Quick Change - Circus of Death (1988)

You are now listening to a metal album. If the metal you are listening to is not sufficiently "face-melting," you may have to resort to ripping your own face off for the proper metal effect. To demonstrate, I have commissioned my 15 year old pothead brother to give us a diagram showing the proper method of ripping off one's own face. He claims that the random green stuff on the side of the image isn't a fully necessary part of the face-ripping experience, but claimed that he had to include it because, to quote, he was "totally feeling it." Thank you.

Gang of Four - Mall (1991)

This album cover would already be pretty lousy if it had come from some rinky-dink pop-punk band or similar, which is what the album cover reminds me of. It's absolutely depressing when it comes from a band like Gang of Four that really should've known better. But then, I think the 90s made everybody kind of stupid when it came to album cover design.

American Gypsy - Angel Eyes (1974)

Portraying your band as a group of cheetahs on an album cover is kind of strange but it could potentially work if done well. Unfortunately, whoever drew this apparently only had four paint colors to work with and was suffering from the DTs, resulting in something that's less "strange" and more "ugly and horrifying to look at." At least this band didn't exist in the era of Photoshop or else we'd probably be seeing a bunch of poorly-pasted and colored heads atop real cheetah bodies.

Formula 3 - Sognando e Risognando (1972)

I didn't know that cutting a woman in half could actually be made more creepy and disgusting, but these guys sure managed to figure it out. I guess they figured that if they made the body look like a bad blow-up doll of a corpse, they could get away with the whole bisection thing without it seeming too terrible. Of course, they failed to realize that even having that idea for an album cover in the first place is terrible in and of itself.

Cerys Matthews - Cockahoop (2003)

This album cover proves that no matter how disastrously bad your fashion sense is, you can always make it look that much more ridiculous if you portray yourself with some artwork as drawn by a 10 year old.

Blues Creation - Demon and Eleven Children (1971)

I'm starting to get to the point where I legitimately have to ask what the deal is with psychedelic or metal bands featuring such amateurish, awkward artwork on their albums. Is this just inherent to these bands' style? Does it reflect upon the maturity and/or drug-addled states of these people's minds? I'm seriously starting to get bored of these covers. At least branch out into other styles of awfulness!

Given that this particular band are Japanese, though, maybe I can cut them some slack. Presumably they just figured that bad album covers were part of the territory and dutifully obliged.

The Woofers and Tweeters Ensemble - Beatle Barkers (1983)

You know those dumb "jingle pets" songs that get played on some of the more pathetic radio stations around the holidays? Those "songs" that are old Christmas tunes featuring pitch-shifted dog barks and other animal noises in place of actual singing? Well someone decided to do a whole album of Beatles songs in that "style" and left us with some truly wretched music and a pretty damned bad album cover. I really can't say much more on this subject. If you listen to any of the mp3s on the site provided, you'll realize that no other explanation is required. This is an album straight from the pits of hell itself and to speak of it would just be to invoke its dark powers to destroy all that is good and just in the world. Or at least wreck some pretty good Beatles tunes.

Butthole Surfers - Electriclarryland (1996)

I can't really nail this album cover for being in bad taste since a solid majority of the Butthole Surfers's album covers were in bad taste. I can at least take them to dask for doing bad taste so ineptly. I mean, this is a band that went from album covers featuring photos of starving Africans and John Wayne Gacy paintings to a very crudely drawn cartoon image of a guy getting a pencil shoved into his ear. This doesn't make the previously mentioned covers that much better, mind, it just makes you realize that if you're going to really go for bad taste, you might as well go all the way. It won't make your album cover any better, but it won't look so half-assed.

Finch - Beyond Expression (1976)

It's not often that I agree with an album's title, but really, what can you say about a monstrous disembodied heart that's spewing fire from its innards?

At least A.A. Allen didn't name this. He probably would've called it "The Healer of Heartburns."

Charles Roy Schroeder, Ph.D - Rope Jumping for Boys and Men (1974)

I like how the "artist" attempted to depict motion in his image, along with how badly they failed at it. The current image doesn't really depict motion as much as it depicts "having a seizure while attempting to draw someone jumping rope."

Ted Nugent - Craveman (2002)

This album cover was brought to you by five minutes with Photoshop's bevel tool.

Bruce Haack - The Electronic Record for Children (1969)

This cover explains why hippies shouldn't have been allowed to make their own album covers. Sketchy, art-school dropout drawing style? Inexplicably naked children and naked adults? More hair than a wig factory?

I'm just glad that he drew so many lightning bolts. Without those, I wouldn't have had a fucking clue that the album apparently contains electronic music!

The Cure - The Cure (2004)

You know, when the best artwork you can produce for your album is something that your 5 year old drew, you might want to reconsider things a bit.

Adrian - One Step into the Uncertain (1989)

With this one, you can tell that the artist completely blew their artistic load on the whatever-it-is that's assailing my favorite norse rock god Val Hallen, then completely forgot about drawing, well, anything else at all. I can hear the excuses now: "Well, uh, the battle is taking place on a distant world enshrouded by blue fog... and no, those aren't deformed marshmallows, they're eggs. Seriously."

The goofy pose is also great. It makes it look like Val has something really great in his hands and the monster is trying desperately to look over his shoulder and see what it is.

Y Kant Tori Read - Y Kant Tori Read (1988)

The album that Tori Amos would really like everyone to forget about. Given how horribly 80s her outfit looks on this cover, I think I can see part of the reason why, to say nothing of the 5th-grade level scribbles surrounding her. I'm seriously afraid her hair is going to come alive and eat me, if she doesn't use that cutlass first.

Dayglo Abortions - Two Dogs Fucking (1990)

This is one of those few times when the album cover actually delivers on what the album's name is. It also makes you wish that it hadn't.

Scorpions - Lovedrive (alternate cover) (1979)

To be fair, Scorpions were eventually clued in to the fact that pictures of melting tits don't exactly cause albums to fly off the shelves, and thus were forced to change the cover of Lovedrive. In order to accomplish this, they decided to hire out the work to a cheap tattoo parlor for a few cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of Everclear. Granted, it's less terrible than the original cover, but that's only because it would've been difficult to make it worse.

Frank Black - The Cult of Ray (1996)

The only thing better than just one poorly-drawn face is the same poorly drawn face copied and pasted multiple times over what looks like one of those pre-made Powerpoint backgrounds.

Impaled Northern Moonforest - Impaled Northern Moonforest (1997)

You know, if you're trying to make fun of black metal (which is such a ridiculous genre to begin with that I didn't even realize that it needed to be parodied), your parody might work slightly better if your album cover didn't take five minutes for your 8 year old cousin to draw in MS Paint.

Fleetwood Mac - Mystery to Me (1973)

You know, it's a mystery to me too why Fleetwood Mac would choose to put a gorilla that's been brutally mouth-raped on an album cover. Yes, I know, the white stuff is supposed to be frosting, but if that's the case then why the hell is the gorilla crying?