.

Mr. Big Drawlz - Prelude to Prosperity (2006)

It could've been a decently low-key album cover: our rapper, Mr. Big Drawlz, with a suitably thuggish portrait, standing out in the streets. Not necessarily a great album cover, but a fitting one. Then comes the big question: why the stretched-out photo inserted into the background? Specifically, why the stretched-out photo of Mr. Big Drawlz holding a gigantic pair of briefs? Is this meant to be an explanation for his unusual moniker? A sign that he wears them? None of this makes any sense.

About the album's title: I don't forsee any prosperity coming your way, Drawlz. If someone's going to buy a rap album, they're going to buy one that doesn't have a gigantic pair of men's underwear on the front.

Rudy Ray Moore - The Sensuous Black Woman meets the Sensuous Black Man (1971)

I realize this is meant to be a sort of parody of sex albums from around this time period (yes, such a thing did exist), and the photo itself isn't really that bad, all things considered. It's like a more attractive, less horrifying version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Two Virgins. The problem is that, since this is a Rudy Ray Moore album on top of being a parody, you have to have Rudy's face on the cover somewhere. How to accomplish this? Crudely pasting his face in over the head of whomever his stand-in is supposed to be. Come on, you might as well go all the way with it! At least you can ogle the crude neon-line drawings along the margins to make up for that. Okay, not really.

Deep Purple - Scandinavian Nights (2003)

The cover itself is already pretty nasty. Cheap, public-domain typesets beset our brave lead singer who seems to be suffering from a combination of whiplash and mild retardation, both presumably caused by the giant photoshop lens flare that's attacking him. What's even worse is the glaring typo. Unless there really is a land called Sandinavia, where sand and snow mix together like peanut butter and chocolate and young Swedish lads and lasses have to learn about the ancient pyramids of their homeland.

The Handless Organist - Truly a Miracle of God

Albums like this used to be fairly common in the Christian music community. The idea, I suppose, was that having obviously crippled or deformed people record Christian tunes was meant to be inspirational in some sort of matronly, cluckingly condescending way. "Oh yes, those poor people must have things so hard. It's truly amazing that they can make such music. Truly, Jesus has blessed them, doncha know."

Social critique out of the way, it actually isinteresting that a woman with no hands (or at least deformed stubby things that should be hands) could learn how to play the organ. However, it would've been better if the album cover didn't look like it had been made in five minutes in somebody's basement.