As of last night, metal-archives.com listed 73,580 metal bands worldwide.
I looked through all their names to find the most common ones. Earlier I Googled “most common metal band names”, with no results. Now, several hours and bloodshot eyes later, I know why.
It is draining to wade through essentially a giant thesaurus of negativity. Metal bands like to call themselves the many (many, many) names of Satan. (There are even six (natch) bands called Satan.) They also call themselves everything that’s wrong with the world. If heavy metal were a singular entity, and its band names were indications of self-estimation, it would have quite the psychological profile.
My methodology was simple. When band names are identical, metal-archives differentiates them by country (e.g, “Abyss (Esp)”, “Abyss (Ita)”, etc.). I considered band names as strictly as possible. Any variation from a name constituted a different name. Thus, “The Abyss” did not count for “Abyss”. Neither would “Abyss” with umlauts, accent marks, foreign spellings, misspellings, or inclusion in a longer name (e.g., “Abyss of Doom”). The results would been different had I been more lenient (“Catharsis”, for example, would have hauled in “Katharsis” and its many variant spellings), but I avoided the headache of exceptions. Only “Abyss” counted for “Abyss”.
Here are the results.
. . .
. . .
Note that these are all one-word names that describe general concepts. Small wonder that uncreative metallers worldwide name their bands after them. No doubt such repetition was inevitable before the Internet. Now that metal-archives is functioning and well-known, there is no excuse for repeating band names.
Age helps. Despite their general-sounding names, “Death”, “Krieg”, and “Rage” all have only one entry, probably because those bands got established early enough to serve notice to the rest of the world.
“Genocide” jumps out with its unfortunate frequency. (“Matricide”, “Parricide”, and “Regicide” get seven, 10, and six nods, respectively. Similarly, eight bands are named “Pogrom”.) There are three Heavens and nine Hells; five Mortals and four Immortals; seven Lords, four Nomads, three Lone Wolves, and three Ninjas; eight Macbeths, two Lord Byrons, and one Wuthering Heights; three Philosophers, one Schopenhauer, and one Nietzschean Reprisal. Nine bands are Nameless, and two are Sin Nombre. Somehow there are three Crapulences and three Intestinal Infections. Two bands have inexplicably called themselves Dormitory.
Thankfully, there is only one Necrogay.
There should be more Necrogays. Any band that has a song named Stabbed With A Pen is ok by me.
Seriously, it sounds like you are concocting a messed up version of the 12 Days of Christmas.
Legion being the winner is quite apt, for they truly are many.
ninja! hahahahaha.
There are 1048 instances of “Dark.” But if you really want to get deep, how about the 2344 entries using the suffix “tion.”
What is really, really strange is that there is only ONE entry for “Satan’s Almighty Penis.”
It goes from ridiculous to hilarious when local bands with the same name declare war on each other -case in point: the Irish gore-death band Warpath and the English thrash band Warpath
Sample Youtube comment:
Warpath IRL hammer you guys into the dirt. Give up the name before you shame yourselves into insignificance by comparason. Retro Thrash and Corporate waffle what are you thinking.
This got me wondering, so I wrote a script to list the most common words in the EM band name list. Here’s the top 20:
637 Black
574 Death
460 Dark
320 Blood
318 Dead
221 Hate
218 Eternal
210 Dawn
189 Darkness
186 Silence
181 Soul
175 Hell
168 Funeral
162 Pain
154 Chaos
153 Evil
146 Angel
142 Fear
139 Beyond
138 Flesh
The Onion wrote a funny “News In Brief” tangentally related to this a few years back:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-only-7-band-names-remaining,5697/
If I spent 5 minutes learning an instrument for every hour I whiled away dreaming up band names, I might actually have something to name. Alas, I will probably settle on my old standby, ‘The Bri’ish Teef.’
First person to post that really really long band name that refers to some kind of serious medical condition gets a prize. I think they’re from Mexico.
