Why Are These AI-Generated Iron Maiden Album Covers SO Good?!

AI (artificial intelligence) often provides us with things we never knew we needed, the latest being computer-generated renderings of Iron Maiden album art and their iconic mascot Eddie.

There are hundreds of depictions of Eddie already out there, from artwork accompanying musical releases to hundreds of variations on location-specific tour shirts and elsewhere in Iron Maiden’s visual world.

Someone has uploaded seven AI iterations of Iron Maiden album covers in the Cursed AI Facebook group.

“Beware, these creations may haunt your dreams and unravel your sanity. Step into the eerie world of AI-generated cursed art, where machines possess powers to create twisted and terrifying masterpieces,” begins the About section of this group, “Join our community of art lovers with a taste for the strange and share your twisted creations. These disturbingly beautiful images crafted by AI will leave you questioning the very nature of technology and its place in our world.”

The page itself is a rather open playground with an obvious focus on what’s described above — it’s curiously weird and oddly unsettling at times, quirky and head-scratching at others. Taylor Swift rendered as Gollum from The Lords of the Rings checks all of those boxes.

Naturally, Maiden’s undead mascot, who is usually depicted in some harrowing scene, lends itself to the page’s aesthetic.

In the AI images seen below, Eddie takes on a few new forms and is set in some pretty nightmarish hellscapes. Fans who are intimately familiar with Maiden’s artwork should be able to easily identify some of the covers AI drew from to create alternate renditions. The most casual of fans will be able to spot some clear parallels as well, most notably the tree-like figure that may just be the most haunting of the bunch.

The user who uploaded the images directed AI with this prompt: Obscure 80’s era heavy metal album covers, in the style of Iron Maiden. Create one album cover, per image, including the classic “Iron Maiden” logo.

READ MORE: Every Iron Maiden Song Ranked

Many of the commenters reach for the low-hanging fruit, which in this case still tastes the sweetest, and point out that these are all generally better than Iron Maiden’s lampooned artwork for their 2003 album Dance of Death.

Because AI is quite imperfect, there’s some obvious flaws present in these images as well. Iron Maiden’s logo is botched and, in one piece, Eddie holds a guitar (if you can call it that) — it kind of just looks like a guitar neck with no body, but it looks like a complete instrument. And Eddie slightly resembles Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson in this one as well.

If AI can’t even figure out how to create a guitar or perfectly recreate Maiden’s logo, we should have a few more years ahead of us before the machines wipe out the human race. Hooray!

For now, enjoy AI with all of its flaws and limitless capabilities to gently amuse and entertain us.