In addition to their impact on music, Black Sabbath also left their mark visually, with their unmistakable logo and memorable album covers. During his appearance at the Steel City Con in Pennsylvania, Geezer Butler spoke a bit about this aspect of the band.

When asked whose idea it was for the group's striking self-titled album cover, Butler replied that it wasn't the band's: "We saw it the day before the release (laughs), and in England, it was a fold-out cover that showed an inverted cross inside when opened. I thought, 'Oh no, if my father sees this, he'll kill me,' because my parents were ultra-Catholic and I still lived with them."

The bassist also recalled the cover of the album Paranoid , which he considers terrible: “It was our manager's idea at the time, who quickly left. I still don't know what it represents. It's a guy in a costume, with a sword. It's the worst cover of all time,” he said, causing laughter in the audience.

Butler also said that, after the change of manager, the band gained access to the album covers in advance, allowing them to choose the visual style for each album.

Tony Iommi explains the cover of the album Paranoid.

In 2020, Tony Iommi revealed the origin of the album cover in an interview with The Conversation . According to the guitarist, it was the result of a last-minute change to the album's name.

“The cover of Paranoid has nothing to do with the song 'Paranoid'. The album was going to be called War Pigs , so we had this guy with a shield and a sword, which remotely made sense – more so than Paranoid .”

The album's name was considered controversial and ended up being banned, forcing the group to change it: "The initial title was banned, we couldn't use it at that time... it was embarrassing to move forward after that," Iommi added.

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