Heavy metal and Halloween go hand in hand. From early rock-inspired slasher films such as Slumber Party Massacre, which featured a serial killer offing teens with a guitar-shaped power drill, to Rob Zombie’s unyielding quest to unite ghastly imagery with crunching guitars, to Gwar (’nuff said there), having a gory esthetic tied into your double-bass drums and wailin’ solos is vital to heavy metal.

While most bands generally have fun uniting these extreme artistic endeavours, simple cartoonish drawings of beasties and innards just don’t cut it for some. They have to take it to the next level in a bid to outdo the rest, thereby creating some truly gross graphics that work perfectly with All Hallow’s Eve. In that spirit, let’s take a closer look at some of metal’s most notorious album covers.

MAYHEM

Dawn of the Black Hearts

Warhammer, 1995

Quite possibly one of the world’s most infamous bootleg albums, Dawn of the Black Hearts is known more for its cover than the music within. Bearing a photo of late singer Dead after his shotgun-and-knife suicide (as taken by bandmate Euronymous, who allegedly also scooped up fragments of brain and skull to make a stew with), Dawn of the Black Hearts isn’t just amazingly horrific artwork. It’s sadistic reality that set a new, unequalled level of notoriety for black metal.

CARCASS

Symphonies of Sickness

Earache, 1989

As extreme and brutish as the new grind-gore genre it perfectly represented, Carcass’s sophomore effort, Symphonies of Sickness, featured a disturbing collage of autopsy and slaughterhouse photos arranged in a serial killer-like fashion. Created by the aptly named Gruesome Graphics Inc., the full-colour work was quickly banned in Great Britain and was only available as an import in most other countries. Not even time could kill the impact of this one. Still too over-the-top by its 1996 reissue, Symphonies of Sickness earned itself a cardboard sleeve emblazoned with the phrase “Original Artwork Inside” so it could hit shelves again. Not bad for an album by a bunch of strict vegetarians.

IMPALED

Dead Shall Dead Remain

Deathvomit, 2000

To one-up Carcass, California’s Impaled maximized the gross-o-meter with 2000’s Dead Shall Dead Remain. The scene of a toilet strewn with bloody intestines and feces sets the pace for a succession of disgusting covers, including one of a fetus giving the finger through a severed mid-section. Not only did Dead Shall Dead Remain reinvigorate truly gory artwork and a return to realism over cartoonish drawings, it perfectly represented Impaled’s refusal to take their beloved genre entirely seriously.

CANNIBAL CORPSE

Eaten Back To Life

Metal Blade, 1990

Many would select Tomb of the Mutilated, depicting two defiled corpses arranged in a state of cunnilingus, as the epitome of Cannibal Corpse’s grossness. However, the graphic depiction of a zombie eating its own rotting innards on the band’s 1990 debut raised the bar for disgusting artwork, and put artist Vincent Locke in a position to continually outdo himself. It also started a trend for all early Cannibal Corpse albums: being banned by various stores and government institutions. Germany was particularly uppity about this one, though after years of being available only as an import, it revoked the ban in 2006.

BRUJERIA

Matando Güeros

Roadrunner, 1993

Pure weirdness from Faith No More’s Mike Patton. The Napalm Death-inspired Spanish grindcore on Matando Güeros wasn’t as creepy as the cover, which boasted a hand holding up a freshly decapitated and thoroughly abused head. Banning from, like, everywhere naturally ensued.

SLAYER

Reign in Blood

Def Jam, 1986

Sometimes inference is far more disturbing than overtness. Reign in Blood may not be instantly disgusting, but when one delves further into this cryptic collage of a satanic mass, it is most certainly unnerving. Artist Larry Caroll (who would create many more Slayer covers) succeeds at indelibly burning the image of a goat-head-wearing black priest being carried about by a collection of demonic beings through a pool of blood in what is ostensibly hell. Gross? No. Unforgettably eerie? No doubt.

OBITUARY

Slowly We Rot

Roadrunner, 1989

A lone teenage body lies decomposing in a rancid gutter as the band’s piercing logo drips blood and the album’s title — written in slime and sinew — proudly declares that we all turn to such a putrid mess when we die. Nice.

MISFITS

Earth A.D.

Plan 9, 1983

While not an outright metal album, the impact of Earth A.D. was so vital to the world of metal (we wouldn’t have Metallica without ’em — good or bad as that is), it deserves inclusion. Not unlike Reign in Blood, the power of Earth A.D.’s cover lies in its foreshadowing rather than its explicitness. The apocalyptic vision of zombies rising from a sludgy sewer in various states of decay, poised to attack humanity, sets the mind ablaze with wonder. Yes, the artwork itsef is somewhat juvenile, but this was the early ’80s, after all.

AC/DC

If You Want Blood You’ve Got It

Epic, 1978

While it may seem tame by today’s standards, when put in the context of the fashionable, disco-tainted late ’70s, AC/DC’s first live album featured a remarkably uncharacteristic, albeit explicit and unforgettable, cover. Singer Bon Scott is portrayed as a maniac sadistically eradicating guitarist Angus Young with his own “axe.” The perpetual schoolboy is impaled and shocked, a motif which carries through to the back cover, where we find Young’s lifeless body sprawled across the stage.

THE BEATLES

Yesterday And Today

Capitol, 1966

Argue all you want, but for these pretty boys to release an album depicting themselves as butchers covered in blood, meat and severed doll parts back in 1966 took serious bollocks. Naturally, it was banned, setting the bell curve for metal bands to top. Which took, oh, two decades. That’s pretty fuckin’ metal.