WTF Album Covers: Raven The Pack Is Back

Brace yourself; what follows is one of the most brain-twistingly wrongheaded album covers in heavy metal history. What WERE these lunks thinking when they approved THIS image to sell their album for Atlantic Records?

WOW! This is a staggering achievement. It manages to be cheesy, stupid, AND sports related at the same time! According to the legend of this pile of flaming crap, a corporate label hack got a hold of this band, pressured them to make the record as commercial as possible and these poor metal schmucks wound up having HORNS and KEYTARS overdubbed on their record.

I’m no fan of metal, but I can sympathize with a band that has its musical vision turned into the sonic equivalent of Sesame Street but a guy in a necktie. Poor, misguided Raven. They should have told the photographer AND the corporate hack to get stuffed…but what can you do? Except brace yourself for inclusion in the Hall of Shame.

WTF Album Covers: Morrissey Get Rich Or Die Tryin’

When the PR spin doctors couldn’t live up to the courage of their convictions with the original gun-totin’ 50 Cent image for Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, they took the most spineless, cheesy route possible to save their wretched little movie–they swapped the gangsta thuggin gun visuals for the pic on the left–Curtis Jackson holding a cute little tyke instead.

“Awwww” you say. “Just look at that sweet little kiddo! Curtis Jackson might carry a pistol, but at least he won’t let the kid use it as a pacifier.”

It was shameless. It was corny. It worked. Even though poor 50 Cent had to endure the shame of the sort of spin doctoring usually reserved for Republican senators caught with their hands on the interns, he not only ended up no worse for the wear, he might have actually become a major influence for older, less relevant crooners who can’t…quite…command…the attention of the media and buying public the way they used to.

Case in point: Morrissey, who could be the very very first case of “me too” crossover from alt. rock to hip hop imagery. Is Moz trying to score points with 50 Cent’s audience? Is this the very first “aging rocker versus rap” feud? Perhaps Morrissey and Fiddy will engage in some kind of DJ battle, rap-off or…um, croon-off.

Probably not. But it would be damn amusing if they did. Behold Morrissey’s attempt to cash in on the baby pic image, which is somehow as disturbing as the possibility that he might try to guest-rap on the next 50 Cent single.

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WTF Album Covers: Skillet and Leroy The Okra Eaters

Somehow I keep finding these “adults only” albums featuring poorly photographed humans from Earth in sexually compromising positions, making unfunny statements with cartoon speech bubbles. Ever since I found a Blowfly record in the dollar bin, these albums are now constantly turning up when I go vinyl shopping.

The most horrifying thing about this album cover apart from the nyuk-nyuk “lookit,we made a sex funny” vibe are the safari suit and the green checked pants. I want a pair to wear on stage now, thanks. When the alien archaeology teams land on this plant in a hundred years, they will find these records and wonder just who the the hell Sanford and Son were. Hell, some high school graduates are wondering that RIGHT NOW.

–Joe Wallace

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WTF Bad Album Covers: Jerry Falwell Where Are The Dead?

I forget which punk rock album or ad campaign said it first, but I shall paraphrase here. Jerry Falwell is dead and it’s a damn good thing. But before he went, he inflicted this album cover on the unsuspecting public. No, this is NOT an ad sheet for the original Night of the Living Dead, but it would be very easy to mistake this horrid LP cover for such a thing.

Sorry zombie fans, but this is a Jerry Falwell album, and while Falwell is so blinded by religious fervor that he can’t see that the dead are right there in front of his pudgy little face, he wasn’t so giddy on Jesus that he forgot to include a handy explanation of the album for anyone (make that EVERYONE) confused by the album cover. That fine print on the left there explains, “A comprehensive message delivered by Dr. Jerry Falwell” with “beautiful special music” supplied by some other weenie. WTF is “beautiful special music”?

Probably the kind played with an extra dose of hate for those naughty unbelievers and people who laugh loudly at horrible album covers like this. Yeahhhhhh.

–Joe Wallace

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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.