Worst Band Names

Circle of Dead Children http://members.tripod.com/~circlegrind/ The google description Aural decimating grindcore possessing the perfect combination of extreme sickening brutality and emotion !

(sad isn't it)

Pig Destroyer

Anal Cunt

Festival of Dead Dear

.. there are hundreds of more, in grindcore/death metal.

moist

ladytron

yes

city-based names: boston, chicago, etc

ratt

Oh yes, Ned Raggetts Atomic Dustbin - f*ck*ng appalling name.

Anyway, band names. The thing about band names is that so many of them have been worn down by endless usage and we forget how awful they are. eg.

The Beatles (apalling and irrelevant insectoid pun) The Beach Boys (to quote Tanya: "they are boys! they go to the beach!") Oasis (sounds like Alan Partridge's backing band)

Something I was thinking the other day - what was the first 'abstract' band name? Not a 'the [noun]s' name or something purely descriptive. Love was fairly early. Ditto Pink Floyd.

Def Leppard Motley Crue

And others are so uninspiring to hear, they have no imagination:

Girlschool Loudness Air Supply

Please give me a break from this jackassery!!!

a moon beneath the grindsludge.

And Ladytron is a shockingly good name for the band (and it is an excellent song by Roxy Music...erm...wrong thread).

the worst of all is Soul Coughing

What's wrong with Ladytron?

Nothing of course...excellent band.

But I remembered another very bad band name (since were into the question of 80s revivalism): Johnny Hates Jazz.

saidflorence - insisted on awful name being spelt lower case.

Fretblanket - no comment needed really.

YES. I should think that Killing Jesus would be worse than Killing Joke. THERFORE, Killing Jesus is a worse band name than Killing Joke. Yes.

Yes, Virginia. There is a worse band name than Killing Joke.

Jester 86 Understands Something.....

Jester Eighty Six LOVES JESUS!

PEACE.

PS.....Cheese is Rice.

Yours In THEE LOVE of JESUS CHRIST,

CAL,

or in other words...

j86.

Apart from Taunton, of course. But then they didn't really exist ...

Grand Prize Winner for this category goes to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Papa Roach. The name is about as bad as the music.

Deep Blue Something (in the Sixpence None The Richer bracket)

Limp Biskit

(grim, but quite apt I suppose) Muse (hateful. conclusive proof that you can judge a book by its cover, unless it's by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and it's err.. not a book

Echoboy (yeah - cause that'll really make your band stand out)

The Style Council (was this self parody?)

Stereophonics (90s band name by numbers)

Dub Federation (might have been OK if there wasn't already a Dub Syndicate. at least ADF added an 'Asian' bit for interest)

Almost all those one-word names chosen by every shitpop chancer in mid 90s Britain.

Also, any 90's band name with "Super" in it.

Radiohead.

Coldplay.

The Cranberry Saw Us.

a) It's a Monty Python ref.

b) They represent the West Side. Goleta Power.

LOVE and TOMORROW are contenders.

but maybe THEM predates?

(non-rock answer - tho of course they played rock support slots at the key moment - wd be AMM: explanation of which acronym I notice Keith Rowe is still keeping shtumm abt, in current Wire)

Also "Northern Uproar" did suggest boring meat 'n' 2 veg britrock of the most ZZZzzz-inducing sort. Fortunately.

x0x0

These are fun things to check out on last.fm, for example

https://www.last.fm/music/Paradox

The 1960s was a huge landgrab for common words. You just had to plant a “The” flag in front of it.

xxxpost, I check every once in a while, but there's never been a hardcore band called Lifetime of Abuse

there is Life is Abuse but I don't like the ring of that as well

I was pretty upset to discover Moni Jitchell recently - I thought we'd agreed to stop doing this shit

Buckcherry should have been the last word in that nonsense

pro-tip - if you used to be in the band Saliva and you want to go on tour and do their songs, but Saliva still exists and you can't legally use their name, perhaps best not to use the naming convention "Josey Scott's Saliva"

lol

i had a really good "worst band name" idea last night, but forgot it! it was 2 words and one of the words was 'Pizza'

Sounds like band-name trauma induced by this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1F4B-7agAEotGg?format=jpg&name=large

Pizza Great Guy

The "ILM Best of 2023 Tracks Nominations" playlist just served me up a song by needanamebro.

they got a new name now bro

https://www.instagram.com/saynow

they're great but I'm glad they changed it that name wasn't doing them any favours

ruby the hatchet

...I had avoided "Amp Fiddler" until a couple weeks ago due to the truly dire choice of name, but turns out he's great!

ruby the hatchet makes me think of the simpsons be sharps ep "we need a name that's clever at first but less funny each time you hear it"

is "ruby the hatchet" a pun I am not getting? Is it supposed to sound like "booby hatch" or something? help me out here, I'm not in a place where I can say this out loud without looking like a crazy person

Bury the hatchet

oh, duh! thanks, that was driving me crazy. I need some caffeine

You and me both.

what a horribly formed "pun"

They should change their name to Bury Tuesday.

We the type of people who don't ruby the axe

Sean Na Na

I did not need to see those pasty white beer bellies on clicking that link.

Surely, Michael Cera Palin was named with the kind of lol self-awareness that they would end up on lists like this.

Quite impressed with the double pun, but it's still not a good name.

Cera, Palin and Tall

Some more searching on whether Michael Cera Palin intended the double pun (alas, they didn't) led me to this thread-locker of a list:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/mookid/artists-from-the-late-2000s_2010s-whose-names-are-an-ironic-parody-of-the-name-of-a-celebrity/

Slightly ruin a celebrity name

Wait what’s the double pun with “Michael Cera Palin?”

Michael Cera
Sarah Palin
Michael Palin

why not just go all out:

Ruth's Chris Paul George Michael Cera Palin

this thread-locker of a list

wow.

have to admit tho i'd have chuckled seeing "Wayne Longer" as a rejected JBR screen name

Amazed that there's an Amy Grindhouse but nobody has claimed Amy Crackhouse yet.

The name "Scary German Guy" legit made me laugh out loud. Somehow the fact that they're from Long Island makes it funnier.

The funny thing about Michael Cera Palin is that for a band with such a jokey/ironic name they seem remarkably earnest.

The singer openly admits in that article that he named the band that way for SEO (search engine optimization):

Take Brabant, who wasn’t even in a band yet when he came up with the name Michael Cera Palin, which he debuted in 2015. He reverse-engineered the moniker after he concluded that “celebrity names were very algorithm-friendly” and his music would thus “reach a nonzero amount of ears.” The musician wasn’t even aware his creation also parodied comedian Michael Palin until a Monty Python Facebook page accidentally auto-tagged his group in a post.

Eric American Idle

Dr John Cleese

Graham Chapman Styx

Terry Jesus Jones

Sister Carol Cleveland

Vince Neil Innes

Todd Terry Gilliam

The Knights Who Say Nils Lofgren

Judean People's Front 242

The Dead Jimmy Buffet Fan Sketch

Butt Mommy

Yeah, don't like that at all.

lol