Controversial
26. Dio: Holy Diver - Holy Diver is the American heavy metal band Dio's debut album. Released on May 25, 1983, it has been hailed by critics as Dio's best work and a classic staple in the heavy metal genre. The album was eventually certified Gold in the US on September 12, 1984 and Platinum on March 21, 1989. The original vinyl release had a photo-montage LP-liner.
The cover was controversial, featuring what appears to be a monster killing what appears to be a Catholic priest. Dio was quick to argue that appearances are misleading and it could just as easily be a priest killing a monster. If the Dio logo is held upside down it appears to read "Die", or a stylistically obscured "Devil." It could also mean the devil torturing the priest, but then the chain breaks and he plunges to the depths. It could also mean that priests sometimes get corrupted by evil. It could also mean anything you want it to mean, I guess, if the right substance is utilized.
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Weird
26. Fist: 'Goodbody’s Traveling Torture Show' Tie me up and whip me She-Man, if that is what you are. Utterly indescribable camp from the 70's. I have no idea who Fist was or what happened to her, and judging by the content of this LP-a cacophony of shrieks, slaps, wails and other dungeon sounds-she probably deserved whatever she had coming. And loved it!
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Worst
26. Black Sabbath – ‘Sabotage’ Let's all pose in front of a life-size mirror and call it album cover art. Sabotage is the sixth studio album by the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released in 1975. The album cover is a photograph of the band members standing in front of a large bronze mirror. Their "reflections" face the wrong way, and are simply copies of each band member's real image. This is the first album to feature all of the band members on the cover.
For the second time, a Black Sabbath album initially saw favourable reviews, with Rolling Stone stating "Sabotage is not only Black Sabbath's best record since Paranoid, it might be their best ever", although later reviewers such as Allmusic noted that "the magical chemistry that made such albums as Paranoid and Volume 4 so special was beginning to disintegrate".[4]
Sabotage cracked the top 20 in both the United Kingdom and United States, but was the band's first release not to achieve platinum status in the US. Songs such as "Hole in the Sky", and "Symptom of the Universe" became fan favorites, with the latter's chugging riff even cited as an early example of thrash metal. Black Sabbath toured in support of Sabotage with openers KISS, but were forced to cut the tour short in November 1975, following a motorcycle accident in which Ozzy ruptured a muscle in his back.
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Best
26. The Beatles: ‘Revolver’ One of my all-time favorite covers, this would certainly make my top ten, but logs in at #26 on the Gigwise list. Revolver is the seventh album by the Four Lads, released on August 5, 1966. The album showcased a number of new stylistic developments which would become more pronounced on later albums. Many of the tracks on Revolver are marked by an electric guitar-rock sound, in contrast with their previous, folk-rock inspired Rubber Soul. It reached #1 on the UK chart for seven weeks and #1 on the U.S. chart for six weeks.
Revolver was released before the Beatles' last tour in August 1966, but they did not perform songs from the album live. Their reasoning for this was that many of the tracks on the album, for example "Tomorrow Never Knows", were too complex to perform with live instruments.
The cover illustration was created by German-born bassist and artist Klaus Voormann, one of the Beatles' oldest friends from their days at the Star Club in Hamburg. Voormann's illustration, part line drawing and part collage, included photographs by Robert Whitaker, who also took the back cover photographs and many other images of the group between 1964 and 1966, such as the infamous "butcher cover" for Yesterday and Today. Voormann's own photo as well as his name (Klaus O. W. Voormann) is worked into Harrison's hair on the right-hand side of the cover. In the Revolver cover appearing in his artwork for Anthology 3, he replaced this image with a more recent photo. Harrison's Revolver image was seen again on his single release of "When We Was Fab" along with an updated version of the same image.
The title "Revolver", like "Rubber Soul" before it, is a pun, referring both to a kind of handgun as well as the "revolving" motion of the record as it is played on a turntable. The Beatles had a difficult time coming up with this title. According to Barry Miles in his book Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, the title that the four had originally wanted was Abracadabra, until they discovered that another band had already used it. After that, opinion split: Lennon wanted to call it Four Sides of the Eternal Triangle and Starr jokingly suggested After Geography, playing on The Rolling Stones' recently released Aftermath LP. Other suggestions included Magical Circles, Beatles on Safari, Pendulum, and, finally, Revolver, whose wordplay was the one that all four agreed upon. The title was chosen while the band were on tour in Japan in June–July 1966.
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