10 Fake Album Covers By Bands That Unfortunately Don’t Exist
I often hear or read something—a word, a few words, or a sentence—that makes me think: this would make a great name for a band, or a good song title. Until recently, those ideas usually faded into oblivion. But since AI exists, it’s relatively easy to quickly conjure up a fake album cover for such an idea.
I actually thought it was a rare quirk, this fantasizing about fictional bands and albums. But a simple search on Google reveals that entire communities exist around the topic of fake album covers. Well, then I can certainly write a blog post about it. So, here’s a handpicked selection from my stockpile of fake cover art: ten imaginary bands and artists you’d wish actually existed.
The Obnoxxious
“Obnoxious” is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. You hardly need to speak English to understand what it means: irritating, offensive, repulsive. A perfect name for a punk band.
The Obnoxxious, formed in 1971 in a leaking storage room of a kebab shop in London’s Brixton neighborhood, were a major source of inspiration for the Sex Pistols. Provocative lyrics, screaming vocals, raging guitars, mohawks, safety pins, ripped clothes—The Obnoxxious were practically the first in everything. But because they didn’t have as good a manager as the Sex Pistols, their role in punk history has always been somewhat overlooked.
Ultimately, the band released only one LP and a few singles. When major success failed to materialize, the four band members each went their own way. Singer Ronnie Rancid got addicted to alcohol and drugs, bassist Nasty Nick opted for a respectable office job, drummer Billy Vomit went on to study architecture, guitarist Toxic Freddie learned to really play guitar and started making experimental jazz. But it’s still fun to put on their record every now and then and shout along with classics like “UK Sucks”, “Fascist Motherfuckers”, and “Asshole Anarchy”.
The Coming Men
The Icelandic singer-songwriter trio The Coming Men formed in the late 1990s, far from the Reykjavik scene, in a small settlement of 10,000 inhabitants called Akureyri. Which incidently is the country’s second city, nevertheless.
Jón Siggarðurson, Gunnar Þórðurson, and Tjörfi Þjóðgeirson were individually too introspective to go solo, but together they made just enough noise to give it a try. Their music meanders between whispering folk, minimal electronics, and harmonies that sound as if they’ve just been thawed from the permafrost. The listener automatically envisions dewy moss, babbling brooks, and hot springs.
The Coming Men write songs that are rarely about something, more often drifting past it: glaciers retreating without saying goodbye, letters never sent, and expectations politely postponed. Onstage, the members exchange instruments, languages, and looks of mild confusion, singing in voices that almost overlap, as if singing together is a moral choice.
Their breakthrough album, “Keep Coming”, was released in 2001 and was praised for its “unobtrusive urgency.” Since then, they’ve been releasing albums at long intervals. The band is still active, though details remain scarce: performances are often only confirmed after they’ve already taken place. As they say themselves: The Coming Men are never too late—the world is often just too early.
Sodom and Gomorra
The 1970s were a good decade for male duos: Simon & Garfunkel, Seals & Crofts, Hall & Oates. To the general public, Sodom & Gomorra are somewhat less well-known which is probably partly due to the fact that they only released one LP. But that 1979 album, “The Night The City Burned”, full of steaming funk, spicy soul, and sweltering disco, does enjoy cult status among connoisseurs.
During the recording of the second album, Jack Sodom and Winston Gomorra had a violent argument, reportedly over the number of sugar cubes in Winston’s coffee, but musical differences likely also played a role. The second album never materialized, and fans have been hoping for a reunion ever since. But because the two men are now approaching their eighties, time is running out.
Ultra Cool Dwarfs
The Celtic post-punk of Ultra Cool Dwarfs is considered by experts to be the missing link between The Pogues, The Waterboys, and The Dropkick Murphys. The trio met in 2003 while studying at the University of Dublin, studies which they still haven’t completed. Frontman Sean O’Rourke studied astronomy there, which inspired the band’s name. An ultra cool dwarf is a type of star, which is indeed quite cool for a star, although it can still reach temperatures of around 2400 degrees Celsius.
While folk music tends to look to the past and punk screams at the future, Ultra Cool Dwarfs remain firmly grounded in the present. Their sound consists of driving rhythms, grinding bass, and melodies that sound suspiciously like traditional ballads or are they punk songs with a violin accidentally thrown in? The three musicians play bagpipes, banjo, and pennywistle as easily as guitar, bass, and drums, resulting in an exciting and eclectic sound.
The lyrics balance between political annoyances, undersized hotel beds, Irish rent prices, and objects with low mass but disproportionate gravity. Themes like labor, seafaring, national identity, and structural misunderstandings in pubs also recur regularly. But above all, their lyrics, and indeed everything about the band, are characterized by an abundance of humor, irony, and self-deprecation, evident simply by the fact that all three Dwarfs are over 1.90 meters tall.
After their first album, “Mildly Apocalyptic” in 2007, the band began a promotional tour of medium-sized venues, small festivals, and packed pubs, in Ireland and far beyond. And they’ve essentially never stopped touring.
Live performances by Ultra Cool Dwarfs are characterized by a sense of collective confusion: the audience doesn’t know whether to dance, sing along, or think. Often, all these things happen simultaneously. The band seems not only to allow this but actively encourage it, changing tempos mid-song or quoting traditions that no one in the audience can quite place. During the inexorable climax of all these concerts, the song “Circumstellar Body Language,” so many romances have blossomed that their influence on the Irish birth rate cannot be underestimated.
The breakthrough into truly large venues and stadiums has always eluded them, but the band consistently appears on lists of “underrated bands.” In that sense, Ultra Cool Dwarfs remain exactly what they always were: a necessary transition between drunkenness and discipline, between folk and post-punk. After more than two decades, the Dwarfs steadfastly refuse to be nostalgic, which, paradoxically, makes them still relevant.
