The Most Badass Album Covers In The History Of Music
Swords! Dragons! Hot chicks! Chainmail! These are the ingredients for an epic album cover!
25. Twilight Of The Thunder God
Viking metal band Amon Amarth are no strangers to badass album covers – their music is the perfect accompaniment to stabbing a dragon in his big dumb face. For 2008′s Twilight Of The Thunder God, we’ve got all of the elements: a noble warrior wielding a massive hammer, a ferocious mythical beast, and what looks like an exploding moon in the background.
24. Killing The Dragon
Ronnie James Dio is a dude who understands that you need to prep the listener for a shredding experience. Take the cover for Slaying The Dragon, which pictures a massive serpent being battled by a legion of warriors. Is Dio the dragon? Is he the army bringing him down? We may never be able to unpack the secrets of this metaphor.
23. Throwin’ Down
You don’t have to play heavy metal to have a badass fantasy album cover – take dunker Rick James, that insane coke-added superfreak. The cover of his 1982 album Throwin’ Down has him in full barbarian regalia, toting a bloody axe-shaped guitar and a shield. What foes fell before the onslaught of James’ ferocity? Who would dare pull his cornrows?
22. War To End All Wars
When your name is Yngwie Malmsteen, you kind of have to amp up the badass in the cover art to get over it. Thankfully, the fleet-fingered guitar shredder got legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta to paint the cover for War To End All Wars, and it’s a very macho depiction of two medieval dudes locked in mortal combat. It’s almost enough to make me forget Malmsteen’s poodle perm. Wait, nope.
21. Blood On Ice
The cover for Bathory’s Blood On Ice album, painted by the legendary Kristian Wahlin, has everything – flaming swords inscribed with mysterious runes! Pearlescent stallions galloping through the night! Aged wizards performing ancient rites! Black-garbed demons with armies of wolves! A snake! It’s like every D&D campaign we ever ran rolled into one.
20. Blow Your Speakers
Yeah, Manowar. Has there ever been a band that reveled in depicting themselves as loincloth-clad warrior lords like them? We coud have thrown just about any of their releases on here, but let’s rock out with Blow Your Speakers, which throws in a trio of scantily-dressed fantasy babes…
19. Animals Will Be Stoned
Justice of the Unicorns have a completely badass fantasy band name, so big ups to them for going all the way and getting an awesome Boris Vallejo painting to adorn their Animals Will Be Stoned release. Griffins (or at least I think that’s a griffin, it might just be a big bird with Jersey Shore arms) kidnapping hot chicks is totally sweet. I defy anyone to disagree with me on this.
18. Metalwar
Look at that sword. Can you think of a better sword with which to fight a Metal War? I can’t. The only thing that would make it more badass is if it was on fire or something. All-girl Swedish metal band Hysterica earn a place in the badass canon with this utterly sweet cover.
17. Expect No Mercy
Another Frank Frazetta masterpiece, this one from the cover of Nazareth’s ’77 rocker Expect No Mercy. The Scottish rockers slammed albums out at a breakneck pace through the ’70s, but this was one of their best, full of balls-out rockers with Southern-style guitar and propulsive basswork. It’s perfect music to decapitate a dude by.
16. The Dragon
Okay, so Vangelis isn’t exactly hard rock – even though the Blade Runner score owns – but this cover to The Dragon is straight-up nutty. A Chthuloid dragon rising out of the deep with bad intentions is totally badass fantasy. All it needs is a semi-naked barbarian with a trident aimed at his tentacled head to be an all-time classic.
15. Saxon
The first album by New Wave Of British Heavy Metal pioneers Saxon has a spectacularly primitive cover – a Viking warrior charging right at you, brandishing his bloody sword. The message is clear – this is an album that is going to hack you into little pieces and leave you to rot in the swamp. Hope you’re into that, brah.
14. The Adventures Of Robert Savage
Here’s an old-school psych rock album that pretty much nobody knows anything about. The Adventures of Robert Savage were a 70s hard rock trio that released just the one album, and even completists say that it’s pretty much disposable. The best thing about it is the ruling old-school epic fantasy battle on the cover, where a lone night is staring down a coiled dragon.
13. Take No Prisoners
If you were going to single out one band that loved to make themselves look like badass dwarf warriors, it would be Molly Hatchet. The Florida-born band adorned album after album with wild fantasy art, but for my money nothing beats Take No Prisoners, which shows the band decked out in chainmail, holding halberds, and reclining on a huge lizard under a two-mooned sky.
