Diamonds are a skull's best friend? Skulls are in!

Damien Hirst might have "created" the most notorious and expensive one, but he's far from alone: skulls are on display everywhere right now, within galleries, on record covers, and spray-painted on the wall next door. Behold this onslaught of skull imagery, collected from current art shows and some recent reissued albums and labels. Dia de los Muertos beckons, yet there's a serious sinister present-day political element to at least some of this work. Add your skullbitchery, skullduggery and skull contribution suggestions to the comments section below.

For the Love of God by Damien Hirst. This platinum-cast skull, covered with 8601 pave-set diamonds, recently sold for $100,000,000.

At Cheim & Read in New York, "I Am As You Will Be: The Skeleton in Art" includes pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Hirst, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol. Above is Alice Neel's Self Portrait, Skull, from 1958.

Five or six years before Hirst's For the Love of God, Sherrie Levine made Skull, a bronze piece in an edition of 12. Skull is on display at the Marcel Duchamp-riffing "Sherrie Levine" at NYEHAUS in New York, and Levine is also part of the group show at Cheim & Read.

Gallerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris is showing recent work by Chiho Aoshima, including the 2007 mixed media piece The Fountain of the Skull.

"Chris Marker: Staring Back," currently at the Peter Blum galleries in New York, showcases 200 photographs taken by the filmmaker (who has long been critically attuned to the emblematic and iconic) over the course of six decades.

Thanks to releases by Shackleton and to some acclaimed compilations, the Skull Disco label in the UK is at the forefront of dubstep, and has recently drawn contributions by the apocalyptic beat conductor Ricardo Villalobos.

Sporting coral, ebony, glass, and gold, Steven Gregory's Blue Skies Ahead -- one of a number of skull-based works at New York's Nicholas Robinson Gallery through November -- evokes Dia de los Muertos as much as Hirst's sinister decadence.

Another skull by Gregory at Nicholas Robinson Gallery, Waking Dreams includes lapis lazuli, ebony, gold and diamond.

The '70s funk/soul group Skull Snaps has been sampled like crazy for a reason: their 1973 album, recently reissued, can step to some of Curtis Mayfield's recordings from the era.