moe. - No Doy (1996)

moe. must have realized a bit too late that having a photo of a man with a nail driven through his skull on an album cover was pretty morbid and sent the wrong message about what listening to the band's music might cause you to do to yourself. Their solution of painting the nailed man hazard-cone orange with Prince purple eyes and giving him a big, dopey smile was a fairly inelegant (not to mention ineffectual) fix for this problem.

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.

Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse (1994)

Q: How do you make the usual sort of cut-rate fantasy artwork found on countless metal album covers even uglier than usual?
A: Make everything a eye-hurting shade of blue, and I mean everything.

Ratchell - Ratchell II (1972)

Words just fail me on this one. I never realized there could be a band so collectively ugly that even doctored, Glamour-shots style photos couldn't save any of them. These guys look less like a rock band and more like that depressing band your cheap uncle hired for his wedding that only knew how to play bad covers of old 70s rock ballads, right down to the depressing Tony Orlando look-alike.

The Monkees - Pool It! (1987)

Somebody should have told the Monkees that they stopped being teen heartthrobs approximately 20 years before this album got made. Let's face it, there's nothing more depressing than a bunch of doughy, middle-aged men in swimming trunks trying to play like they're still cool. And jesus, what's with the painted-in water? Couldn't they afford to shoot this album cover in a real pool?

Limp Bizkit - Results May Vary (2003)

Putting a photo of any band members on an album cover isn't a bad idea, really. It just helps if you don't have so much lighting shined on your face that you look like a bloated, doughy corpse. Soaking everything in a sickly lime green doesn't help either since it just makes you look like a cheap ripoff of the Wizard of Oz.

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.

Frank Black and the Catholics - Frank Black and the Catholics (1998)

Boy there's nothing like having a color palette on your album that makes its title hard to see. It's even better when said color palette consists of brown, yellow, gold, and more brown.

Fotomaker - Fotomaker (1978)

While this obviously isn't on the same level, as, say, Virgin Killer, there's definitely some implications to this album cover that I don't like in the slightest. At least Fotomaker only made a preteen girl pose her FACE provocatively on an album cover, which is more than I can say about what the Scorpions did, but the makeup sure doesn't help Fotomaker's case out any.

Super Furry Animals - Hey Venus! (2007)

I love psychedelic artwork as much as the next guy but I usually don't like it quite this terrifying. I especially take issue with the really ugly comic book style color job on the figures. This all less suggests psychedelia and more implies some sort of horrible attempt to update the 60s gone hideously awry.