The Best and Worst Band Names You've Ever Heard

Djent edition!

Good: Periphery, Cloudkicker, Animals As Leaders, Vildhjarta, Tesseract

Bad: Chimp Spanner, Born Of Osiris, TesseracT with the second T capitalized, any band with "djent" in its name

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

Precisely.

And if any other ones try, I will slice them in half.

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

Y'know, Led Zeppelin is one of those band names which get better once you know the story behind it (Lead Balloon -> Lead Zeppelin -> Led Zeppelin).

The opposite can also be true. Take Slayer, for example. I always considered that an absolutely badass name for a metal band - simple, brutal, no Wangst, weird Latin stuff or over-the-top Gorn. Then I found out that it was conceived as a backronym for "Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot", which is pretty lame. So "Slayer" sounds better as a band name if you don't know where it came from.

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

I think you have a misunderstanding of what a backroynm is. In short, they don't come first.

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.

Sad thing about Hoobastank is that I really, really enjoy one of their songs (The Reason)... and it's going to be a bit of a hurdle for me to actually look up the rest of their songs to see if anything else is worth listening to. I know a band that I otherwise don't like can have a single song that's awesome for my tastes, and I don't know if Hoobastank is gonna be like that or not, but...

...well, music isn't the only place I let "ability to invent a good name" determine where I send my business. I've chosen high-priced World Of Warcraft goods based on the name of the seller alone.

Anyway. I would say that misspellings help the band if the name is a pretty common word or even phrase. Otherwise you might get Googled and be unable to find the band because the actual use of the common word overrides it in popularity (like when I tried to find a computer app simply called Words).

There's a lot of names that I get used to because they sing songs I've encountered through fanvids, but whose names mean nothing to me. Don't think that's in their best interests, really. It's like how I put off watching The Shawshank Redemption for the longest time because the name sounded like a movie that could never interest me, but it turned out to be an awesome movie with a poor choice of name. Names with numbers often do this: Blink 182, Matchbox 20 and the like, as someone up there said.

I like how Alice Cooper chose the name for his band (and later adopted it as his own): He meant to have it that if you'd never heard of him, you'd expect some sweet, normal girl... with an axe behind her back, like Lizzy Borden. Something like that.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Best: Death takes the #1 crown. As far as metal band names go, it's perfect. Runners-up: Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Emperor, Anal Cunt (horrible music though), The Sex Pistols, The Grateful Dead, Public Enemy, Megadeth, Jag Panzer, Kraftwerk, Impaled Northern Moonforest.

Worst: HORSE the band, The Goo Goo Dolls, Hoobastank, Limp Bizkit, Job for a Cowboy, Wolves in the Throne Room, Iwrestledabearonce, Panic! At the Disco, Anaal Nathrakh, 666Satanic Army666, pornogrind band names (all of them), Pain of Salvation, the majority of English-language J-Rock band names, Bullet For My Valentine, Children of Bodom, Fairyland, Edguy, Helloween, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper, The Dixie Chicks, Blut Aus Nord.

edited 27th Apr '11 5:27:29 PM by WoolieWool

Out of Context Theater: Mike K "'Bloody Pussies' cracked me up"

Best DJ Names: DJ Shadow, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid!, DJ Qbert, Mixmaster Mike, Grandmaster Flash, Grandwizzard Theodore, Grandmixer DS.T, Grandmixer Maxwell, Coldcutz Crew, Code Money, Grater, DJ Swamp, DJ Shredder, DJ Spinbad

Worst DJ Names: DJ Hurricane, DJ Handy, DJ Rooster Cock (I wish I was kidding), DJ DJ DJ DJ (this is not funny), The Invisibl Skratch Piklz (really?), The Invincible Hamsters Crew (again, really?), DJ Bliff

So Bad, It's Good: I once had the distinguished pleasure of battling a man calling himself DJ Eatyourface

edited 27th Apr '11 7:37:01 PM by SpainSun

I spread my wings and I learn how to fly....

So Bad, It's Good Rapper name: MC 900 ft. Jesus

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

I tend to dislike names that contain MC or DJ.

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.

Another good name: 9 Lb. Hammer (because it sounds like Carl's genitals).

edited 27th Apr '11 10:28:27 PM by Buscemi

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

Yeah, you're right. I was in doubt how to phrase it, but I thought maybe they first came up with "Slayer" and only later with the acronym, which would make it a backronym.

What about MC 5?

edited 27th Apr '11 11:26:43 PM by MidnightRambler

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

Sure, why not?

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.

The Slayer thing is indeed a backronym, I don't think it's even official (I could be wrong).

edited 28th Apr '11 9:32:34 AM by ImipolexG

no one will notice that I changed this

Just off the top of my head, and trying not to repeat previously mentioned ones...

---

• Best: Joy Division, Warsaw (Joy Division's former name), The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, Genesis
• Worst: Cream, Dinosaur Jr, Guillemots

The "Joy Divisions" are the apocryphal prostitution group made in concentration camps. But seriously. The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. That sounds really magnificent.

edited 28th Apr '11 12:18:11 PM by Catalogue

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Hey, what's with the hate for WITTR's name? I think it's pretty good

Also, The Fall of Troy is a pretty great band name.

Yeah, I second Wolves in the Throne Room sounding pretty cool. Now if only their music stopped sounding like a slowed down Bergtatt knockoff to me...

So! I also like the sound of Chimaira, Massive Attack, Gorguts and Godflesh (did I mention that last one already?). Gorguts especially sounds cool when you don't get the origins of the name and pronounce it "gor-goots". I did that at first.

Gorillaz is less liked by me, because... well, I doubt anyone likes Xtreme Kool Letterz these days. Not sure anyone ever did, actually. Pantera also sounds dumb to me for some reason. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with me disliking them in general.

I do appreciate a band that pulls off a name that begins with X and doesn't sound awful, though. Can anyone share some? I've got none in my library and the only one I know of is Xera. And shut up about Linkin Park.

edited 28th Apr '11 1:01:51 PM by Litis

Third. The implications are awesome.

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

I've never listened to them, but they do have a pretty cool name.

I guess it is.

XTC, of course!

Possibly also Xhol (Caravan).

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

Guillemots under worst? Aww, I think it's a good name! Then again, I'm a keen birdwatcher so any bird based name gets a plus vote in my book

Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!

Worst genre/movement name: Djent. No really, I can't stand it. I only use that term because "modern tech metal thingy" doesn't cut.

I just had to say that.

edited 28th Apr '11 6:29:15 PM by NEO

No regret shall pass over the threshold!

Okay, maybe Guillemots isn't the worst ever. But gUiLLeMoTs is.

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Wolves in the Throne Room is indeed an awesome name, and now I'm curious to hear what they sound like.

Also, while I don't particularly like The Dixie Chicks (although I do like a few of their songs), I don't see anything wrong with their name. It's got mid-word rhyming going on along with some interesting connotations for country-loving folk. Also a bit of incongruity as "Dixieland" and the register for "chicks" don't much go together, something like pairing "Babes" and, I dunno, "Royal" or "Refined" or "Hometown" or something. Not a huge switch in register, but enough to cause interest, which is good for a band.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

True, I'll give you that one See also tUnE-yArDs.

Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!

Tröjan Some obscure speed metal band from england...I dunno. Well anyway putting two dots over O's like Motörhead doesnt always make it metal. Tröjan translates to "The Sweater" in swedish. Thats just marginally metal.

In the process of creating Old Shame.