AlkemestRedux: AI slop album covers

AlkemestRedux 05.01.26	we hate to see it don't we folks
RunOfTheMill 05.01.26	Pestilence - Levels of Perception almost had an AI cover, but fans rightfully bullied Patrick Memelli to replace it with a very boring "these are the band members" album cover
Devastator 05.01.26	August Burns Red - Death Below is a hilariously obvious slop cover
Trebor. 05.01.26	The worst part about AI to me is that I now have to consider whether something is AI or not. I'll catch myself saying to myself "This is AI slop" but I check the date of the content and it's from 3 years ago or whatever so it's just regular slop! I honestly feel bad for people who make bad art now because people think it's AI lol AI is the devil so it makes sense that Deicide used it
Sharenge 05.01.26	I'm not AI you're AI
AlkemestRedux 05.01.26	Added that Mickey Mouse ABR cover. That's pretty bad lol And yeah I hate second guessing too. The silver lining is maybe it'll kill social media? Or more likely just drive everyone insane.
pyroflare77 05.01.26	Latest metal church
frozencarl 05.01.26	Vision Divine - Blood and Angels' Tears (confirmed) Disarmonia Mundi - The Dormant Stranger (pretty sure confirmed) The Unguided - Hellven (idk if the art is AI, but they are using tf out of AI to make videos promoting the "lore" of their albums. its gross)
AlkemestRedux 05.01.26	oof some hearty servings of slop
unclereich 05.01.26	it's fun and easy to make album covers. we'd mess with ms paint in high school and make ones for albums that didn't exist. i don't see what a band is gaining by not taking 5 minutes to make one w/o ai. very odd. most offenders seem to be boomers though who a fucking obsessed with it so makes sense
budgie 05.01.26	somehow less bad than all the photoshbop album covers from early to mid 2000s ,lol
arthropod 05.01.26	Myrath since at least two LPs
Scoot 05.01.26	https://open.spotify.com/album/5lJs3JfIysz3GOO1u9nyQJ?si=bLgGZYRaRViN0S8E7CQqhQ this was 1000% made with gemini
brickhed 05.01.26	i would rather take photoshop abominations than something that took literally zero effort and maybe a bit of thought. it's art, not sure why AI has to take over that department, too.
DaveyMonsoon 05.01.26	Grave Digger's most recent album is definitely AI. Same with the latest Dark Angel album.
budgie 05.01.26	i too am terrified at what ai will do to the world but there's a pretty incredible amount of input controls that can go into the generated media. sure you can just type in "tree" into a generic model and get a picture of a tree, but if you can also make a full shortfilm about a tree that can look and be about whatever you want, there's basically no limit, and that takes making your own workflows and using different models maybe creating your own specialized models &c. there's a whole lot of finesse probably would take average joe with no coding or real PC experience a year+ to be able to produce something out of his own mind
pyroflare77 05.02.26	idk using AI still feels like bashing your head against a wall until the blood spatter looks close enough to what you want
ConcubinaryCode 05.02.26	Its obvious to me now that you say it but i didnt register these were made with AI seeing them before.
ArsMoriendi 05.02.26	Hmmm it's all metal and hardcore? Did anyone notable do it outside of those genres? Well I guess there's that music video Erykah Badu made with Alchemist, but that's not album art
JoyfulPlatypus 05.02.26	It's not an album cover, but I remember when 30 Seconds To Mars was doing their anniversary tour of A Beautiful Lie, they put out a SUPER shitty AI promo video that featured younger 2005-era Jared Leto meeting modern day Jared Leto. And yeah it's bad just for being lazily AI-generated, but I can't stress enough how shitty the quality of this video was.
NudeTayne 05.02.26	set fire to your local data centers yeah
SAPoodle 05.02.26	Pretty much all the recent Merzbow releases have AI covers
Asdfp277 05.02.26	it always looks ugly as shit smh
bach 05.02.26	@Ars Tears for Fears did it on their last live record.
bach 05.02.26	besides marveling at the capabilities of modern tech, all of this shit is pointless. all ai art makes me really depressed and lacks any soul or emotion. You're telling me Glenn Benton cant commission some twink on deviantart to draw up a picture of Jesus sawing his own head off for the new album? But i bet their record label is selling dumb shit like deicide leg warmers and mouse pads or some shit. what happened to the networking of artists across different mediums? like do you know how many youth pastors would love to do the art work for the new abr album?
Pennywise_M 05.02.26	I remember being pissed for a whole year about the ABR cover. Album was also one of their weakest imo
Aerisavion 05.02.26	“I remember when 30 Seconds To Mars was doing their anniversary tour of A Beautiful Lie, they put out a SUPER shitty AI promo video that featured younger 2005-era Jared Leto meeting modern day Jared Leto.” Gross.
cloakanddagger 05.02.26	If you're a small artist with a limited budget, use public domain artwork. If you're a big artist with a less limited budget, pay an actual artist. There's no excuse imo, fuck this soulless ugly slop that steals work from actual artists and destroys the environment in the process.
