Forty-three years after its release, the cover of Judas Priest's British Steel still has the power to unnerve. Designed by Roslav Szaybo, it depicts a hand, cloaked in darkness, fingers splayed, clutching a giant razor blade so tightly that the glinting edges appear to cut into the flesh. Somehow, the absence of blood only serves to make the image more disturbing.
Judas Priest never intended the cover of their 1980 classic to be macabre. The sleeve was simply an extension of the album’s title, conceived by bassist Ian Hill as both a nod to the striking steelworkers of the time and to what the band saw as their own quintessential Britishness.
