WTF: Riot Narita Album Cover

Being the curator of a bad album cover collection has its downsides. There are the endless rejects–album covers that simply aren’t rotten ENOUGH to include in a gallery of truly craptacular designs.

You have to wade through a lot of mediocrity to find real gems of awfulness. But when you do finally spot a brain shatteringly bad album cover, there’s a part of your soul that leaps for joy. And there was some handsprings going on today with the discovery of Riot’s Narita LP, truly one of the most deliciously shitty things we’ve found in a long time.

Beavis and Butthead once made fun of a Edie Brickell video, Butthead muttering,  “She’s pinching a loaf!” as Brickell crouched on the ground to sing. That’s exactly what echoes through the mind when gazing upon this miserable pimento loaf of an album cover. It looks like this mutant wrestler/mammal thing is crapping out skeletons as its being buzzed by an 80s era cargo plane.

Who can tell what was going through the minds of the art department on this? No, wait, we can guess. Copious amounts of THC and Budweiser. That’s the only way I can see this one getting approved. You might be forgiven for being fooled into thinking that Riot is some kind of Japanese metal band ala Loudness or X (Japan) unless you’ve actually heard this LP, but these lads are homegrown westerns with a bad sense of art direction.

“Hey guys! I have this awesome idea for the next album cover! A ferret-faced sumo wrestler that craps out skeletons along the flight path of cargo aircraft. We can call this record “Narita” after that airport near Tokyo. You know, the one we’re never going to see because this album’s going to tank big time once people see the cover? Yeah, let’s do it for ROCK AND ROOLLLLLLLLLL.”