WTF Bad Album Covers: Static-X Start A War

Our very first WTF bad album cover since Vinyl Road Rage! Don’t worry, there are plenty more Vinyl Road Rage record store review posts coming, but this week we resume our normal posts, too…and WTF bad album covers are piling up all over the place faster than I can write them up and post them.

First I’d like to say that from a visual perspective, I think this band was much better when it was called Alice In Chains. Maybe they THINK they’re Alice In Chains, but one listen to the tracks off this album and you’ll be begging for Layne Staley to dig himself out of the ground and throttle these guys to death with his bare zombified hands.

This is yet another in a long parade of nu metal “mad faces” album covers, but honestly, the cover makes it look like the mad faces are due to the fact that the hair salon won’t take them as walk-in clients rather than some kind of teeno-angst mongering.

I couldn’t figure out what it was that made me think this Static-X album cover is so wretched until I realized that the mad face dude with his mouth open (catching flies, no doubt) makes this cover look an AWFUL LOT like that Devil’s Bris album by Voltaire.

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WTF Album Covers: Geraldine and Ricky

Seriously, what is with the born-again Christians and the puppets? I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than spend 45 minutes with my hand up a puppet’s ass talking out of the side of my mouth like a third-rate George Raft. And don’t try to tell me this crap is aimed at KIDS–track two on side two is titled “The Liquor Store”. That’s where I’d be spending the meager proceeds from this vinyl abomination if I had ANYTHING to do with it.

You might wonder why I vent my bile on ventriloquists on vinyl with such…passion, until you remember that very NATURE of the ventriloquist act is that you’re supposed to SEE THE DUMMY TALK apparently ON ITS OWN. Like MAGIC. Put these people on a record and the whole point of the ventriloquist act is…well yeah, you get it now.

Like so many other things associated with right wing evangelical Christianity, this makes absolutely ZERO SENSE.

OK, I feel better now.

–Joe Wallace

WTF Album Covers: Fleetwood Mac Mystery To Me

The real mystery behind this bad album cover is why anyone thought it would be a good idea to market the music on the album using THIS IMAGE. Since a plenty of Fleetwood Mac albums in the catalog featured members of the band on the cover, one can only assume that aesthetic is also represented here somehow. But which band member is depicted here?

Could it be a snide jab at Stevie Nicks? Or maybe that this gorilla looks a little tiny bit like Mick Fleetwood isn’t a coincidence. Regardless, file this one under “What were they thinking?” or maybe even, “We have an artist friend.” Friends don’t let friends design album covers for friend bands.

WTF Album Covers: Pleasureman by Gunther

I thought Gunther was joking. Surely, I wondered aloud, this HAS to be some Saturday Night Live gag spun off into its own release. Please tell me this guy’s not for real. Pleasureman here can NOT be serious.

But he IS.

Let’s consider the album as a unified concept for a moment–the images, the song titles, the face of the dork on the cover. You get Gunther’s faux-sexy “the Metamucil isn’t working” grimace, but you ALSO get staggeringly smooth and sophisticated tracks like Ding Dong Song. We’re talking high class material for the jet set here. Oh yes indeed, you ought to wrap your ears around this so you can get SUPER sexy before you go out on that blind date and turn on charm.

Tell me how you’ll be sustaining your arousal level without chemical assistance after listening to this nonsense. This stuff sounds like a VERY low rent Hyperbubble ripoff without the fun or canny observances of social phenomena (hear Pictures of Paradise for some great multiple entendres and commentary.

I do like the fact that Gunther is fondling himself on this album cover…indicative of what he did through the entire recording process in one way or another.

WTF Bad Album Covers: The Eternal Horror of Baby Lu-Lu

I don’t know about you, but the cover of this album makes me want to smash people with a shovel until the state troopers show up and taze me to death.

Reading the back cover makes me feel nauseous in a way I can’t properly explain. I wish I heard voices so I could obey them telling me to disintegrate whoever is responsible for this. (Click on the image to enlarge and damage your mind.)

WTF Bad Album Covers: No Commentary Necessary

I’m not saying a DAMN THING about this one. Do I really need to? Times like these I wish I could turn off the non-stop Beavis and Butthead episode playing in my brain, but I can’t, OK? Just snicker along with me and let’s call it a day and nobody make the joke about playing this album only once per month. Effing tasteless.