12. Fire Up The Blades
Vancouver metal band know what you need to have a truly badass fantasy battle: weapons. On the cover of their 2004 album Fire Up The Blades, they unleash an apocalyptic display of edged weaponry just waiting to cleave an orcish skull in twain. That means „cut it in half,“ for those of you who aren’t up on your Tolkien.
11. The Great Stone War
This cover, from California-based deathcore band Winds of Plague, is just about the definition of badass. Two warriors facing off on the field of battle – one encased in pure, glistening steel, the other a rotting-faced revenant. Swords locked, they embark on a violent clash of ideologies that only one can survive. And, yes, this is a concept album about exactly that thing. Owns.
10. One Crimson Night
More power metal from Sweden, HammerFall (yes, that is the proper appellation) has had a long working relationship with Samwise Didier, the Blizzard artist probably best known for his work on World Of Warcraft. There’s even a town in the game named after the band. So naturally said covers perfecty encapsulate the soundtrack for a massive Horde raid.
9. War Master
On the bands in the world who glory in displaying scenes of absurd carnage on their covers, few do it with the balls-out aplomb of Bolt Thrower. Taking their name from a siege weapon in Warhammer, they have often turned to the artists of Games Workshop to illustrate their covers and posters. The art for War Master, featuring a wild barbarian cleaving through his enemies, is possibly the owningest.
8. Relayer
How to choose from the vast array of album covers done by legendary artist Roger Dean? The man knocked out literally dozens of illustrations for bands like Yes, Asia, Uriah Heep and other stars of the prog era. We turned to an expert Deanologist, UGO’s Movies editor Jordan Hoffman, who told us that the objective best is Relayer by Yes. It’s got everything – lonely adventurers on horses, fantastic topography, and snakes. I’d like to see a little more blood, but this is prog.
7. Valley Of The Damned
Oh, Dragonforce. Your album covers struggle to express the sheer fury of the music inside. But to get a real badass fantasy moment, we need to go back to the band’s debut, 2003′s Valley Of The Damned. Majestic ice mountains! Horses rearing back in fury! A hot chick in a boat wearing inappropriate clothing! Lightning! Epic in every way.
6. Rain Of A Thousand Flames
Yeah! Take that, army of vaguely disgusting lizard squid creatures! Suck down the blazing rain of flame from the heavens! The blazing flame of rock. Rhapsody of Fire is so committed to the fantasy badassery that their albums are actually organized as „sagas.“ That is dedication. Rain Of A Thousand Flames is an EP, so it’s not integral to the „Emerald Sword Saga.“ Did I just write that sentence?
5. Darkest Day
This guy’s just having a hell of a time. He’s climbed up some ugly-ass tree only to find a posionous winged serpent at the top. What else to do but start hacking the living crap out of it and hope you survive? The grinding death metal of Florida-based Obituary is probably blasting through his magical iPod (or maybe he has a Zune) right now.
4. Sword And Sorcery
Let’s just boil this down to the most basic elements, shall we? Noble barbarian (completely free of any body hair, for some reason – maybe his wizard cast Wilfred’s Perpetual Waxing on him and he missed his saving throw) brandishing his axe and shield as he comes over the crest of a hill, backed up by his faithful posse. What awaits him? Could it be… adventure?
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3. Murderauder
Just because many of the fantasy greats have shuffled off this mortal coil doesn’t mean that bloody barbarian style is dead. Take the cover for Murderauder by Denver, CO metal band Tauntaun. Sure, they’re named after the beast that kept Luke Skywalker alive in the snowy wastes of Hoth, but it’s obvious that they’d rather take life than preserve it.
2. Conan The Barbarian
No, not the soundtrack to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie (although that does have a pretty badass cover). Instead, this is a 12 inch single by disco musician Cousin Ice. What’s more badass than a giant bird swooping in to kidnap a sexy lady who isn’t wearing a shirt? Just standing up on a pile of rocks and watching it happen. Ice is like „Yeah, whatever, I got another chick right here. You just do for you, man.“
1. Bagged And Boarded
We’ve shown you some pretty grisly scenes in this feature, but this is the first cover we’ve had to out-and-out censor. I’m sorry. I know you’re a responsible adult, but if I published the full cover for San Diego metal band Goblin Cock’s debut album Bagged And Boarded, our sponsors would flee the site in abject terror. You can probably guess what it is, but think about it: ruling your goblin kingdom from your skull-adorned throne with your jimmy hanging out means you Do Not Give A F-word. And that’s badass.
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