Paracoccidioidomicosisproctitissarcomucosis?
Brooke, hilarious observation.
“They also call themselves everything that’s wrong with the world. If heavy metal were a singular entity, and its band names were indications of self-estimation, it would have quite the psychological profile.”
What’s also interesting is how HM has a long tradition (stretching out to initiators Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Judas Priest) of two-word band names that are antithetical, one setting up an expectation and the next upsetting it. Nihilistic, iconoclastic and reactionary
I had a discussion with a mate a few days ago about if he were to found a HM band would it be a one-word or two-word name (yes that’s the shit we talk about). He didn’t even have to ponder, he had a reply ready, he said he’d probably go for a two-word name but he’d still be jealous of the good one-word names because they have more archetypal power. We discussed the best Greek HM band names in this context and of course his argumentation is clear with the following examples:
Best two-word Greek metal band name: Rotting Christ
Best one-word Greek metal band name: Varathron
The first is very striking, creates an image immediately and it’s one full of hopelessness and dread. You thought he was resurrected to the heavens but no, maggots are eating his flesh in the crypt. But the other has an eternal, mystical aura about it, very mythological. Well, for non-Greeks, Varathron is a pit, specifically one at Athens behind the acropolis into which criminals were thrown. Let me think of a better international example…
Incantation > Malevolent Creation, although Malevolent Creation makes you think about what that would entail more.
I went with a two-word name a long time ago but I’m jealous of the power of the single word names too
Count how many “metal” bands have named an album Memento Mori…lamest cliche ever!
My buddies band name still takes the cake, Lethal Erection. another longtime favorite amalgam band name is Pornovore or Pornivore.
Ok, here’s a funny story: I was eating at a Bob Evan’s diner at a truck stop in Lafayette, Indiana (Axl Rose’s hometown) on the way home to Chicago from the Scion Rock Fest in Columbus, Ohio. As I was eating a much needed lunch with my friends, this guy notices my Nunslaughter shirt and says: “Hey guys! Do you like metal? I play in a band!” He then points to his shirt: “We’re called Human Filleted!” “Hey, y’all wanna come hang out at my place later?” We politely declined, finished our lunch, and left the place. The day after, I looked up their myspace. Pretty generic brutal death metal. http://www.myspace.com/humanfilleted
I think this is something every metal freak has thought about once or a 1000x. Personally, I’m a big fan of the descriptive adjective followed by a noun–maybe it’s because of my 80’s roots, when bands tended to have two word names (even Metallica and Megadeth were two word mash ups, tho Slayer, was, only SLAYER!) altho it’s not a hard and fast rule. I’m surprised no one has mentioned the book “All Known Metal Bands”–it’s a great book, though there are omissions due to metal’s constant evolution. I also find it interesting to wonder if the above list of bands tend to come from developed nations or developing nations–names like Torment and Genocide might be more of an apt description if you live in a repressive country full of strife and harsh living conditions.
Well the Genocide I know and like is from economic superpower Japan.
There were pretty cool band called Genocídio in Brazil though!
The funny thing is, I don’t think any of those names are actually good band names. I think the problem is that I already have a mental association for all those one-word names to their relevant concepts, so overloading them with a band association yields minor confusion. On the other hand, adding a second word creates a new mental token, so for me, ‘Malevolent Creation’ is superior to ‘Incantation’. Or, ‘Nemesis Divina’ is considerably more memorable than just ‘Nemesis’.
I think an NCAA Tourney-style bracket to determine the Invisible Oranges Readers’ Choice for best Metal Band Name Ever is in order. Different Regions could be devised by number of words, region of the world, style of metal, or even era. Pointless? Yes. Fun? Probably not, but perhaps. I say this at the risk of having it devolve into a MetalSucks ridiculous list / posting war. Sooooo…. maybe a not-so-good-idea. My predicted winner would be Slayer, though. Simple, awesome to yell / growl, powerful, scary, involves destruction and/or death, the logo’s cool… all-around great handle. Very metal.
