1. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tarkus
Arguably the most infamous work of bad art in prog history, the cover of ELP's Tarkus is a bona fide brain-stopper. Rendered in what appears to be Magic Marker, the image of a monstrous tank/armadillo hybrid named Tarkus is just as cartoonishly bombastic as the music within. Open the gatefold cover, and the graphics get even crazier: In a sequence of wordless panels, Tarkus is born from a volcano and battles a host of equally weird critters before being resurrected as—wow—Aquatarkus. According to frontman Greg Lake, Tarkus was meant to be viewed as a symbol of the military-industrial complex. Or at least the military-industrial complex as envisioned by a disturbed middle-schooler.
2. Yes, Tormato
British design firm Hipgnosis was responsible for some of the most memorable sleeves in prog-rock history: They hooked up with Pink Floyd early on, helping to create indelible visuals. Designer Storm Thorgerson went on to do some of the best and worst in the field, and though he gets full credit for Dark Side Of The Moon, he's also responsible for unintentional hilarity like Yes' ninth studio album, Tormato. The story behind the cover—probably apocryphal, but still funny—is that the band's Rick Wakeman hated the cover photos so much that he threw a tomato at them. The glop was then worked into the design, and the album title adjusted. Both now recall a tornado mixed with a tomato, which is never a good thing.
3. King Crimson, In The Court Of The Crimson King
King Crimson's landmark debut album (sorry, "observation") might have a great cover—it just depends on how you define the word "great." If your definition is "incredibly creepy and hard to look at for fear of going insane," then In The Court Of The Crimson King has one of the greatest rock covers ever. It was the first and only painting by artist Barry Godber, who died of a heart attack at age 24, shortly after the album's release. Draw your own conclusions from that.
4. Rush, Hemispheres
The naked "golden god" figure walking across a giant brain on the cover of Hemispheres had appeared in Rush artwork prior to 1978, but never before had he been such an active participant in the scenario the picture creates. Here, he seems to choose some uptight citizen to follow him on a journey literally "into the mind"—an image so righteous that thousands of otherwise-macho hard-rock fans plastered it onto their bedroom walls, so they could drift off to sleep pondering a man's firm, bare ass.
5. Steely Dan, Can't Buy A Thrill
There's nothing slapdash about Steely Dan's immaculate progressive jazz-rock, which makes the cover of its otherwise terrific 1972 debut, Can't Buy A Thrill, all the more inappropriate. Picture a half-assed high-school art project—some big red lips here, a shirtless man and his man-boobs there, and some really far-out squiggly lines shooting to and fro. Sure, there are some hookers in there, too, an indication of the perversity lurking just underneath the Dan's shiny exterior. But a record so elegantly subversive demands more than a poorly conceived collage.
6. The Mars Volta, De-Loused In The Comatorium
De-Loused In The Comatorium is apparently a concept album about a man named Cerpin Taxt who overdoses on morphine and ends up in a weeklong coma, during which time he delves deep into the recesses of his troubled subconscious. But it's impossible to make heads or tails of Cedric Bixler-Zavala's lyrics on the actual record. The confusion carries over to the cover, which depicts a severed, gold-plated head on a plate, with a beam of light shooting out of its mouth. The head looks like a cross between Peter Gabriel and C-3PO, perhaps the perfect distillation of the typical prog-rock fan's obsessions.
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