We weren’t quite sure what we wanted to use for the cover, but we knew we wanted to try and be different than all of the other metal bands around at the time. One idea I had originally was a really great picture of this huge rock with ocean waves crashing all around it. I got it out of National Geographic, I think, and I made a photocopy of it to show to Kevin. It looked really cool, all grainy and black and white from the crappy copy machine, but I don’t think anyone was too thrilled with the idea. It looked very "New-Age Doom". Then Kevin showed me a picture he had taken on a school field-trip to Washington D.C.. It was a photo of the cathedral with this eerie sunlight coming over the top and really nice colors. The only problem was he couldn’t find the negative and all we had was this little snap-shot. So we had a friend who was a photographer take a picture of the picture so we we could blow up the negative from that one. Kevin was learning Commercial Art in school so we thought we could do the lay-out ourselves and do it just how we wanted. But when we sent the finished cover to the label in England, they didn’t want to pay for a color separation for the photo or something like that, so we ended up with the cover in black and white. How ironic is that? Here we were trying to be different and we end up with this drab cover with a picture of this big scary cathedral on it. It couldn’t have turned out any more ‘metal’ looking if we had wanted it to. Needless to say, that scene from SPINAL TAP has always come to mind. A lot of people have told me they love the cover just because it is so stark and simple and I can see their point, but I have always felt that the album cover, on a subconscious level, plays a big role in how the music sounds to you. For example, when I listen to certain albums I tend to associate a certain feel or 'color' with the music. I think a lot of this is related to the look of the cover, and I think that "Suffering Hour" has always seemed very one-dimensional to me because of its cover. So, all things considered, I think for a first album it’s not all that bad. It didn’t really show the different textures and moods of our music, even as much as our demos had, but on a positive note, at least I decided to drop the the cheesy falsetto-screams just prior to recording the album (shooting for Halford, but sounding like King Diamond, never had a vocalist tried to do so much with so little). I guess it could have been worse.