Black Sabbath Album Covers

5 album covers in our archive

Behind the Covers currently documents 5 Black Sabbath album covers from 1970 to 1986. Read together, the entries show how the artwork changed from release to release, with each story identifying the designers, photographers, source material, and design decisions behind the sleeve.

Cover evolution

Black Sabbath · 1970–1986

Seventh Star by Black Sabbath — album cover art

Seventh Star (1986)

The cover of Black Sabbath's Seventh Star places Tony Iommi alone in a barren, otherworldly landscape, turning an album caught between solo record and Sabbath release into a portrait of isolation. The original sleeve credits Steve J. Gerdes with art direction and design and Kevin Stapleton with photography, while the package also incorporates Lucas Cranach the Elder's 1506 woodcut The Temptation of St Antony.

Label: Warner Bros. Records
Designer: Steve J. Gerdes
Photographer: Kevin Stapleton
Genre: Metal, Rock
Decade: 1980s

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Heaven and Hell by Black Sabbath — album cover art

Heaven and Hell (1980)

Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell cover was never painted for the band. Lynn Curlee had already created Smoking Angels as a gallery work, inspired by a photograph of costumed performers backstage at a small-town Christmas pageant, when Sabbath's management called looking for an image that could save a stalled sleeve.

Label: Warner Bros. Records
Designer: Lynn Curlee
Genre: Metal, Rock
Decade: 1980s

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Technical Ecstasy by Black Sabbath — album cover art

Technical Ecstasy (1976)

Black Sabbath's Technical Ecstasy turns an escalator encounter into one of Hipgnosis's strangest mechanical romances. Storm Thorgerson developed the concept, George Hardie designed the male and female robots and handled the graphics, and Richard Manning executed the robot illustration and photographic retouching that made the impossible scene look almost plausible.

Label: Vertigo Records
Designer: Hipgnosis
Genre: Metal, Rock
Decade: 1970s

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Paranoid by Black Sabbath — album cover art

Paranoid (1970)

Keith Macmillan's War Pigs concept became iconic mismatch when label changed album title to Paranoid last-minute. Roger Brown posed as the fluorescent warrior in Black Park for heavy metal's most confusing cover.

Label: Vertigo Records
Designer: Keith Macmillan
Photographer: Keith Macmillan
Genre: Metal
Decade: 1970s

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Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath — album cover art

Black Sabbath (1970)

A cloaked figure stands frozen before a haunted-looking watermill, draped in false-color crimson and shadow. For fifty years no one knew who she was. The mist on the water was faked with dry ice, then a smoke machine, in a 4 a.m. shoot that helped launch heavy metal.

Label: Vertigo Records
Designer: Keith Macmillan
Photographer: Keith Macmillan
Genre: Metal
Decade: 1970s

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