As an aside, I’ve always liked the “Witch” family of metal bands… Skeletonwitch, Witch, Witchery, Witchfinder General, Angel Witch…
there can be only one SLAYER!
Paracoccidioidomicosisproctitissarcomucosis
Anyways, the best names are abstract, but fit the music. Mortuary Drape is an excellent example. The Faceless is another.
I just realized that Onkel Peppie of Necrogay is wearing a banana hamock. Or is that a jockstrap?
My friends and I in high school came up with “Satan’s Bake Sale.” As far as I know, it’s unused.
@Gse, on the subject of most commonly used words in band names, how many band names can you make from your list, Dark Angel, Death Angel, Hate Eternal… There must be loads of others!
Maybe even more remarkable is that there are 12 different American bands called Necropolis.
I hope you were joking about spending hours doing this. If not, drop me a note next time one of these questions occurs to you! Our computers exist to serve…
And this all reminds me of this, where I proved that the most metal of all possible names is Sacrificia (with special guests Saran Orer).
Oh, and re @gse’s list of the most common words, I just did a check for the word pairs used in the most different names (excluding the obvious a/an/the/of/in/etc). The winner is “No” and “More”, which appear together in 8 different names: Faith No More, Mercy No More, Mourn No More, No More Fear, No More Hate, No More Lies, No More Pain, Shit No More.
Blood/Red and New/World each have 6; Hand/Left, Chaos/Order, As/Burns, Black/Metal, Dead/Rising, My/Soul, Heavy/Metal, Darkest/My, and Last/My each have 5.
I knew the guys from Legion. Yeah.
I’m just a little relieved to see that there were only five bands named Remains.
And for yet another oddity, there are two pairs of bands with the same three words in a different order: Black Skies Burn and Skies Burn Black; and Deus Ex Machina and Machina Deus Ex. And 62 pairs of bands with the same two words in the opposite order, like Abuse Ritual and Ritual Abuse.
The longest band-name in the database at the moment is 54 characters. But it’s a joke.
I even have my wife thinking up names for me. we have a book on the table with lists of names: egregious, machination, kraken, chthonic… I can’t even play a power chord, I just obsess with names. wait… the obsessed, oh wait…taken. wino, thanks for taking all the good names. I’m on the power of the one word schoolbus. It has more of a punch and it seems to resonate with the power of said word. mastodon. good fuckin name. anal cunt… intrusive, ephemerally effective. metal names must carry with them mythical and linguistic power. pathos, gloom, doom, terror. all important.
and i think slayer is short for dragonslayer. slayer was just easier to chant. slayer, by itself, seems to generate deeper darker meaning. slayer of god, slayer of self, slayer of the world…one word. dragonslayer…appealing to the d&d crowd, but not quite the kick in the teeth as slayer.
Can you imagine what the 32nd band to name themselves Legion must think? They picked the most popular metal band name, but somehow missed that 31 other metal bands had already picked the name. That is big time lols.
»Legion« is an awesome name that could be taken into interesting territory. Imagine all the Legions coalescing into one unit. That would give a whole new meaning to the phrase »they are Legion« (i. e. ubiquitous and/or many), they could play 30 gigs on the same day all over the planet, release tons of music, and just cause complete confusion.
Economies of scale for metal names so to speak …
“There can only be one Slayer”
There’s already been at least two.
Didn’t a festival in Norway recently announce that four bands called Ragnarok would be playing this year? I thought that was quite amusing
I own three different Slayers (California, Texas, and the UK) There was both a Genocide, and a Hatred in New Jersey.
I can now produce various of these things automatically:
Common Names
Common Name Words (by Style!)
Name-Word Pairs
Incidentally, the first one reveals that the original post overlooked Prophecy, of which there are 25! Always better to let a computer do the counting…
“Thankfully…”
That last sentence almost killed me with laughter.