“The only sin here is that we have gone our entire lives as Priest fanatics yet we have never seen these photos – until now!” writes Monte.
“We all thought the Sin After Sin cover painting was created from scratch, but in reality it was based on an actual photograph of the Gordon Mausoleum, built in 1910 for Colonel Alexander Gordon, located on the grounds of Putney Vale Cemetery in London.
I just learned of this myself recently when Bob Mayo (of thrash legends, Wargasm) unearthed this amazing find – the first photo you see below.
“The cover was the work of the late British photographer Bob Carlos Clarke, who (along with Hipgnosis) pioneered the process of taking black and white photographs and then airbrushing them with colored inks for the final result.
Another key figure involved in the cover’s creation was Rosław Szaybo, the Polish painter and photographer who served as the European art director of CBS Records from 1972 to 1988.
In addition to his art direction on Sin After Sin, Szaybo also designed the covers of Stained Class, Killing Machine (known in the U.S. as Hell Bent for Leather) and British Steel (apparently, that is Szaybo’s own hand you see gripping the razor blade on the cover!).
He also created the diagonal Judas Priest logo that debuted on Stained Class and is still in use today with only minor modifications.”
/ Courtesy of Kerrang & The Metal Realm