WTF Album Covers Tsjuder Demonic Possession

by Joe Wallace

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not at all a fan of black metal, so maybe it’s completely unfair to poke fun at the Tsjuder album cover for Demonic Possession. After all, if you’re not a fan of this kind of music, it just seems a bit silly. The “ooh scary” makeup, the spiky leather armbands, the growling…if you aren’t caught up in any of this your first reaction is likely something to do with the notion that it might be time to leave Mom’s basement and try using some hair conditioner.

But is that really fair? Whatever…I’m a first impression sorta guy when it comes to WTF album covers.

So with that said, I could NOT STOP LAUGHING at the expression on this guy’s face when I spotted this album cover. Sorry, black metal fans, but the face paint doesn’t say anything to me except Circ du Soleil, and the scowling makes me think about eating more fiber. Coupled with yet another indecipherable scrawl for a band logo and we have a winner for this week’s “Album Cover Most Likely To Make You Laugh While Looking Over Your Shoulder For Angry Metal Dudes With Baseball Bats” contest.

Making fun of black metal band album covers is probably almost as dangerous as making fun of gangsta rap records like Mister Stinky’s Everything Dead. THAT clown actually made a sort-of halfhearted threat to shoot my little harmless ass after I wrote, “Fame, fortune, and all the summer sausage you can eat have all passed Mr. Stinky by…”

The reply I got to THAT post read, “Who ever wasted there time and life…. let me know where you are so I can put a bullet in your face!” Nice going, Stinky. Now the lawyers know where to find you.

Poking fun at the metal album covers hasn’t earned me any similar missives so far, but I did get a peeved message from an offended Yanni fan. Boy, oh boy, I just don’t know when to quit, do I?

I do wonder what day of the week it will wind up being when some face-painted angry King Diamond sorta guy shows up looking for some fisticuffs because I said something slightly negative about the idea that all these black metal face-paintey guys make me giggle like a Swedish schoolgirl.

So it’s getting shot by Mister Stinky or curb-stomped by some Scandinavian goat worshipper…hmmm. Which do I choose? Never mind, I’m gonna start making fun of Micronesian zither polka album covers next. Those dudes might come after me with a potato peeler or a pencil sharpener, but it won’t do any lasting injury.

WTF Album Covers: Leona Anderson Music To Suffer By

by Joe Wallace

I stumbled on this image of the album cover for Leona Anderson’s Music To Suffer By on The Magic Whistle. WTF is going on in this picture? This one’s suitable for framing–at least in MY house where bad album art has a special place of love and reverence.

There’s nothing quite like the joys of an especially wretched piece of album art. The ones so wrong-headed you can’t even begin to describe them are my favorites. Music To Suffer By from Leona Anderson is definitely one of those. Can you hear the discussion between Anderson and the artist? “Well, miz Anderson, the guy with the violin is, you know, gonna KILL you here with that lighter as you’re trying to sing with cobwebs coming out of your mouth. GET IT?”

If YOU get it, please by all means, let ME know what this is trying to say. I think maybe I’m still drunk from a week last Thursday and that’s why I can’t wrap my head around it.

WTF Bad Album Covers: Organ Fantasy

We were so busy last week with the inauguration of our new digital single download offerings that we haven’t posted a single bad album cover in quite some time. But rest assured, now that the kickoff of the digital downloads has started we are back on the prowl for the worst album covers ever.

For example…

Organ Fantasy does NOT sound like the name of a record…it’s more like some unreleased David Friedman 42nd Street “adults only” epic starring Chesty Morgan and an embryonic Shannon Tweed. If it weren’t for that balloon on the lower left pointing the way, you could almost excuse this as the work of some genuinely naive and misguided soul…but no. Organ Fantasy is definitely the work of some twisted prankster.

And what on EARTH was the near literal FRENZY to preserve ORGAN music in the first place? There are so many records dedicated to the organ that you’d think all the performers would be EXTINCT in five years or something. How many frickin’ organ records do we really need? No wonder they resorted to Freudian names with Beavis and Butthead visual puns on the cover–the art directors were probably going out of their minds with the literal avalanche of organ records.

WTF Album Covers: Wrong On So Many Levels

This installment of WTF Album covers is brought to you by racism, bad taste, and misguided youth. We present you three eyeball-searing album covers that beggar logic and make us seriously reconsider whether music is a good thing or not. “Do you like music?” Well, WE do, but the people who made these album covers clearly DO NOT.

This particular series was discovered at the COMPLETELY awesome site Glorify The Turd, which as far as website names go is one of the greatest in history. Normally we try to avoid sourcing images like this, but Glorify The Turd has some of the most truly obscure and brain-jerkingly horrific album covers that we couldn’t resist paying tribute to them here with these three starting with a quartet of truly misguided born-again metalers.

The fine print there at the bottom reads, “This album is dedicated to those who have not yet received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. We’re Coming.” Oh dear. One thing this bunch of born-again Klangmeisters does have going for it is a bit of rare multi-culturalism.  But the hairdos and stage clothes have GOT to go. These lads have been shopping for their gear at Forever 21, as evidenced by the polka-dot dude here on the bottom right. Nice one, man–raid your little sister’s wardrobe AND tell me about Jesus.

Next, a move in the opposite direction. These gents aren’t into JESUS…they want to go a bit further SOUTH:

Um…res ipsa loquitor.

Your attention might not be directed to the bottom half of this album cover, but you’ll discover the REAL HORROR of it once you detect the bobbing head. OK, I’ll be the first to say it (maybe not). If our society is going to evolve past its racial tension problems, we have to progress to the point where we are either not afraid or or hurt by at all of the N-word or any other slur or nickname, or NOBODY GETS TO SAY THEM EVER. It’s one or the other, folks.

WTF Album Covers by Britney Spears

I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. There’s no real point in wasting time pointing out that a Britney Spears album cover is crap. The contents are crap, the “artwork” will be wretched as well. But there’s something really galling about Britney Spears aping Johnny Rotten. Behold:

This image really irritated conservatives in Britain at the time…but who cares? Such narrow-minded folk are born to be tormented by people like John Lydon, it’s the natural order of things. And then there’s this:

Dunno if this is the promo artwork for a single, an album or some other nonsense–I can’t be bothered to investigate Britney Spears for a second longer. But I am amused that somebody somewhere thought it would be a good lark to put her on the cross…see, people instantly associate the crucifixion imagery with Jesus and Christianity, but in a historical context, the lowest of the low got crucified.The dregs. Common, dirtbag criminals and people the Romans didn’t think enough of to put into forced labor.

And musically speaking, that’s exactly what’s going on here. Britney has at last found her place with the rest of the human refuse in the music industry. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it makes me laugh. As does this:

At first I thought perhaps this was Britney’s final freakout–that this artwork was an ad for some kind of new white supremacist tea party nonsense. But we would have heard about that by now. Nope, this has to be something else. It’s not an ad for her new gig at Hats Unlimited, so it MUST be an album cover.

A stupid, stupid album cover.

“Hey look, folks, my head can be used for more than just a battering ram. It’s also a HAT RACK. Now buy my single.”

–Joe Wallace