"Terror takes many forms in heavy metal album covers. The ten albums you see below manifest in the frightening forms of animated monsters from your darkest nightmares, the gritty aftermath of a death (or multiple), or profound existential fears of loneliness and vastness of time and space. Many of these you will have never seen on a 'scary albums' list before, so have an open mind when viewing this article, and succumb to the darkness within these masterpieces."
5) Carcass: Reek of Putrefaction
Even the greatest surgeon with the most durable of stomachs would turn his head upon the sight of Carcass's debut album Reek of Putrefaction. Gone are the days of seventh grade "About Me" magazine collages. You get to know everything about Carcass's mission as a band as you try to hold back your nausea looking at corpses of every race, age, and cause of death imaginable. Heads vomiting limbs, an infant head with no eyes, and a decayed eye. Also, did you happen to notice the deformed head in the middle spewing out what looks like vital organs? It's like "I Spy" for unimaginably sick motherf***ers like us!
4) Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath
Long gone were the days of malted milkshakes at the sock hop by the time Black Sabbath released their iconic debut album. Though this is probably one of the most colorful albums on this list, Black Sabbath has everything but a welcoming presence. Despite all the warm colors surrounding the Mapledurham Watermill in Oxfordshire, this front cover inhabits a cold, eerie state of being. It doesn't help that a creepy old crone (who resembles Ozzy almost identically) stands front-and-center, searing her black eyes into your whimpering soul. Behold, the black magic of the godfathers of heavy metal: managing to create a timelessly haunting piece that continues to fascinate every metalhead on the planet. It may not be the goriest work on this list, but the work of the musicians who truly know what the genre encompasses cannot be ignored.
3) Brujeria: Matando Gueros
This picture is as real as your horrified expression right now. This is the head of Mario Rios (according to Wikipedia, trust accordingly), but he is better known to Brujeria and their fans as Coco Loco, who became the band's official mascot following the release of their debut album Matando Gueros. Why the head was decapitated and by who is still unknown, but when this picture first appeared on the Mexican sensationalist magazine "Alarma!" it raised a lot of heads (no pun intended) and the issues of poverty and rising crime rates in Mexico became problems that at least the United States grew to become more concentrated on. The head reminds of something you would find on Carcass's Reek of Putrefaction (see pick #5), but unlike the medley of vulgarity in Carcass's work, the artwork forces you to stare at this half-decaying head until the chills running up your spine make you too uncomfortable to look anymore.
2) Cannibal Corpse: Butchered at Birth
Truly, what would be a list of terrifying album covers without at least ONE Cannibal Corpse record? This album defined the band musically as much as it did artistically. If you are not creeped out by that web of infant corpses and skeletons in the background or by the sadistic ghouls that make Ed Gein look like Mr. Rogers, there is something seriously wrong with you. For me the most terrifying part of this cover is gazing upon the face of a fair maiden and then quickly progressing in a linear fashion from wholesome flesh to this wretched, formless bag of bones. The cover may be as sickening and gruesome as its music ("Meat Hook Sodomy" anyone?), but it has still held up as one of the most iconic heavy metal albums in history.
1) Mayhem: Dawn of the Black Hearts
Visions of morbid reality always beat out monsters of fantasy. Which is why this ghastly iconic black metal cover tops off the list. The early days of Norwegian black metal were truly defined by the grim and blasphemous crimes that occurred on a regular basis: church burnings and murders of innocents were rather commonplace in this otherwise seemingly peaceful country. Here Dead is pictured soaking in blood and brain matter of sheer irony, as the viewer witnesses the aftermath of Per Yngve Ohlin's suicide. Any normal human being would have called the cops, fainted, or both. What did his bandmates do instead? They used the incident as a marketing point for Dawn of the Black Hearts and wearing fragments of his skull like Audrey Hepburn wears Tiffany's necklaces. Nothing---not even the courteous note written by Dead prior to his demise ("Sorry for the mess")---could lessen the impact that this album cover has on its viewers. I bet Mayhem really did cook his brains and use it in a stew. That's a cool Halloween story anyway.
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