Rush, 2112

Rush’s 2112 is progressive metal at its best.

And the understated album art only enhances the music; its simplicity contrasts nicely with the musical complexity within.

The front cover has the evil red star, which came to symbolize collectivist oppression. The back cover features the iconic “starman” (who would appear with Rush for decades, always striving for the rights of the individual) pushing against the star.

A classic cover for a classic album.

Kane Roberts-s/t

Guitarist Kane Roberts briefly played with Alice Cooper in the 1980's. He played on the very average "Constrictor" and the quite good "Raise your fist and yell". He also did a few solo albums. This one was done in 1987 while he was still playing with Alice. He used that machine gun guitar on stage with Alice. Despite how silly it looks he could actually play when he wanted to. Unfortunately his better material was with Mr. Cooper and this album consisted of stuff he wrote over a three year period. In case you were wondering this cover is better than the music on the album so that should tell you something.

Deep Purple - Stormbringer

Seldom mentioned other than to discuss the involvement of David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes as well as pinpointing the time when Ritchie Blackmore hit the bricks from Deep Purple, Stormbringer is a slightly underrated album. Sure, the previous outing with the MK3 lineup Burn far exceeds this one and sure, Stormbringer does suffer from identity crisis, but everything slides into place for some strange reason and the latter is certainly a fun listen.

One of the few Deep Purple album covers to ban the lineup from its face, Stormbringer sets the imagination free with the image of Pegasus confronting (or causing it if you interpret it by the album's title) a tornado in the contemporary world. The rainbow-colored lightning at Pegasus' heels certainly has to be considered Blackmore's precursory inspiration for his future tidings.

On a personal level, I find this cover to be dreamy and nostalgic in a slightly childish (or child-like) manner, enough to provoke me to begin a poem I'm still fine-tuning.

Sodom-Mortal way of live

These people appear to only have on thing on their minds and in some cases it appears to involve a goat. Kind of a different cover for Sodom at this point as there in blood or anyone with weapons plus no band logo. It's a pretty spectacular double live album though.

Megadeth-So far, so good, so what

I remember seeing this cover when it came out in early 1988. My intial response was "they really thought this was good?". If anything it looks even worse now than it did then.