Aerisavion 05.02.26	Hate to say it but sadly it looks like we’ve reached a point where there really is no going back… the likelihood is that AI cover art will probably become an increasingly common trend as people just give up fighting it.
DoofDoof 05.02.26	In the ranking of all my biggest fears about how AI will influence my life this rates outside the top 1000. Still not a great thing though. AI art should be restricted to the comedy potential tbh, because it does have comedy potential
Dizchu 05.02.26	tbh the best thing to do at this point is identify the aspects of art that AI slop is limited to and just... avoid them lol. so no more hyper-detailed surrealism, sorry.
Sharenge 05.02.26	can't stop the slop
Azazzel 05.02.26	an embarrassing amount for metal when you line them all up. https://rateyourmusic.com/list/BeardAlmighty/ai-hell-ai-album-cover-master-list/1/ I stumbled on the the Therion live album from this year 'Con orquesta' and when I searched it up to confirm found a post their fb page vociferously defending that it was not AI, that they would never and here look at this test result! but it so obviously is and if you look up the artist it was contracted out to his portfolio is rife with it. poor boomers.
brickhed 05.02.26	going through that list actually made my head hurt
mryrtmrnfoxxxy 05.02.26	butthole surfers- the new live album with an ai housefly cover list of lame ass losers imo hire artists fuckos
ArsMoriendi 05.02.26	Damn an actual artist I like has an AI cover...lame
mryrtmrnfoxxxy 05.02.26	what do you mean cyan isnt a shade of blue
ArsMoriendi 05.02.26	It isn't
Asdfp277 05.02.26	i think it's both a shade of blue AND a shade of green
Pennywise_M 05.02.26	"the likelihood is that AI cover art will probably become an increasingly common trend as people just give up fighting it." Couldn't be more true and this will be happening in all areas of life.
Gameofmetal 05.02.26	Idk what world you guys think you're living in but the majority of the public has become quickly hostile to generative AI and it's very demonstrably made a lot of businesses and artists back off using it. We're beating this shit, stop being cowards and rolling over for it from the jump. Do not give me this helpless "welp it's happening anyway" bit, just be for it or against it like someone with a spine.
Asdfp277 05.02.26	personaly i don't care how normalized it might become, i'm still complaining. i stay complaining
brickhed 05.02.26	I just avoid anything gen AI. if I suspect it, I look for signs. and id im right I generally don't touch that person/website/whatever with a 20 foot pole. I feel like people don't understand it enough to be cautious or do it because its easy and using brain hard
unclereich 05.02.26	next list goy slop album covers
Kimm 05.03.26	"Hmmm it's all metal and hardcore? Did anyone notable do it outside of those genres?" Kesha did in 2024 for her single, 'Delusional', and then changed it in 2025 after the backlash: “When making the single art for my song ‘Delusional,’ I wanted to make the point that it’s DELUSIONAL that the world expects artists to continue making art when we are so undervalued. I’ve realized that living in alignment with my integrity is more important than proving a point" I have a crazy and inexplicable affinity for Kesha, but even I thought that was pretty cringe (and possibly bullshit)
Dizchu 05.03.26	"the likelihood is that AI cover art will probably become an increasingly common trend as people just give up fighting it." I don't think this is such a bad thing, there's already too much music in the world to fully digest. If an album has AI art it's a good indication the band doesn't care and neither should I.
Dreamflight 05.03.26	Good point. And If you're a small band who can't afford to pay a designer / illustrator try to come up with something simpler for your artwork. You don't need all that larger than life grandiose crap that's on that RYM list, which ultimately turns out into smt lifeless and stale. Sometimes less is more. And there are tons of examples out there (candlemass self-titled and COL's Salvation come to mind). It's especially frustrating seeing big bands like Dream Theater or Venom on that list.
Krpa 05.03.26	The Pineapple Thief's It Leads to This has an AI-generated cover. I love the band so I'm a bit saddened to see that.
Dizchu 05.03.26	The crazy thing is when these generated slop covers are made by established album artists. Makes you question how much thought or care they put into their pre-AI work.
Hyperion1001 05.03.26	“ I don't think this is such a bad thing, there's already too much music in the world to fully digest. If an album has AI art it's a good indication the band doesn't care and neither should I.” this is exactly my feeling. i already use bad album art to filter releases, so AI garbage has just become another addition to that filter.
Dizchu 05.03.26	Terrible artwork should come from the heart, not a prompt. Consuming Impulse by Pestilence is one of the goofiest album covers I've ever seen but I wouldn't trade it for the world. Certainly not for some disposable generislop ephemera.
heck 05.03.26	the label Reigning Phoenix Music (formerly Atomic Fire) released multiple albums on this list and seems to have a track record of using AI for most of their less-major releases (meaning not artists like Meshuggah, Opeth, etc.)
