You Can’t Judge a Band by a Logo - Or Can You?

While searching for “do-it-yourself” graphics apps for this site, I found an amusing (albeit dated) thread on www.typophile.com regarding the proper design and fonts for creating logos for Black Metal bands. As is typical for any discussion regarding music genres, the comments often disintegrate into “that type of music SUCKS!” kind of drivel, but it’s still an interesting read all the same.

I do have to disagree with the majority of, in my opinion, uninformed and naive opinions expressed in the thread regarding Black Metal as a whole. You simply can’t stereotype an entire subgenre of ANY type of music based on look, artwork or even sound - although forming a preconceived opinion of a band by it’s sound does make the most sense if anything does. And of course, if you’ve actually listened to the band then it’s not really preconceived, is it? But I digress. . .

As is typical, people want to put labels on things to make it easier to pass judgement, without really getting to know the subject of which they are commenting. It’s human nature and often times stereotypes exist for a reason. Perhaps an antiquated or absurd reason, but validity is in the eye of the beholder.  Yet if anyone bothered to research their subject even a modicum, they’d find for every ‘typical’ Black Metal band like Darkthrone there is something entirely different in the same subgenre - such as Ulver or Vampiric Ritual or Vaakevandring. 

Sad to see in these so-called days of enlightenment, and by peers that are ’supposedly’ open-minded, that the status quo is still the lowest rung on the ladder.  C’est la vie, eh?

On the bright side, I did find the mention of http://www.skuls.no as very amusing & clever.  It’s a Norwegian site that sells t-shirts of faux Black Metal bands (with nifty logos) made from common words like ‘weekday’, ‘office’ or ‘bread’.  All in hopes that some non-Norwegian poserboys will buy them up and wear’em out to shows.  Brilliant!

My personal favorite is the logo for Gravid, which means ‘pregnant’ in Norwegian.  I kinda resemble that one what with my god-like appearance (Buddha).

Now if they would just do a shirt for marokkaner “moron” or drømmen “dreamer”, then I might actually have to buy a shirt (thanks to http://www.tranexp.com/ for the help on translating those!)

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