WTF Bad Album Covers: Twin Peaks, Anyone?

Does the peace of mind come from the perspective of whoever’s responsible for the dead chick on the cover wrapped in plastic? Is this the corpse of a shrewish, constantly nagging loudmouth who said one snide thing too many before being bashed over the head with an Italian glass ashtray? Or maybe this album cover is suggesting that being DEAD and WRAPPED IN PLASTIC is what gives that peace of mind? Wow…what a statement!

Our First NSFW WTF Bad Album Cover

This edition of WTF Bad Album Covers is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Now that we have that formality out of the way… … Continue Reading

WTF Bad Album Covers Lil’ Flip The Leprechaun

What in the world were they thinking on THIS one? One music blogger writing for the Houston Press declares this the WORST hip hop cover in the history of the Houston scene. We’ll go that one better and say that this is simply one of the worst album covers, like, ever. Nothing says, “Hey, take me seriously” like a guy dressed up like the Lucky Charms mascot.

Gotta give Lil’ Flip points for originality in one respect–he’s not pointing a gun at the cover, standing against a brick wall with his arms folded and his chin stuck in the air like a weathervane, or making some ding-dong finger exercises that are supposed to indicate which side of the street he lives on. So good on you for that.

Ever since Lil’ Kim gained traction in the music industry, hip hop and related sounds has suffered from a veritable flood of “me too” rappers and hip hoppers all trying to get some of that “lil” magic to rub off on them. Seems pathetic, doesn’t? Lil Flip is only one of a shameful crop of intellectually bankrupt me too-ers. My question for all these Lil’ guys–do you want to be known as Lil ANYTHING when you’re FORTY? I didn’t think so. We can NEVER forgive Lil Kim for unleashing this torrent of Lil knockoffs.

Behold the list of the damned, courtesy of Wikipedia.

• Lil’ 1/2 Dead, American rapper
• Lil Bastard, American wrestler
• Lil’ Boosie, American rapper
• Lil’ Bow Wow American rapper and actor
• Lil’ Brotha, American rapper
• Lil’ Cahill, Garage MC in Jersey, Channel Islands,
• Lil’ Cease, American rapper
• Lil’ Chris, British pop singer
• Lil’ Flip, American rapper
• Lil’ Fizz, American rapper and actor
• Lil’ J, American rapper
• Lil’ Jon, American music producer
• Lil’ Keke, American rapper
• Lil’ Malik, (today Mr. Malik) American rapper
• Lil’ Mama, American rapper
• Lil’ Mo, American singer
• Lil Poison, Professional video gamer
• Lil’ O, American rapper
• Lil Rob, American rapper
• Lil’ Romeo (today only Romeo), American actor and rapper
• Lil’ Ronnie American music producer
• Lil’ Scrappy, American rapper
• Lil’ T, Danish rapper and singer
• Lil Wayne, American rapper
• Lil’ Will, American rapper
• Lil’ Wyte, American rapper
• Lil’ Ye, American rapper and all-around entertainment mogul
• Lil’ Zane, American rapper and dancer
• Lil’ Buster, Moroccan rapper , From 4Styles Crew

Hows about somebody calling themselves Lil Dumbass?

WTF Bad Album Covers: Monstrosity In Dark Purity

by Joe Wallace

Oh, sweet Jesus what do we have HERE? Scary, barely legible band logos indicated the presence of METAL.

Supported by the fact that a vaguely Rob Zombie-esque sinister entity appears on the cover of this mons-turd, and it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes or his latter day doppleganger Doctor Who to figure out that a brain clearly damaged by hours of non-stop headbanging thought this Photoshopped atrocity would be a great way to sell records.

The name of this little gem really takes the cake. “In Dark Purity“?? Why not just call it “Little House On The Prairie With Satan” and get it over with?

With a title like that, these guys HAVE to be Cookie Monster metal. I’m not listening to this to find out–we’ll save that little chore for a teeno hesher who hasn’t heard enough bad music yet. I can only judge this book by its cover…

I won’t even LOOK at the song titles, which I am sure are early-period Metallica ripoffs. I bet you a dollar there’s an Eye of the Beholder-style title, some kind of Fade to Black reference, a song about falling into a pit of despair and at least one track that makes references to conquering, crushing, or sodomizing an angel.

Go look for me, willya?