We don’t know of any poker games that allow you to raise your own bet without an intervening raise by another player, but here at NCS we make up our own fucking rules as we go along.

So this game began when our friends at Reign in Blonde posted a ridiculous album cover by Kivimetsan Druidi (here). Which prompted us to raise with the ridiculous album cover above by the non-metal band Florence and the Machine.

Now, if you keep your eyes open, you’ll see ridiculous new album covers every week. So this game conceivably could go on, well, forever.  Who knows, maybe it will. But we’re at least going to continue the game for one more day by raising our own raise, not once but twice, courtesy of a Canadian rock trio called Danko Jones and a French “power metal” band called Heavenly.

The new Danko Jones album, scheduled for a May release, is called Below the Belt. Danko Jones recently opened for Guns N’ Roses and Sebastian Bach at a tour of hockey arenas across Canada. Which pretty much guarantees their music blows large hairy balls.

Heavenly’s latest album (December 2009) is called Carpe Diem. Their music’s not our style either. But we’re grateful to both bands, because their album covers allow us to keep this ridiculous-album-cover game going for one more day.  (to see these covers, you’ll have to click past the jump . . .) Continue reading »