Dreamflight 05.03.26	"The Pineapple Thief's It Leads to This has an AI-generated cover. I love the band so I'm a bit saddened to see that." Seriously, these guys needed AI to create this? That's just laziness.
kkarron 05.03.26	yeah Consuming Impulse is a true all-timer
TheAntichrist 05.04.26	ai is fvckin' awful unless u like the great displacement of humans which sounds like something satan my baby daddy would enjoy but even he can't get behind that cus he's got a way of culling the herd which doesn't involve copyright infringement and stealing jobs and all that fvcked up stuff
ToSmokMuzyki 05.04.26	i for one welcome our ai overlords
Christbait 05.04.26	^^AI is so dumb cause it scrapes content like yours, Smok. I doubt that DT cover is AI. They just make horrific album covers period.
ToSmokMuzyki 05.04.26	nah i could never do what ai does
Christbait 05.04.26	You do it every day, bud. You're like grok with a viking fetish.
ToSmokMuzyki 05.04.26	these beauties are beyond my imagination: https://ibb.co/Vc93mbqJ https://ibb.co/bMzvFcG7 https://ibb.co/TM0dZZ97
Donchivo 05.04.26	To be honest some of thsee albums sound like AI slop too. like writing a prompt: 'please create an album sounding in line with these 15 previous albums of the band'.
Tunaboy45 05.04.26	The only two AI-generated album covers I can tolerate are Squid's Bright Green Field and Everything Everything's Raw Data Feel, primarily because: a) it was still a new, novel exciting technology at the time and both bands have since said they wouldn't use it again b) it was an intentional stylistic choice and not a way to lazily cut corners or avoid having to pay an actual artist c) they weren't using commercially available platforms, they worked with academics to develop programmes and provided the input themselves, unlike a lot of the albums here where the band clearly just put a load of lazy prompts into ChatGPT
ToSmokMuzyki 05.04.26	my only problem with the venom cover is theyve done it 4 other times already
RunOfTheMill 05.04.26	I hate to say it, but I'm reminded of Judas Priest's Invincible Shield idk if the actual album cover is AI, I don't think it is (Mark Wilkinson has been making these kinds of illustrations for decades) but there is art in the liner notes that is so obviously AI it hurts seriously some doodles on loose-leaf paper would be 10000% more endearing and interesting
AlkemestRedux 05.04.26	Gonna start adding some more today m///
RunOfTheMill 05.04.26	lmao all of this depresses me
Dizchu 05.04.26	rage against the dying of the light
Feather 05.04.26	Megadeth potentially
butt. 05.04.26	That ABR absolutely takes the cake. AI was still just abstract garbage at that point too, you can spot it from a mile away. Such a stain on their legacy lmao
Christbait 05.04.26	I remember a couple of years ago when image AI was really making waves and I was able to get like 5 prompts worth of free "art". I remember thinking, "oh these look pretty cool" and then immediately forgot about it and have never been compelled to use it since. You could just see how soulless it all seemed. It was during the time where AI was seemingly copying nothing but Salvador Dali since all my prompts returned an image mid-melt.
cylinder 05.04.26	i'm disappointed in the Butthole Surfers
BookoftheFallen 05.04.26	the new Rage album
Deathconscious 05.04.26	The Pestilence dumbfucks are at it again lol.
unclereich 05.09.26	Action Bronson- planet frog
Djang0 05.09.26	"I doubt that DT cover is AI. They just make horrific album covers period." True however Hugh Syme is known to use stock images and likeness of other works to create his god awful art and I would not be shocked if he's eating gen AI up. The tour visuals looked almost entirely AI too lol Also it was prolly mentioned in this thread but it's common for artists to AI generate separate assets but them compose them together (as if that makes it better)
BSX 05.09.26	you can get copyright free png images and layer them together to get something similar to these albums. . . or pay an actual artist.
ScuroFantasma 05.09.26	> and destroys the environment in the process. Super overblown but very popular talking point unfortunately I don’t really care about AI, but there’s nothing really special about AI data centres compared to any other, and there’s nothing particularly special about data centres compared to other sources of pollution, water and energy consumption, heat etc. You’re better off skipping a single beef patty than skipping AI prompts for a lifetime. Can still talk about it being a contributor or whatever but scale is really important.
Wilt 05.09.26	Hundredth - Faded Splendor
XingKing 05.09.26	Stormo - Endocannibalismo. AI skramz art
brickhed 05.09.26	"Super overblown but very popular talking point unfortunately" what, does it make it invalid? even if you ignore that, it lives in a modern age limbo of exploiting unregulation and using lobbying to keep AI unregulated (sounds familiar). then there's stuff like Texas politics that use corruption to have data centers all over. not even gonna get into the horrendous noise pollution and how it's slowly killing rural residents is the AI scandal of the week still alive and strong? it was for a good few months this year.
ScuroFantasma 05.10.26	> what, does it make it invalid? Yeah, it does. AI has a lot of other issues, as you’re mentioning and which are worth addressing separately, including noise and air pollution, but energy and water consumption just aren’t really up there, at least not to any special degree, but that’s one of the main talking point against it. Your average golf course uses more water than a data centre, but I don’t think that’s the impression most people would have if you read headlines about it. That wasn’t my impression either, until I looked into it a bit.