Speaking of cash-ins, this cover just breaks my eyes almost every time I look at it. I refuse to believe that anyone with any inkling of design sense had anything to do with this cover. Using photo negatives on an album cover is a gamble under the best circumstances, but typically you should try to use contrasting covers to make the negatives stand out instead of using a horrible grey background that makes them blend in. The clashing red on the "Naked" and even the inherent awkwardness of the album's title (never, EVER use ellipses in an album title, I beg you) just make things worse. Jesus, they didn't even get Harrison's photo right.

The hilarious thing about this cover is, as amateurish and nasty as it looks, simply making a negative of the existing album cover results in a much more professional looking cover that's far easier on the eyes. Nicer color palette, less clashing color contrast, and overall a nicer viewing experience. It still has problems, but at least they're workable problems.

Just when I thought I'd seen everything there possibly is to see on an album cover, I find what seems to be the world's first-ever white trash elf. I suspect the artist must've got his inspiration from just taking a good, long look at Ronnie James Dio.

Never before have I seen an album cover which makes the concept of lust seem so utterly distasteful as to make celibacy seem like a reasonable alternative.

While I can't really nail this album cover for being in bad tase since, hell, a solid majority of the Butthole Surfers's album covers were in bad taste, I can at least nail them for doing bad taste so ineptly. I mean, this is a band that went from album covers featuring photos of starving Africans and John Wayne Gacy paintings to a very crudely drawn cartoon image of a guy getting a pencil shoved into his ear. This doesn't really make the previously mentioned covers that much better, mind, it just makes you realize that if you're going to really go for bad taste, you might as well go all the way. It probably won't make your album cover any better, but at least it won't look so half-assed.

In a rare instance of the aims of this journal intersecting with my real life, I was wandering the CD section of my local Best Buy today, largely out of boredom, and found this eye-searing example of poor design right in plain sight in quite a large stack.

I've made fun of bargain-bin compilations before, and at first I thought this compilation had all of the hallmarks; crudely-taken photo of the performer, gigantic ugly fonts laid over garish colors, a huge emphasis on a set of bulletpoints as opposed to any sort of artistic creativity. Then I discovered, via research, that this is actually the official compilation put out by Afroman's rather big-budget record label. I left a sad, shaken, depressed man. When the world wants to actually base their official compilations based on shitty cut-rate budget comps by fly-by-night record companies, I'm not sure I even want to continue anymore.

Before Fall Out Boy became the mopey, dopey purveyors of softcore emo whining suitable for listening to while wearing your librarian sweater and giant, black-framed glasses, Fall Out Boy were apparently a bunch of misguided dorks leering at an ugly girl while surrounded by eye-searing colors. Well, actually they still are a bunch of misguided dorks, but at least their embrace of the mopier side of life has improved their design skills a tad.

Rateyourmusic tells me that this is the last album that Fireballet ever released. I suspect this is because putting all of your ugly, hairy male band members on your album cover wearing tutus and frolicking around is considered in certain parts of the world to be a career-ending move. Making awful puns on top of that just seals the deal.

And now, a couple hints for those wishing to look more menacing on their album covers.

1) It's quite difficult to look effectively menacing when you use a butterfly-wing pattern as part of your album cover's background.
2) It's nearly impossible to look menacing when you essentially look like Tiny Tim's uglier kid brother.
3) While spooky lighting can make one look more menacing, be sure the lighting doesn't make your skin look like you're a pumpkin with jaundice.

( It's definitely dead, Jim )

While we're on the subject of stupid, shocking grind covers here, here's this brilliant one. If you're trying to be shocking guys, perhaps use a little less contrast in your photo. It seriously took me about 10 minutes for me to figure out that what I was looking at wasn't an unidentifiable blur of red and black and was actually a decapitated cattle head (GEE, JUST LIKE THE BAND NAME). Boy was my face red!

Hey, did you know that apparently this band are vegetarians with a huge emphasis on animal rights? After seeing this cover, they sure could've fooled me!

If someone were to ask me what my deepest, darkest nightmares looked like, I would have to say that this would come fairly close to nailing it.

Featuring quite possibly the ugliest group of teen heartthrobs, well, ever. Not only do I resent their horrible faces, I also resent that they attempted to do the 80s feathered hair look about four years before the 80s actually began. Their outfits, of course, are too horrible to even mention effectively.

I've had the fashion disaster tag around for a long time, almost as long as this blog has been in existence. During this time, I've seen many a horrible outfit on some poor shmuck or another who probably really thought they were looking sharp for their big breakthrough. This cover, however, THIS cover, this one made me wish I had something even more damning than just "fashion disaster" as a tag. This guy is a goddamned fashion holocaust. I mean, wow, I can't even begin to say what's wrong with this picture. My mind can barely COMPREHEND what's wrong with this picture. This is one of the worst outfits I've ever seen on anybody, ever, and it scares me.

While I'm pretty sure the album title/cover combo are meant to work as a joke, this still leaves me with a photo of a very pasty white fat... um, thing all suited up for some S&M fun in some dungeon somewhere. Maybe I'm a bit too square, but I don't especially find this to be very effective album cover material. I mean, at least make it so I can figure out the gender of whatever it is that's being tied up next time.

You know, complaining about Limp Bizkit being stupid and juvenile is kind of like complaining about dogs barking and licking themselves. Hell, making fun of Fred Durst is kind of like making fun of developmentally disabled kids in that it's entirely too easy and almost meanspirited in a way. However, given that most kids in a special ed class would probably know better than to release an album cover based around such a horribly juvenile phrase and somehow Fred Durst DIDN'T, well, I think that deserves some mention after all. Godspeed, Fred. May you one day be able to handle the horrors of the third grade.

After this I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to smile again.

Rikk Agnew asks us to consider what a real life Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle were to look like. According to Rikk, they would be horribly ugly, angry abominations less prone to spouting outdated Californian surfer lingo and eating pizza and more prone to wanting to bite your fingers off and burn your house down. Truly the stuff of nightmares.

( Kind of gross, so I'll be safe )

Cattle Decapitation attempt to take a page from the Cannibal Corpse school of "ultra gory 'shocking' album covers that try a bit TOO hard to be shocking" and end up with something that's honestly kind of ridiculous. It's gross, yes, but you mean to tell me that this cow presumably ate a few humans alive then, due to the cow's digestive system not being intended for breaking down meat, shat them out in a gory heap? Come on, people, you have to work a bit harder to outdo Cannibal Corpse here (not that I'm asking anybody to try, for the love of god).

The only thing better than just one poorly-drawn face is the same poorly drawn face copied and pasted multiple times over what looks like one of those pre-made Powerpoint backgrounds.

I really wish I could make fun of this album cover effectively, but to be quite honest it hurts my eyes to look at it for any extended period of time. The combination of the color and the blown-up blurry picture is just doing a number on my eyes and it sucks.

A few thoughts regarding this cover:
1) That doesn't look anything like a trampoline at all. I suppose that the title "Jumping on the Bed" wouldn't have had the same quality to it, though.
2) He doesn't look very happy, or even very active. He seems to be standing on the bed, saying off-camera "can we just get this overwith so I can get off this Peep-colored monstrosity?"
3) There are few things less flattering than having a photo taken of you in your briefs and taking a photo of you in your briefs from the waist down certainly doesn't help matters any.