7. Jethro Tull, The Broadsword And The Beast
Sure, there are dozens of Renaissance Faire-inspired covers that could go on this list, but the sheer simplicity of the album title—The Broadsword And The Beast—and its incredible cover art go so perfectly together. A painting depicts the beast, which appears to be part wizard, part elf, and part butterfly, with the tail of a lion, holding the titular sword while the sea rages behind him. Bandmembers' heads mark the four corners, all part of a grand picture frame. Oh, and quoth Wikipedia: "The runic symbols around the edge of the cover are from the Cirth rune system used by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord Of The Rings." Of course they are.
8. Fates Warning, Awaken The Guardian
Indie-metal band Fates Warning began to leave head-banging behind with its second album, The Spectre Within, and the journey toward the progressive continued on 1985's Awaken The Guardian, the cover of which is a black-light-ready monstrosity featuring what appears to be a star gate stationed on a rolling interplanetary landscape. Weirdly incongruous element: the graffiti-style font for the band's name, and the way it barely fits into the tiny niche it's been allotted. Perhaps the band didn't want the name to get in the way of that pretty picture.
9. Dream Theater, When Dream And Day Unite
The debut album by Boston prog-metal favorites Dream Theater offers the intentionally nightmarish image of a hunk about to be branded with the Dream Theater logo by some unseen malefactor. (The band's publicist, perhaps?) An unnecessary touch of realism: a narrow tuft of underarm hair, apparently there to let us know that this chiseled, well-coiffed dude is All Man.
10. Queensrÿche, Hear In The Now Frontier
Desert and mountains are there to indicate "frontier," but how will Queensrÿche manage to get across the clever here/hear pun? How about severed ears in old-fashioned jars? Perfect! (And thus ended Queensrÿche's run as a chart-topping rock god.)
11. Marillion, Script For A Jester's Tear
Marillion's 1983 debut, Script For A Jester's Tear, was almost single-handedly responsible for re-inflating progressive rock after punk lanced it—even though Cheap Trick was probably more responsible for that than The Clash. But while old-school acts like King Crimson and Genesis wisely commissioned tasteful, minimal album art in the '80s, Marillion opted for a throwback: The harlequin on Script's cover fiddles sadly in a typically overwrought, absurdly pretentious prog tableau. Artist Mark Wilkinson allegedly forgot one of the band's explicit requests—to include a rubber plant in the background of the painting. Yeah, that would've fixed it.
12. Genesis, Nursery Cryme
The three Genesis albums designed by artist Paul Whitehead—Trespass, Nursery Cryme, and Foxtrot—make for a pretty warped triptych. Even clumsier than the album's titular pun, the cover of Nursery Cryme depicts a proper young lady playing croquet with—gasp!—tiny, decapitated human heads. The ersatz surrealism is rendered even lamer by a maid wearing what look like hamster wheels on her shoes. And what's with progressive-rock albums and their obsession with vanishing points?
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