3 album covers in our archive
Black Sabbath is featured in Behind the Covers' archive with 3 album covers spanning the 1980s and 1970s. Released across Warner Bros. Records and Vertigo Records labels, the artwork sits in the metal, rock tradition. Each cover is documented in our archive with design notes covering illustration, painting, 1980s, metal, black sabbath, angels. Below you'll find the full story behind each Black Sabbath cover — designers, photographers, label history, and the visual choices that defined the release.
Cover evolution
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.
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.
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.
