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Eternal Summer: The Hottest Heavy-Metal Album Covers of All Time

by Chuck Eddy

Heavy metal may well be the Viking soundtrack to an endless tundra of ice and snow and darkness, but the genre's also obviously always been obsessed with interminable conflagration amid Dante's nine steamin'-hot circles of Hell. Seriously: if you want a really excellent suntan all year 'round, metal's where to go. Google "kneecap burning sensation," as this writer did recently, and the No. 3 possible cause (right behind "patellar bursitis" and "peripheral neuropathy") is "heavy metal exposure" true fact! So in honor of metal's "Eternal Summer" (as apparent Beach Boys fans Celtic Frost humorously put it in a song title on 1985's To Mega Therion, which bore impossibly evil-looking H.R. Giger cover art depicting Jesus in Satan's slingshot), we decided to take the temperatures of some of metal's most Hades-blazing album covers. Time to fire up the grill, slap on some Coppertone and stretch out on a lounge chair. It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes. Or, as Beavis would put it, "Fire! Fire! Fire!"

Crisis in Utopia

Holy Grail

This Pasadena five-piece soars somewhere between old-thrash revisionists like Warbringer and more NWOBHM-ish traditionalists like their ex-mates White Wizzard. They sound way more tuneful than the former, but darker and more violent than the latter. And they're good at it, mixing harmonies, gang shouts, show-offy shredding, Wishbone Ash-lovely tapestries, and (thankfully rare) death-metal grunts into their sky-crashing Valhalla-battle attack. They even do a semi-classical instrumental called "Nocturne in D Minor." But their pinnacle is the majestic, anthemic, indelible "Chase the Wind."

Relentless Retribution

Death Angel

The Sound of Perseverance

Death

Death went out on a ringing note when it released the epic The Sound of Perseverance in 1998. Rather than churn out an orthodox death-metal album, Chuck Schuldiner and company crafted a wildly expansive listening experience that incorporated elements of progressive metal and European power metal. The band is way more melodic than before, but leaner and meaner, too. Schuldiner's vocals are equally innovative. He eschews guttural rage for a high-end screech that falls somewhere between Painkiller-era Rob Halford and the wraithlike black metal vocals then coming out of Norway.

As The Palaces Burn

Lamb of God

Perhaps a castle is indeed cooking somewhere in this picture — they managed the proper vermillion tint, at least — but if so, it looks more like just a big hunk of meat. A delicious rack of lamb, perhaps! But a medium-rare one, at best.

Gravestone Skylines

Hellmouth

A vulture feasts on cadavers amid roasted-red ravishes of war as patrolling soldiers in nuclear suits charge through: not chilly by any means, but despite the band

Into the Pandemonium

Celtic Frost

Ominous painting of an arsoned Dark Ages village at night, with somebody climbing ladders on one of the old buildings. Penalized, though, due to the fact that the ladder-climber might be a fireman, and because the art for their previous record, the aforementioned To Mega Therion, while less hot, looked a whole lot scarier.

Symphony Masses: Ho Drakon Ho Megas

This one definitely gets ridiculous-album-title points. Also, said 'whoracle' has several octopus-style appendages: always a plus. But the fire is merely raging behind her — so far, it has avoided the abandoned-looking medieval-architectural structure in which she's wailing. So she's not quite 'in flames.' Yet.

The Devil You Know

Heaven and Hell

Having shed the Black Sabbath skin, Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice reveal a darker, more focused side under the Heaven and Hell moniker. The album opens with the wicked creepy-crawl of "Atom and Evil" before plowing through the powerhouse "Bible Black." Other highlights include the bass intro of infectious galloper "Double the Pain," the sludgy, bluesy anthem "The Turn of the Screw" and the astounding thrasher (yes, thrasher) "Eating the Cannibals."