Canadian band Numenorean caused controversy in 2016 by using a post-mortem photograph of a two-year-old girl as the cover for their debut album Home. (On the CD version, the exploitative cover is inside a slipcase.) Kristen MacDonald was killed by her father in 1970, in a well-documented murder case, and the band explained their use of her image in the album’s liner notes: “Perhaps what we are really searching for is the innocence that we once had as a child. However, since we are incapable of ever getting that back, the only place we can perhaps find this comfort once more is in death.”
The first photograph of a dead body on a record cover was perhaps the Dead Kennedys’ single Holiday in Cambodia, released in 1980. The 12" single appropriated Neal Ulevich’s image of a public lynching after the 6th October 1976 massacre. Proposed cover art for the Pain Killer album Guts of a Virgin—an autopsy photo of a woman with her intestines exposed, in a tasteless pun on the album title—was destroyed by UK customs in 1991 as potentially obscene, and the album was released with a censored cover. (The uncensored photo was used for the Japanese CD release.)
The first photograph of a dead body on a record cover was perhaps the Dead Kennedys’ single Holiday in Cambodia, released in 1980. The 12" single appropriated Neal Ulevich’s image of a public lynching after the 6th October 1976 massacre. Proposed cover art for the Pain Killer album Guts of a Virgin—an autopsy photo of a woman with her intestines exposed, in a tasteless pun on the album title—was destroyed by UK customs in 1991 as potentially obscene, and the album was released with a censored cover. (The uncensored photo was used for the Japanese CD release.)