The 10 Deadliest Metal Album Covers (And the Artists Who Created Them)
Metal is as much about the look as it is the sound. Some album covers are so brutal, they feel like horror movies frozen in time—grotesque, nightmarish, and packed with enough death and destruction to make your grandma faint. The artists behind these covers didn’t just make art—they crafted visual horror masterpieces that shaped metal’s identity.
Let’s dive into 10 of the deadliest metal album covers and the twisted minds that created them.
10. Reign in Blood – Slayer (1986)
🎨 Artist: Larry Carroll
Slayer’s Reign in Blood is widely considered the most intense thrash album ever, and Larry Carroll’s chaotic, hellish cover art set the perfect stage. With distorted, tormented figures and religious horror imagery, it looks like a medieval nightmare on acid—exactly what a Slayer album should look like.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: Looks like something a serial killer would paint with their own blood.
9. Tomb of the Mutilated – Cannibal Corpse (1992)
🎨 Artist: Vincent Locke
If you’ve ever seen a Cannibal Corpse album cover and thought, should this even be legal?, blame Vincent Locke. Tomb of the Mutilated is peak death metal horror—a sickeningly detailed scene of grotesque, corpse-desecrating violence. Naturally, it got banned in multiple countries.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: The kind of cover that makes record store clerks call the cops.
8. Altars of Madness – Morbid Angel (1989)
🎨 Artist: Dan Seagrave
Dan Seagrave is a legend in death metal artwork, and Altars of Madness is one of his most iconic pieces. The swirling, demonic faces trapped in an eerie void perfectly match the album’s chaotic, evil sound. His signature style—intricate, otherworldly landscapes drenched in horror—defined an entire era of metal.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: Stare at it long enough, and you might summon something unholy.
7. In the Nightside Eclipse – Emperor (1994)
🎨 Artist: Kristian Wåhlin (Necrolord)
Black metal covers are usually raw and grim, but Kristian “Necrolord” Wåhlin took the genre’s darkness and turned it into art. In the Nightside Eclipse is a gothic nightmare—towering castles, frozen landscapes, and a haunting, moonlit sky. It looks exactly how black metal sounds.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: If a cursed painting existed, this would be it.
6. To Mega Therion – Celtic Frost (1985)
🎨 Artist: H.R. Giger
H.R. Giger—the mastermind behind Alien—was the perfect choice for Celtic Frost’s occult-drenched, avant-garde metal. His biomechanical horror style made To Mega Therion look as evil as it sounds, featuring a gigantic demonic Jesus with a cannon for an arm. Blasphemy never looked so good.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: The cover alone feels like a portal to another dimension.
5. Left Hand Path – Entombed (1990)
🎨 Artist: Dan Seagrave
Another Seagrave classic, Left Hand Path is an eerie graveyard scene leading to a glowing, supernatural vortex. The album itself revolutionized Swedish death metal, and the cover gives it an air of ancient evil—like you’re not supposed to be looking at it.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: It feels like the first step in an unspeakable ritual.
4. Butchered at Birth – Cannibal Corpse (1991)
🎨 Artist: Vincent Locke
If Tomb of the Mutilated was horrifying, Butchered at Birth was pure nightmare fuel. Vincent Locke once again created a cover so disturbing, it had to be censored in several countries. Featuring rotting corpses, piles of mutilated flesh, and two zombified butchers, it cemented Cannibal Corpse as the kings of controversy.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: You cannot unsee it. Ever.
3. Blessed Are the Sick – Morbid Angel (1991)
🎨 Artist: Jean Delville
Instead of grotesque horror, Morbid Angel went classical—choosing Jean Delville’s Les Trésors de Satan (1895) for the cover of Blessed Are the Sick. The painting’s eerie beauty mixed with the album’s brutal sound created an unsettling contrast, making it one of death metal’s most hauntingly refined artworks.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: Looks like it belongs in a museum—until you realize it's pure blasphemy.
2. Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)
🎨 Artist: Keith Macmillan (credited as Keef)
The first truly terrifying metal album cover. The eerie, washed-out photo of a mysterious woman in front of a dilapidated house feels like a cursed image. There’s no blood, no gore—just pure dread. Keef’s photography set the stage for metal’s obsession with dark, unsettling imagery.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: It doesn’t scream horror—it whispers it in your ear at 3 AM.
1. De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas – Mayhem (1994)
🎨 Artist: Unknown
Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is the deadliest album in metal history—literally. Between band members committing murder, suicide, and church burnings, this album is cursed. The cover? A dark, ominous photo of Nidaros Cathedral in Norway, bathed in blue and shadow. No blood, no demons—just the overwhelming presence of evil.
🩸 Why It’s Deadly: You don’t own this album. It owns you.
Final Thoughts: The Power of Metal Art
Album covers aren’t just decoration—they set the tone, drawing you into the music before you even hear the first note. Whether it’s Dan Seagrave’s monstrous landscapes, Vincent Locke’s grotesque carnage, or H.R. Giger’s biomechanical nightmares, these artists helped make metal look as terrifying as it sounds.
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