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Besides being darker, there are also less people. U.S. covers in particular have usually tended to have someone vaguely humanoid on the cover - regardless of how ghastly the artwork. It was in the specs: if you want to sell in the U.S. then put a person on the front. (They've even done it to Stephen Donaldson's latest books - making me very careful to hunt down the U.K. editions.) Maybe some are slowly learning that the U.S. audience can be a bit more discriminating than that.
Of course there is another factor. More books are being published with purchased clipart rather than dedicated artwork, so that makes it harder to find people to put on the cover that look like they have anything to do with the story.
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