You know the old saying "never judge a book by it's cover", but my question is how much does an album cover mean to you? Have you ever bought an album based mainly on a great album cover or have you ever not bought an album or put off buying it just because it had a weak cover? I am sure I was guilty of this back in the days when I had money buying a hole in my pocket and bought an album just because it looked like it would be a good metal album. I remember buying a tape by a band called E-X-E and I had never heard of them before. The album cover had a guy with demon head on it and it just screamed metal so I bought it. It was decent speed metal so it was worth the gamble. On the other hand I bought a tape by a band called Battlecry because it had Knights on it and the Battlecry logo looked really cool when I was 16. I guess they were sort of hard rock, but very keyboard heavy hard rock and just extremely dull. I ended up trading it to someone who I am sure made the trade because they thought it had a cool cover as well.
Now I struggle with finding examples of bad or weak album cover that turned me off or made me hesitate to buy the album. I think Ratt's Reach for the sky comes to mind as it just seemed an cover for a Ratt album and I actually waited to hear it first before buying it. I also remember thinking Judas Priest's Turbo had a lame cover and the album turned out to be even more lame. Cinderella's Long cold winter had a weak cover and I wasn't thrilled by the album in 1988, but over the years I have come to know that it is actually a great rock album. I am sure that I have more examples of both situations, but those are the ones that leap to mind first. It has also probably been a long time since an album cover has influenced me one way or the other.
Didn't the first Slaughter album look as if it were a death metal CD? Before you listened to "Eye to Eye", that is. heheh.
ReplyDeleteWell - I remember buying The Number of the Beast based on the cover and 23 years later I still am a big Maiden fan. I Drove all the way to Quebec from NYC to see them this summer.
ReplyDeleteA littile tough to think of other examples for me.
I love the blog, it's good to see another unabashed metal fan out here!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree on "Long Cold Winter"--it's one of the few hair metal albums that has gottne BETTER with time!
Metal albums I have bought in the past year or two based largely, if not totally, on the cover:
Lynch Mob, "REvolution" (interesting, not great)
Iced Earth, "The Glorious Burden" (pretty good)
Dream Theater, "Train of Thought" (outstanding)
My favorite covers that were not major factors in my buying decisions? Def Leppard's "Pyromania" (which happens to be #1 on my blog's "25 Greatest Hair Metal Albums of the 1980s" list from a couple of months back); Whitesnake "Whitesnake;" Whitesnake, "Slide It In;" and, in the non-metal category, almost anything from Yes in the 1970s and Steve Hackett's "Voyage of the Acolyte," "Spectral Mornings," To Watch the Storms."
-- david