Fans of Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan are about to be faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, the musician is about to release a live album combining material from A Perfect Circle, Puscifer and Failure, which is bound to appeal to followers of the projects; on the other, buying it will mean having to look at one of the ugliest, most unappealing album covers in recent memory.
The album cover for Cinquanta depicts Keenan as a baby crying in a crib. The soles of his feet are in the foreground, and he’s wearing a less-than-clean-looking diaper. Making matters worse, the font looks vaguely like it was taken from the Avatar: The Way of Water poster.
The repelling nature of the photo might be excusable if it were even a tiny bit funny — but the whole thing is frankly way too juvenile to be funny, and it’s only amusing in a “laughing at him rather than with him” kind of way.
The unsightly abomination is out March 22 and is available to pre-order here. Cinquanta was recorded in 2014 and features members of A Perfect Circle, Puscifer and Failure on stage together. The concert marked Maynard’s 50th birthday; it’s now being released a decade later, presumably to coincide with his 60th.
It will certainly make our job a lot easier when we go about making our annual list of the worst album covers of the year.