As someone who finds progressive rock inevitably and unintentionally hiliarious, it is my duty to point out this AV club article about the worst prog rock album covers ever.

1. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Tarkus

Arguably the most infamous work of bad art in prog history, the cover of ELP’s Tarkus is a bona fide brain-stopper. Rendered in what appears to be Magic Marker, the image of a monstrous tank/armadillo hybrid named Tarkus is just as cartoonishly bombastic as the music within. Open the gatefold cover, and the graphics get even crazier: In a sequence of wordless panels, Tarkus is born from a volcano and battles a host of equally weird critters before being resurrected as—wow—Aquatarkus. According to frontman Greg Lake, Tarkus was meant to be viewed as a symbol of the military-industrial complex. Or at least the military-industrial complex as envisioned by a disturbed middle-schooler.

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