The Best and Worst Band Names You've Ever Heard

Has Ecstasy of Saint Theresa been mentioned here already?

Slowdive is indeed a great name.

edited 31st Jan '14 10:45:02 AM by Quag15

The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa is indeed one of the better band names out there.

I've never heard of them. I guess I'm gonna have to Czech them out—*shot*

Snow Patrol for best. The Clash too, probably.

I used to confuse Snow Patrol and The Postal Service a lot for some reason. Both have good names, though.

Huh. At the same time those two are very different as names, as well as musically, but still I can easily see why someone would be confused which is which.

I somewhat wish that Slowdive had called that album Souvlaki Space Station, partially because of alliteration, partially because I tend to get confused when an album is almost-but-not-quite named after one of it's songs... The only other specific example of such a thing I can bring up is with Chumbawamba: their biggest hit is "Tubthumping", but the album it's from is Tubthumper.

K-pop has some really terrible band names, like H.O.T. (High-five Of Teenagers) and TRAX (Typhoon of Rose Attacks on Xmas). In their defense, they aren't fluent in English, but I don't think I've seen any band name that could top these as the worst.

I don't know about the best though.

The problem with K-Pop band/singer names is that many of them seem to think that all-caps = cool. Thus we get names like BIGSTAR, BIKINY (seriously? They couldn't spell-check that?), EXID, EXO, INFINITE, and VIXX.

Ooh, almost forgot PSY for a second.

edited 15th Feb '14 11:04:23 PM by PhysicalStamina

Slowdive got the name of the album Souvlaki from a sketch by the comedy group the Jerky Boys. I think the title of the album just being Souvlaki would work the best though.

It's definitely an irritating thing. It's possible that an angry 10-year-old boy named them. Think about it!

Frequently transliteration in Korean and Japanese fails to take into account the mechanics of capitalisation because that distinction is not native to those languages. Neither has much of an equivalent to "the" or "a," either. So it goes. It looks weird in English, but it's understandable.

Any band with anal, sh*t, c*nt, or other names that have to be that "edgy" has a stupid name imo, unless it's supposed to be ironic. There's tasteless and then there's horrible.

I'm listening to a country band right now called Two Tons of Steel. I heard one of their songs on a local station many years ago, and always thought that was a cool name.

It's very hard to make that sort of thing work in a band name, although in the right context it can be mildly amusing... if only in knowing the context. For example, the industrial musician Anal Sadist took his name from a friend's assertion that his fixation on chess strategy was "the worst kind of anal sadism"—in this case meaning anal-retentive, or extremely fussy. But even then, context is key.

Although it can provide for some decent song titles now and then: "The Shit of the Alchemist" by Ramleh, for example.

There was a a pretty decent mallcore emo band named Mae, back in the day. Name was alright. Allegedly, back when they were completely independent, it was supposed to be an acronym for Multisensory Aesthetic Experience. I'm just glad they dropped that by the time they hit the mainstream.

Good: iwrestledabearonce (even though they sound awful), Behemoth, Fiction Junction, The Minibosses, Metallica, Queen, Pantera, t.A.t.u., etc... If stagenames for a single person count, add Skrillex because the phonetics of that are stupidly good and Weird Al Yankovic because it fits the music.

Bad: Sunn O))) (naming your band after an amplifier brand? Seriously? They're good, though), Broken CYDE (even worse than their name), 3OH!3 (no comment) aaaaaand I can't think of many more bad names.

Awesome: Royal Hunt. Stately and elegant while hinting at something more primal beneath, even if the band are mostly the former two.

Terrible: Under Moonlight Sadness. Is this some poorly translated Sailor Moon fanfic?

I actually like iwrestledabearonce...

Skrillex does have a weirdly fun-to-say name, though.

It really does sound like a fanfic, doesn't it?

I really like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Queens of the Stone Age, Avenged Sevenfold, Mastodon, Them Crooked Vultures, Iron Maiden, The Sword, Soundgarden, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, and Anthrax.

Five Finger Death Punch, Atreyu, Sum 41, and blink-182 though, not so much. At least regarding band names.

EDIT: Breaking Benjamin and especially Oingo Boingo are also pretty shit in that regard.

edited 24th Feb '14 11:50:44 PM by XJTordecai

Oingo Boingo were originally called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (bold-text because why not), which is a pretty decent name, but the reduced one is a bit meh.

Reminds me of that T.Rex album, Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow.

Anyway, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark is a fun band name.

I think Oingo Boingo is still a good name but I think the name got worse when they shortened it again to just Boingo.

Nikleback Is probably the most stupid. I keep thinking "Okay, heads it's Niklefront, tails it's Nikleback."

I bet a lot of people get "Nikleback" confused with "Nickelback". Such similar band names!