The Best and Worst Band Names You've Ever Heard

Let's take a quick scroll through my iPod. :P

Likey: Aether, Animal Collective, Aphex Twin, Arcade Fire, Atlas Sound, Au, Autechre, Battles, Beck, Belong, Black Dice, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Boards of Canada, Boredoms, Burial, Can, Casino Versus Japan, Crystal Castles, Datarock, Deepchord, Demdike Stare, Desolate, Destroyer, The Detroit Escalator Co., Dirty Projectors, Distance, Eleven Tigers, Emeralds, Fatboy Slim, Fennesz, The Flaming Lips, Flying Lotus, Gas, Geotic, Glasser, Growing, Helios, Here We Go Magic, High Places, Horizon Fire, I 8 U, Infinite Body, Information, Intrusion, jj, Justice, Kraftwerk, LFO, Lights Out Asia, Loscil, Marble Sky, MGMT, Mnemonic, Monolake, Oneohtrix Point Never, The Orb, Orbital, Oren Ambarchi, Papercuts, Pixel, Radiohead, The Residents, ROVO, Secede, Special Others, Squarepusher, Stars of the Lid, Sun Ra, Supersilent, Tobacco, Tycho, Venetian Snares, White Rainbow, Wild Nothing, xx, 2562

No Likey (music, name): I Set All My Friends on Fire, Boys and Girls, other horrible popular bands that I don't care to name...

No Likey (just name): Freelance Whales, Access to Arasaka, Am-Boy, Amon Tobin, Balam Acab, Baths, Blamstrain, Cymbals Eat Guitars, deadmau5, Dosh, edIT, Falty DL, Fuck Buttons, Ginormous, Mouse on Mars, How to Dress Well, iTAL tEK, Lemon Jelly, Lucky Dragons, The Octopus Project, Pantha du Prince, Passion Pit, pretty much all bands names starting with "Pho", Plaid, Secret Machines, Shackleton, Richard Devine, Shed, Shpongle,Sweet Trip, subtractiveLAD, Teebs, Universal Studios Florida, u-Ziq

Gas has the most descriptive name ever.

Go on and tell me this isn't the sound of gas molecules lazily bumping into each other.

Also, I think Krallice is a really cool name. Too cool to be truly randomly made up...

@Goomba - I knew I'd forgotten one name I really liked, it was Black Moth Super Rainbow

great band name. Pretty great band too

S'more. Not at the 'best and worst' ends, just good and bad.

Good names:

• And So I Watch You From Afar
• Battles
• Blonde Redhead
• British Sea Power
• Choir Of Young Believers
• Ecstatic Sunshine
• Efterklang (cool onomatopoeic foreign word.)
• Lowercase Noises (perfectly descriptive.)
• Midlake (same here.)
• Okkervil River
• Oneohtrix Point Never
• School Of Seven Bells (a mythical school of Robin Hood style Andean pickpockets, apparently. Awesome.)
• Shearwater (I like birds )
• The Twilight Sad
• Ungdomskulen (Norwegian for 'Middle School' - Norwegian makes everything badass.)
• The Young Knives (just a bit cool really.)

Crap names:

• Akron/Family (what is the slash for?)
• As The Poets Affirm (generic post-rock name is generic.)
• Codes In The Clouds (ditto.)
• Epic45 (really not epic.)
• Goonies Never Say Die (film quotes do not good band names make.)
• Harrys Gym (I know the lack of punctuation is deliberate but it annoys the hell out of me.)
• immanu el
• Joy Wants Eternity (see entry on As The Poets Affirm and Codes In The Clouds)
• Pg.lost (that isn't even a thing!)
• The Samuel Jackson Five (crap pun is crap)
• September Malevolence
• Teeth Of The Sea
• Tubelord (whu?)

So Bad It's Good:

• Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

edited 25th Apr '11 1:43:24 PM by Saeglopur

Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!

I live near the place where Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin was formed. A lot of the local indie hipster crowd thinks it's a great name.

On the name Lemon Jelly: seriously, they ripped off Green Jello?

More Buscemi at http://forum.reelsociety.com/

Personally, I hate it when a band names themselves after something only they get. Case in point: August Burns Red. Long story short: Red was one of their dogs, and August was his ex. How would I know about that (other than the bio), and why would I care (sure, animal cruelty is awful, but it has nothing to do with their actual music)?

Speaking of bands that do talk about animal cruelty, The Agonist has a decent name that fits their lyrics. It means "instigator", but even if you didn't know that...

There are snakes in the grass, so we'd better go hunting!

Worst: Poopfist. Yes, it exists: http://www.myspace.com/poopfistband

@Saeglopur: I kind of like "September Malevolence"

All the bands from Scott Pilgrim have awesome names; The Clash at Demonhead, Crash and the Boys, Sex Bob-Omb, Shatterband.

We must move forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

Best: AC/DC, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Queen, Canned Heat, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

Worst: As I Lay Dying, 30 Seconds To Mars, Neutral Milk Hotel

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

Neutral Milk Hotel is merely absurd and unimpressive; otherwise, I agree soundly.

