This month’s column starts with two album covers that are very different from each other, but that are both pretty much exactly appropriate for their musical content — or for what I imagine their musical content to be based on the covers themselves, the artist names and album names, which is, of course, all I have to go on.

Demon Hunter – World Is a Thorn

OK, technically I shouldn’t know the artist or album title for this one, as they are not on the cover. But the way I find these covers, that would have been almost impossible to avoid. If you can think of a way for me to find the cover images of new albums without getting the artist/album title info, let me know. I’m into being a purist if at all possible.

But for now, I’ll cheat. Which means that I know this band is called Demon Hunter, and their album is titled World Is a Thorn, which tells you a lot right there. This music will involve large amounts of thick, distorted guitars, guttural and/or screaming vocals, and either breakneck-fast, virtuosic riffage or slow, punishing dirges. (I’m leaning toward breakneck, but I wanted to leave open the possibility of a slower, doomier band.)

And, lo and behold, this album art fits right in with the band name and title, completing the image of their sound. The cover image is a straightforward rendering of a fantastical Gothic cathedral with a huge dragon’s head front and center, flanked by a couple of somewhat phallic gargoyles. The color palette is a very muted sepia, and the tone is very serious and unironic. The he opposite of, say, Goblin Cock’s legendary debut album cover, which like this one was heavily steeped in Dungeons & Dragons geek lore, but was also heavily steeped in irony. This piece has the air of having been drawn on the back of a soon-to-be-failed math test by a longhaired stoner kid with some serious art chops and antisocial tendencies.

If I were to actually listen to this band (and so far I haven’t listened to anything I’ve written about in this column, aside from a few ill-advised seconds attempting to endure Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok”), I would prepare myself for a very loud, very intense band with no sense of humor at all.

Daniel O’Donnell – Early Memories
This one could actually be any number of things: Motivational book on tape; deadpan satire of motivational book on tape (I’m pretty sure this is 100% sincere, but I do get a bit of a Stuart Smalley vibe, so I wanted to leave the option on the table); audio book of essays about, um, early memories; soothing new age jazz; solo flute meditations (the flute could be of either the western concert or pan variety); cloying Irish folk songs . . . really, the mind reels.

But again, for any of these options, this album cover is absolutely perfect, and I would wager a lot of money that whatever is on this album, it’s absolutely fitting for the album cover. I mean, you’re not going to throw this on and hear some hardcore honky-tonk, or rap, or afropop-infused indie rock (or, let’s be frank, anything with a strong beat at all). Daniel O’Donnell, like Demon Hunter, is nothing if not earnest, and I’m sure he took the design of his album cover as seriously as they did theirs. The smile: inviting and slightly playful, but not goofy. The view: generically lovely, sparkling, tranquil. The fonts: classic, classy, strong but not overbearing. The sweater: blends in perfectly with the sky and sea to offset the artist’s smiling face, ready and waiting to share his early memories with you, whatever form they might take.

This album’s art is also perfectly appropriate for the album’s intended audience, which as anyone could see is late middle-aged ladies with a certain amount of disposable income who like to have music on in the background while they read their historical romance novels or books about how to achieve their soul’s full potential, or maybe just sit and gaze at the dreamcatchers and crystals hanging through their window and dream of sparkling waters and periwinkle sweaters.

Gary Allan – Get off on the Pain
OK, you knew the lovefest couldn’t last, right? I saw this horrendous abortion of an album cover scrolling by, and I knew I had to expose it to the light of day. There is so much wrongness going on here that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Let’s start with the title: “Get off on the Pain”? Really? Mix that in with the random generic-tattoo style photoshop filler graphics, the weathered spraypaint stencil font, and the image of the artist himself: sculpted hair, grizzled face, tattooed, wearing artfully ripped and goth-bedazzled jeans (what, did he write all over them in Sharpie during a long meeting with his publicist?), and I guess this art is pretty appropriate for what the album likely contains as well. Is there any chance a record with art this shitty and a title this groan-inducing, prominently featuring a douchebag of such monumental proportions (I had to cheat and do a little research to determine that the featured tattoo is of a skeleton in a cowboy hat holding a pair of green dice, flanked by a rose on barbed wire — ’nuff said) could be anything but a steaming shit sandwich?

I guess we all owe Gary’s graphic designer some thanks for so blatantly telegraphing the quality of this album to us all, lest we mistakenly purchase or download or otherwise accidentally listen to it, and never recover. I’m not taking the chance.