RATM - RATM

Death metal ones are usually pretty brutal.

One of my favs is Tomb of the Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse.

nsfw

The censored cover for the Beatles White Album:

(NSFW?)

spoiler

Herb Alpert - Whipped Cream & Other Delights

Thrifts stores are littered with them. I think people got it just for the cover.

Also Spiritual Healing

Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers.

There was a version with a working zipper on the cover, but it was expensive to produce and scratched the record.

If that were released today there would be a Culture War Discourse about it.

Mayhem - The Dawn of the Black Hearts,

Look up at your own peril, this comes with trigger warnings

I just learned about the original album artwork for Guns N Roses - Appetite for Destruction which goes pretty hard

Great thread idea - you might also enjoy !albumartporn@lemmy.world, which has some pretty out-there covers.

I'll nominate Abraxas by Santana which has a lot to take in!

Chumbawamba - The Boy Bands Have Won

The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers. Probably the darkest record ever made, and it starts with the striking cover design. From the Wikipedia article:

"The album cover, designed by Richey Edwards while hospitalised, features a triptych by Jenny Saville depicting three perspectives on the body of an obese woman in her underwear, and is titled Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face). Saville gave her permission for use of her work for free after a discussion with Edwards in which he described each song on the album. The back cover features a photo of the band in military uniforms and a quote taken from Octave Mirbeau's book The Torture Garden ...

... The lyrics booklet features various images including Christian iconography, photographs of the gate at Dachau concentration camp and a plan of the gas chambers at Belsen concentration camp, a photograph of Lenin's corpse, an engraving depicting an execution by guillotine in Revolutionary France, a picture of an apple, a photograph of a woman with a parasitic twin, photographs of each of the Manic Street Preachers as children and a photograph of a group of British policemen in gas-masks"

Image here

Pungent Stench - Been Caught Buttering. The original album art, which depicted two severed, partially decomposed heads kissing (in fact, it is one head which had been sawed in half by Joel-Peter Witkin)

I prefer the simple classics:

New Order - Blue Monday

Dwarves have some questionable ones. Same goes for Dayglow abortions. They even got sued over one.

The uncensored version of Spinal Tap - Smell the Glove.

Thelonius Monk, Underground

Fresh White Reeboks Kickin Your Ass by Nigel Pepper Cock is a very visibly hard album cover

Smell the Glove

It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

Its hard not to love aqualung especially the text but especially the art but especially the way it relates to all the songs.

Devourment - Molesting the Decapitated.

The original cover for The Coup's Party Music. Go ahead, look it up.

The Small Faces' Ogden's Nut Gone Flake goes pretty hard if you roll it down a hill.

IYKYK.

The Dickies - Nights in White Satin

Punk cover of the popular song, released as a single.

I remember reading that the single was pulled from stores due to controversy and replaced with another cover. This is a good thing.

This banned cover can be found with an image search. You will know when you see it.

It seems a joke in very bad taste...