Also, My Children My Bride is a terrible name, going along with any name involving the word "bride" as applied to a band aiming for heaviness or darkness. Why, I am not entirely sure; The June Brides *

is a perfectly fine name, but... really! There are certain names that just make you sound like you're trying too hard.

edited 26th Apr '11 5:00:20 AM by JHM

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Best band names: Sisters of Mercy, Queens of the Stone Age, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Meshuggah, Shadow Gallery, Dream Theater (even if they did spell it wrong), Rush, Oceansize, Edge of Sanity, Mastodon, Gojira, Blind Guardian.

Worst band names: Scouting For Girls (appropriate that the absolute worst band on the planet should have the absolute worst band name), Neutral Milk Hotel, Butthole Surfers, Chimp Spanner, Smashing Pumpkins, Led Zeppelin, Cannibal Corpse, Anaal Nathrakh, Happy Apple, Henry Cow.

edited 26th Apr '11 6:56:18 AM by pagad

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

Oh Scouting For Girls, I had completely forgotten about them. You're absolutely right of course, they are an abominably awful band with a terrible name. "Hurr, Scouting For Girls sounds like a good name 'cos it's a pun on Scouting For Boys, and it also suggests we're on the pull! HURR HURR DURR!" Dickheads.

Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!

Henry Cow is somewhat ameliorated when you realise that it's a reference to Henry Cowell.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Great band names:

• Depeche Mode. It's gratuitous French (meaning "in the fashion" or some such), but it has a nice ring to it, and sounds like, well, Depeche Mode.
• The Birthday Massacre.
• Primus.
• The Flaming Lips.

Not so great band names:

• The Devil Wears Prada. Apparently they never heard of the book so the name is a parallel invention, but it's pretty meh as a band title.
• Boys like Girls
• Megadeth. It's just pretty meh.
• Big Time Rush. It's already got a major band name in the name, even if they did not intend it.
• Def Leppard.

edited 26th Apr '11 8:14:53 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

My Dying Bride?

Aww, did I hurt your widdle fee-fees?

Well, it's better than their first choice, Shock The Monkey Yes.

See, it's a joke about their having both a progressive rock band and a Peter Gabriel single in their band name...

edited 26th Apr '11 9:31:08 AM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

More weak names, as far as I am concerned, include Butthole Surfers, Mustard Plug and Bowling For Soup (I don't mind the music of any of these bands, but their names aren't that great).

Best: Megadeth, Slayer, Disturbed, Shinedown, Alice in Chains, Opeth, Heathen, Artillery, Assassin

Worst: Feefer (fitting, considering they were the worst "band" ever), any band that has a sentence for their name,

WTF: Torsofuck, Fuck... I'm Dead, Corpse Penis Eaten By Rectum, Satan's Almighty Penis, Semen Across Lips, Anus Brigade

Did Comics Nix name this band?

edited 26th Apr '11 12:56:57 PM by TheGloomer

I don't feel like doing best and worst names, so I'll just post names I like and names I dislike.

Awesome names: Slayer, Isis, Emperor, Dark Angel, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Thergothon, Skepticism, Sodom, Bolt Thrower, Autopsy, Evoken, Ahab, Celtic Frost, Witchfinder General, Electric Wizard, The Dicks, Arcturus, Slipknot, Venom, Bathory, Napalm Death, Godflesh, Cathedral, Carcass, Swans, Summoning, Rotting Christ, Bal-Sagoth, Joy Division, Massive Attack, Ministry, Goatwhore, Extreme Noise Terror, Anal Cunt, Pagan Altar, Winter, Torsofuck, King Crimson, Sunn O))), Nile, Marduk, Saint Vitus, Nuclear Death.

Shit names: Dream Death, Dream Theater, Limp Bizkit, Five Finger Death Punch, System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, most metalcore band names, most names with a number in them, Faith No More, Alice in Chains, Dark Tranquillity, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Massacra, Deftones, Tool, diSEMBOWELMENT, Until Death Overtakes Me, I Drowned in a Stream of Mourn, Shape of Despair, Eyehategod, BrokeNCYDE, Sonic Youth, Wolves in the Throne Room, Make a Change...Kill Yourself, Dying Fetus.

edited 26th Apr '11 1:17:33 PM by Lordnecronus

last.fm | RYM

Personally I like Dream Theater. It invokes an interesting concept. (That is, a theater in which you view dreams).

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Best: Koan, Wumpscut, Enigma, Roxy Music, Eisbrecher, Popol Vuh

Worst: Orgy, White Zombie, Owl City, Fatboy Slim, Korn

The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.

Most Stereotypically Emo: From Autumn to Ashes, The Hurt Process, Three Days' Grace

Good: A Wilhelm Scream, Amon Amarth, Coheed & Cambria, Incubus, Kaiser Chiefs, Kyuss, Paradise Lost, Shrinebuilder, Sunn O))), The New Pornographers, The Upper Crust, the Wallflowers, Universal State of Mind, Vertical Horizon,

Bad: Ben Folds Five, Default, Factory 81 (their music sucks too), Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Maximum the Hormone, Stone Sour, The All-American Rejects, Youngbloodz

Who builds troper pages?

^Stereotypically emo? I thought Three Day's Grace was Post-Grunge.

I didn't write any of that.

well, everything after the self-titled is post-grunge, yes. But none of those bands are really emo, they just have really emo-sounding band names. From Autumn to Ashes and The Hurt Process are both post-hardcore/metalcore.

edited 26th Apr '11 8:23:22 PM by cadeonehalf

Who builds troper pages?