Neither of us had much of a clue when it came to music, but I remember my brother ordered a few records just because the record jacket looked cool. We got Dio Last in Line and Ozzy's Bark at the Moon just that way. A few years later I remember getting my driver's license, hopping in the car and rushing down to the mall. Generally I had saved $30-40 from doing chores and selling pop bottles and I was eager to make two stops, one to the hobby store to see what was new in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, the second to the record store to see what awesome new records were available. You really couldn't sample songs back then, so as we became more and more interested in metal, as a teen you would often be greatly influenced by the album cover. For me, the closer it looked to something from Dungeons and Dragons, or the more demons or half-naked chicks, or a combination of all three greatly influenced my purchase if I knew nothing else about the band. How many bands sold more copy because some nerdy teen like me thought the cover art rocked!? Some of the truly greats like Ozzy Osborne have survived the early 80's and continue to rock out today, but how many bands never survived either because the record art sucked or the band did or both?
Want to relive all that? I found this website a few years back that actually categories alphabetically heavy metal record album art and you can download it for free for your own entertainment. How cool is that!? So in my opinion, this website is worth a look!
Follow the link to rock on!