Vote For The Album Cover Of The Year

The 2017 Progressive Music Awards is but a month away. And in fact, there’s only one week left to vote. One of several new categories for this year’s awards is for Album Cover Of The Year. We all know how important album artwork is to progressive music, and so it remains. We cast our eye over all the albums that we’ve reviewed over the past 12 months, and painstakingly worked out a list of those that had the most striking covers. We’re presenting each of those ten album covers here for you to view, after which, you can cast your own votes here.

Ayreon – The Source

Arjen Lucassen continues his modern space opera project with this star-packed prequel, featuring a snapshot of the Forever race’s biomechanical creation on its cover

Big Big Train – Grimspound

Folklore’s eponymous crow takes flight again with this full-length mythical companion, which gave the international collective their first chart placing at number 45 in the UK Chart

Heather Findlay – I Am Snow

The Mantra Vega singer gets festive with a winter-themed solo album and seasonal artwork from Mostly Autumn illustrator Richard Nagy

King Crimson – Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind

Ben Singleton returns to the Crimson fold and re-imagines the Cyclops for this 3CD/1 Blu-ray box set, featuring material recorded live in the UK, Canada and Japan during the band’s 2015 tours

Kylver – The Island

Eye-catching artwork accompanies the Newcastle four-piece’s eerie conceptual album. The cover features a representation of the ancient monoliths on the eponymous mythical island, providing the inspiration for the cloth-wrapped limited edition package

Mastodon – Emperor Of Sand

Conceptually exploring themes of death and survival, Mastodon’s seventh album includes cover art of the Emperor incarnate by comic illustrator Alan ‘Medusawolf’ Brown

Opeth – Sorceress

Travis Smith’s bold artwork accompanies Opeth’s diver 12^th album. His formidable man-eating peacock is a sinister twist on Nazareth’s proud foul.

Robert Reed – Sanctuary II

A vibrant splash of colour graces the colour for the second part of the Magenta man’s Oldfield-inspired side-project

Tim Bowness – Lost In The Ghost Light

An epic tale of a fading fictional prog rocker needs an epic cover. Detailed artwork from Cobalt Chapel’s Jarrod Gosling explores the story of Moonshot’s Jeff Harrison

Wolf People – Ruins

Thematically exploring the idea of nature reclaiming the land, the pagan folk prog four-piece combine psychedelia with the supernatural on this cover from cult designer Luke Insect

Artists

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.