The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers. Probably the darkest record ever made, and it starts with the striking cover design. From the Wikipedia article:
"The album cover, designed by Richey Edwards while hospitalised, features a triptych by Jenny Saville depicting three perspectives on the body of an obese woman in her underwear, and is titled Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face). Saville gave her permission for use of her work for free after a discussion with Edwards in which he described each song on the album. The back cover features a photo of the band in military uniforms and a quote taken from Octave Mirbeau’s book The Torture Garden …
… The lyrics booklet features various images including Christian iconography, photographs of the gate at Dachau concentration camp and a plan of the gas chambers at Belsen concentration camp, a photograph of Lenin’s corpse, an engraving depicting an execution by guillotine in Revolutionary France, a picture of an apple, a photograph of a woman with a parasitic twin, photographs of each of the Manic Street Preachers as children and a photograph of a group of British policemen in gas-masks"
The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers. Probably the darkest record ever made, and it starts with the striking cover design. From the Wikipedia article:
"The album cover, designed by Richey Edwards while hospitalised, features a triptych by Jenny Saville depicting three perspectives on the body of an obese woman in her underwear, and is titled Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face). Saville gave her permission for use of her work for free after a discussion with Edwards in which he described each song on the album. The back cover features a photo of the band in military uniforms and a quote taken from Octave Mirbeau’s book The Torture Garden …
… The lyrics booklet features various images including Christian iconography, photographs of the gate at Dachau concentration camp and a plan of the gas chambers at Belsen concentration camp, a photograph of Lenin’s corpse, an engraving depicting an execution by guillotine in Revolutionary France, a picture of an apple, a photograph of a woman with a parasitic twin, photographs of each of the Manic Street Preachers as children and a photograph of a group of British policemen in gas-masks"
Image here
Big fan of that album. It’s made much darker if you know the whole story of Richey and his disappearance.