2 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 2 album covers documented under the "infrared" design theme, spanning the 1960s, 1970s. These covers sit within the metal, rock tradition and feature work by Black Sabbath, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
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 morning shoot that helped launch heavy metal.
Karl Ferris pioneered the use of infrared film for album art, creating an otherworldly image where the band appears in unnatural purple, orange, and green hues through a fisheye lens — as if Hendrix had literally arrived from another dimension.