Tag Archives: bad art

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

WTF album covers puppets

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.

Geraldine And Ricky back cover

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

Fleetwood Mac Bad Album Covers

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.