Since it started, metal has been using sonic intensity and unsettling lyrics to try and frighten the pants off the mainstream. That desire to freak out the uninitiated doesn’t start and stop at the songs, either: heavy music has a storied history of terrifying, ominous and gory album art, which also stretches back as far as the genre itself. Below, Metal Hammer’s listed the 10 most chilling covers in the heavy metal canon, with entries spanning from Black Sabbath’s debut album through to the present day.
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)
Black Sabbath set the mould for heavy metal, not just with its stacked riffs and occult themes, but also its disquieting imagery. That photo of a black-clad woman standing in the middle distance, staring at the camera, is hauntingly ambiguous. The fact that nobody knew the name of the model on the front for 50 years made this cover all the more enigmatic.
Iron Maiden – Fear Of The Dark (1992)
Fear Of The Dark was Iron Maiden’s first record sleeve without Eddie’s creator, legendary painter Derek Riggs, doing the artwork. Fortunately, Melvyn Grant announced himself with bar-raising scariness, turning the band’s already-disturbing zombie mascot into a tree demon nestled deep in the uncanny valley. Fear… may not be the most consistent Maiden album musically, but you still see its artwork on countless t-shirts.
Slayer – South Of Heaven (1988)
With their 1986 magnum opus Reign In Blood, Slayer perfected both their music and imagery. Artist Lawrence Carroll painted a Hieronymous Bosch-like hellscape that the band’s covers had been building towards since their debut. South Of Heaven is arguably the freakier creation, though, flaunting a skull that’s been diagonally impaled on an upside-down cross in an anarchic underworld. Metal as fuck, that.
Avenged Sevenfold – Nightmare (2010)
It was Avenged Sevenfold’s late drummer, Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan, who wanted to call the band’s fifth album Nightmare, and the hard rock jocks honoured that wish with a terrifying cover. Painter Travis Smith tapped into basic childhood fears, reimagining the Deathbat as a boogeyman stalking a little girl. The artist also paid tribute to Avenged’s fallen brother using that “foREVer” gravestone.
Korn – Korn (1994)
Often, it’s the things you don’t see that are the scariest. The album cover of Korn’s self-titled debut – a point-of-view shot depicting a tall, clawed man ominously leering down at a young girl on a swing – is evidence enough of that. It’s a setup that presents so many questions – and, frankly, we don’t want to think about any of the answers.
Cannibal Corpse – Butchered At Birth (1991)
No list of fucked-up album art would be complete without Cannibal Corpse. The death metal brutes – and their resident artist, Vincent Locke – have been courting controversy with their covers for decades, but our pick for the scariest is Butchered At Birth. This piece depicts two emaciated zombies dicing up a dead mum and preparing to hang her newborn from butcher’s hooks. Grim.
Acid Bath – When The Kite String Pops (1994)
This one’s all in the context. The cover of Acid Bath’s revolutionary debut, When The Kite String Pops, isn’t inherently scary by itself: it’s just a painting of a clown, after all. However, this was a self-portrait that John Wayne Gacy made while on death row for murdering 33 people, and it depicts his children’s-party-hosting alter ego, Pogo The Clown.
Autopsy – Severed Survival (1989)
The debut album by death-doom pioneers Autopsy was originally a Hellraiser-esque nightmare of a man being ripped apart by chains. Yet, the censored version is somehow scarier. It’s painted as a POV shot of someone who’s regained consciousness during surgery, only to find themselves being worked on by ghastly zombies. Waking up mid-operation is a harrowing enough idea, let alone what’s happening here.
Bloodbath – The Arrow Of Satan Is Drawn (2018)
Eliran Kantor is the king of disturbing art in the modern metal landscape, and The Arrow Of Satan Is Drawn may be his masterpiece. There’s no gore at all, but the implications are horrific, as hordes of flies surround a white crib while two parents sleep in the background. We don’t need to spell out what’s happened here, but it’s bleak.
Ken Mode – Loved (2018)
Loved is a masterclass in how to design a freaky-as-fuck face. The high contrast draws all the attention to those beady eyes and that evil grin, while the absence of any nose, hair and eyebrows embeds this figure even more firmly in our nightmares. Ken Mode have long been purveyors of unnerving noise rock and, thanks to Randy Ortiz, they finally got the perfect visuals.
