A Good Name for a Rock Band: Difference between revisions

There are a lot of different categories or varieties of band name, and they often correspond to the era or genre of the band in question. This page has some of these, and examples from real life and fiction. Fictional bands often have utterly dreadful names that are poking fun at certain genres.

 

 

Compare [[Trope Names for A Band]].

* Some combinations of units and squad leaders in Warhammer40000 end up sounding like this. Maugan Ra and the Dark Reapers, for instance.

* [[My Immortal (Fanfic)|Voldemort and the Death Dealers]], anyone?

* Firgin D'an and the Modal Nodes, aka the Cantina Band from [[Star Wars]].

* Crash and the Boys in ''[[Scott Pilgrim (Comic Book)|Scott Pilgrim]]''.

* KMFDM and the closely-related MDFMK. TOW claims that "KMFDM is an initialism for the nonsensical and grammatically incorrect German phrase "Kein Mehrheit F?ie Mitleid", which literally translates as "no majority for the pity" or "no majority for the empathy" but is typically given the loose translation of "no pity for the majority" or "no mercy for the masses.""

** Commonly assumed to stand for "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode"

* ELO (Electric Light Orchestra, which was actually a "The..." band name, being as it was a light orchestra with electrified instruments...)

* Metallic Psytrance trio S.U.N. Project falls under the W.A.S.P. type, though they joke that for detractors it can stand for "Stupid Unrespectable Noise".

* Therapy? - The question mark initially got into their band name when member Andy Cairns misaligned their name while designing cover art, then used the punctuation to try and cover this up.

* !.T.O.O.H.!. (yep them again)

* ¡Forward, Russia! -- Confusing Spain with Russia since 2004.

* Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Originally named "Godspeed You Black Emperor!", they changed the location of the exclamation point to reflect the original placement in the title of the Japanese biker gang movie from which they took their name.

What's the most offensive or controversial word you can think of? Well, it would make a great name for a metal band. It's usually quite extreme (often Scandanavian) metal bands that adopt [[Intentionally Awkward Title|Intentionally Awkward Titles]] like Corpse Raper or something that involves violence, death or sexual taboos. However, whether or not these names are selected for shock value or convention is up in the air. It's very common for death metal, black metal and grindcore bands to have "offensive" titles, but fans of those genres are used to or even expect those sorts of names, and so if there is any intended shock value, it's usually lost anyways. Bands from fiction often have names like this, especially if they are formed by teenagers, and the ridiculous name is an indication of the poor quality of their music.

== Grossout/Blasphemy Names ==

* [[Peep Show|We are not calling our band Free The Paedos!]]

* [[Skins|Misplaced Abortion]], whose third record is apparently so far off the top end of the [[Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness]] that it comes back round again and starts to sound like silence.

* The B-52's - named after a hairdo that resembles the nose of an airplane. Renamed The B-52s for proper grammar.

** Indirectly. They were named after a hairdo, which in turn was named for its supposed resemblance to the nose of the aircraft.

* Starflyer 59

* 65daysofstatic

== Wacky Word Combos Examples ==

* The [[Riff Trax (Podcast)|Riff Trax]] of [[Jurassic Park]] has Embryo Cold Storage and Filthy Muppet Innuendo.

* Three-Arm Sally, John's band from ''[[John Dies At the End]]''.

* Terminal Margaret, Vince's Punk band from ''[[The Mighty Boosh]]''.

* Creepy Clown Head Funeral from ''[[Zits]]'' got its name from an incident ending with Jeremy getting ticketed for "transporting an unsecured giant clown head during the disruption of a funeral procession".

* [[Firesign Theatre|White Brains On Toast]]

* On 4/7/2010 ''[[The Daily Show (TV)|The Daily Show]]'' covered reports of recent scandals with the Republican National Conference. After a CNN clip regarding the RNC's "Lesbian Bondage Fiasco", Jon Stewart answered, "If 'Lesbian Bondage Fiasco' isn't the name of an hard-edged indy band by tomorrow, I'll be very disappointed."

* ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'': Clyde mentions that Pantheon of Discord would be a good name for a band. The Doctor wholeheartedly agrees.

** ''[[The Federal Duck]]'' in particular is a truncation of the real-world "Federal Duck Stamp Program."

* Dingoes Ate My Baby, from ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''

* [http://www.xkcd.com/119/ Everybody put your hands together for... HEDGECLIPPER!]

* Glamdring the Foehammer ("it's from ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Literature)|The Lord of the Rings]]'', man"), who perform at an Isle of Wight Festival knockoff in the ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' [[Past Doctor Adventures]] novel ''[[The Devil Goblins From Neptune]]'' (which is ''also'' a good name for a band...)

* [[Death Cab for Cutie]] took its name from an Elvis Presley spoof from a Beatles movie.

* The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (who, incidentally, performed the song "Death Cab for Cutie") are named after a cartoon dog named Bonzo. The "Doo-Dah" part refers to their fodness for old music-hall songs, but is also apparently a pun on "Dada", an art movement.

* Biffy Clyro

* Infocalypse (named for the term used in Snow Crash to denote the fall of Babel)

* Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth take their name from the Tolkien mythos, the name meaning "Mount Doom" in Tolkien's constructed language Sindarin.

** Several black metal bands also take their name from the Tolkien mythos, most notably black metal bands Gorgoroth and Burzum.

* Armcannon, a Buffalo-based video-game-music cover band, takes its name from [[Arm Cannon|the iconic weapon]] of such video game characters as [[Metroid|Samus]] and ''[[Mega Man (Video Game)|Mega Man]]''.

* Kasabian (Named after Manson Family cultist and getaway driver Linda Kasabian.)

* [[Coil]] and [[Current 93]] were both named for obscure occult references (the latter to [[Aleister Crowley]]).

* Gastr Del Sol, which seems to mean something along the lines of [[Word Salad Title|"the sun's stomach"]].

* Münchener Freiheit (more usually known as "Freiheit" in the UK); they named themselves after a street in their native Munich (which has since been slightly renamed "Münchner Freiheit").

* Mudhoney, after a Russ Meyer film. They'd never actually ''seen'' the movie, they just saw the title somewhere and thought it sounded cool.

* [[Green Day]]

* Iced Earth

* Similarly, Blackfield's first album, Blackfield, contained a song titled Blackfield.

* [[Blind Guardian (Music)|Blind Guardian]] -- Guardian of the Blind

* Aversion: Eddie From Ohio (has one Eddie and three non-Eddies; none are from Ohio.)

* James, a (currently) seven-man band who decided to take their name from one of their founders, Jim Glennie. Tim thought it would look bad if [[Face of the Band|the band was named after the lead singer]], Gavan was too heavy metal and Paul was too modest to suggest his own name. Only two of them (Jim and Tim) are still in the band, and "which one's James" is the most boring question around.

** Just for good measure, they'd previously been known as (among other things) a name fitting the X And The Ys mould (arguably also a Grossout name); Venereal And The Diseases.

* Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

For bands and band names that just don't fit anywhere else.

== Examples of Others ==

* Mr.Bungle fronted by [[Mike Patton]], they take their name from an educational film in a Pee-Wee Herman special, yep their name is as clowny as their music.

* Frightened Rabbit, in that it contains none of the naming conventions mentioned above. Both words are perfectly acceptable alone and together, the name doesn't have the word "the," no "ist" suffix, it isn't a complete sentence, it isn't one word, it isn't a list of members, it isn't a lyric, album or song title of theirs and both words are rather soft.