Rickety Ramshackle and the Decrepits
For the Dutch word “gammel” there are three English words that mean more or less the same: rickety, ramshackle, and decrepit. A band name just fell into my lap.
Rickety Ramshackle and the Decrepits were formed in 1987 by five road workers in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The band quickly gained some recognition in the region for their energetic performances and their raw, gritty, bluesy rock. Yet, their breakthrough to a wider audience never really came. Only the title track from their third album, “Wild and Wonky”, became a modest hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1995. But the band still exists, though only Rickety Ramshackle himself remains of the original lineup. His real name is Engelbert Puddlewick, by the way, but that’s not really going to cut it in this genre.
Lasagna Tortellini
If you don’t know anything about Italian cuisine, Lasagna could very well be a girl’s name. And Tortellini is actually used as a surname in Italy, though not very often. That brings us to Lasagna Tortellini, a stunningly beautiful singer who made waves in the 1990s with dreamy, orchestral songs featuring philosophical, social, and spiritual lyrics, often with a feminist slant. Layered lyrics indeed; that joke has been made before. Her best-known songs are “Figlie della Terra”, “Senza Padrone”, and “Giorni di Sale”.
Like practically every female singer-songwriter, she cites Joni Mitchell as her main source of inspiration, but the influences of Kate Bush and Bonny Raitt can also be heard in her music. In recent years, she’s taken it a bit easier; she only performs occasionally and spends most of her time gardening on her little island near Naples. Whether she’ll ever perform in the Netherlands again is highly questionable, but I would definitely buy tickets!
Minne Rispingen
Minne Rispingen (Bad Harvests) was a rockband from the town of Bolsward in the northern Dutch province of Fryslân. Bands from the seventies and eighties like Cheap Trick, Bad Company and Simple Minds were their prime role models. Around the turn of the century they tried to reach a national audience with their Frisian-language rock, following in the wake of Twarres and De Kast, Frisian bands that were quite successful. But although they sold out every venue in their home province, a breakthrough across the province borders didn’t really happen. A reason may be that their heavy guitar songs weren’t considered radio-friendly enough by the DJs in radio city Hilversum.
Also the first two singles from their third album flopped. After that, the band reluctantly decided to release the title track, “Wat Oerbliuwt nei de Nacht” (What Remains After The Night), the only ballad on the album. And that ultimately became their big, and only, hit, which has consistently been voted into the yearly Dutch Top 2000 ever since. It’s a song about a love that starts as a one night stand but that lasts a lifetime. Singer-guitar player Bauke Bosma wrote it for his girlfriend Baukje. Yeah, Bauke and Baukje, you can’t make that up. Or, actually, you can.
In 2010, Minne Rispingen retired, annoyed as they were by having to play that same song over and over again. But sometimes they get together for a reunion concert, and okay, alright then…
The Carrington Event
The Carrington Event was formed in 1971 in a damp basement beneath a secondhand bookshop in Cambridge. The band took its name from the solar storm of 1859, a historical fact they invariably cited in interviews to buy time and avoid questions about the music. Musically, the group balanced between cerebral guitar exercises, irregular time signatures, and long silences that the press consistently described as “brave” or “disturbing.”
Guitarists Eddie Foggins and Lee Ditheridge preferred to play in different tunings, resulting in compositions that sounded like twenty construction workers using all their tools simultaneously. The rhythm section held everything together, albeit often reluctantly.
Their debut album, “Induced Currents in the Upper Atmosphere”, sold very little, but was thoroughly understood by three music critics and a physicist from Bath. Live performances were rare and often ended prematurely for “conceptual reasons.”
In 1976, The Carrington Event quietly dissolved. The guitars fell silent, the magnetic storm passed, and no one was quite sure whether the band had been ahead of their time visionary or occupational therapy for intellectuals.
Bereshit
The late seventies was the time when my partner-in-crime, Kees, and I formed one symphonic rock band after another. Kees played a tiny bit of piano, and I didn’t play any instruments at the time, but in our youthful exuberance, that shouldn’t be an obstacle.
Bereshit is a Hebrew name; it refers to the first book of the Torah. The name is therefore a clear reference to Genesis. Later, after Phil Collins had seized power, that English band produced some decent pop tunes, but the first incarnation of Genesis, still featuring Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett, made quite complex symphonic music. And we appreciated that genre very much.
The emphasis in Bereshit is on the second syllable. But with the emphasis on the first syllable, in Dutch it suddenly means “bear droppings”. As teenagers, we thought it was quite funny to consistently use the correct pronunciation in interviews while everyone was thinking of that other meaning. Incidentally, I only recently discovered that the emphasis should be on the third syllable. Anyway.
ASK
Bereshit broke up quite quickly, but shortly after, we simply formed another symphonic rock group: ASK. And that three-letter word was, of course, a blatant reference to two other great bands from that era: Yes and ELP (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer).
Kees unfortunately didn’t live to see it, but I’m glad that after almost fifty years, there finally is a cover for the debut LP. And all thanks to artificial intelligence. The title, “The Seventh Treshold of Ultimate Becoming”, is also AI-generated, by the way.
I’m not going to put these fictional album covers in my webshop; this playing with AI doesn’t feel like my own work enough for that. And I don’t claim copyright on the names or song titles either. I play a bit of guitar now, but I simply don’t have the time for a career in music. So if anyone is still looking for a band name or song title and finds something to their liking here: be my guest. It would be nice to suddenly hear something by Ultra Cool Dwarfs on the radio or see an announcement for a concert by The Coming Men, last week at the Paradiso. Or to see “Wat Oerbliuwt nei de Nacht” suddenly enter the top 2000 at position 1895 or so.
