Metal umlaut
A heavy metal umlaut is an umlaut (not to be confused with a diaeresis, the name given to the same symbol when used on the second of two vowels to show that both are pronounced) over some of the letters in the names of a heavy metal band — although the names will then sound very silly to people who use languages in which umlauts are common, such as German, Turkish or Swedish.
Umlauts are often used in concert with a Blackletter or pseudo-Blackletter typeface in the band logo to give it a more gothic feel. Many bands have taken to using umlauts and other diacritics, often gratuitously, in their names.
History
The first use appears to have been by the Blue Öyster Cult in 1971. Motörhead and Mötley Crüe then followed.
The umlaut in "Motörhead" was in fact a creation of the graphic designer responsible for the first album cover.
Queensrÿche went further by putting the umlaut over the "y" in their name. (It is sometimes used in Dutch to display the Dutch Y instead of IJ/ij when the real letters "IJ" and "ij" are unavailable.) From a linguistic viewpoint, this might be regarded as an attempt at a diaeresis, rather than as an umlaut, were it not that there are no vowels to be pronounced distinctly.
Hawkwind-influenced 1980s space-rock band Underground Zerø used a variation on the concept, using the Scandinavian vowel ø in their name.
The heavy metal umlaut in popular literature
In the mid-1980s, cartoonist Berke Breathed parodied the Gothic umlaut in the comic strip Bloom County with the fictional group Deathtöngue, fronted by the depraved and unwholesome singer/'lead tongue' "Wild" Bill Catt and infamous for the songs "Let's Run Over Lionel Richie With a Tank" and "U Stink But I Love U". Breathed eventually has Deathtöngue change their name to the umlaut-free Billy and the Boingers following pressure from congressional hearings on porn rock led by one "Tippy Gorp", an obvious reference to heavy metal bête noire Tipper Gore and the PMRC.
The novel Zodiac (1988) by Neal Stephenson features a fictional band called Pöyzen Böyzen, who another character describes as "pretty good for a two-umlaut band."
In 1997, the parody newspaper, The Onion, published an article entitled "Ünited Stätes Toughens Image With Umlauts", about a congressional attempt to add umlauts to the name of the United States of America to make it seem tougher to the rest of the world.
Journalist and author Steve Almond coined the term "spandex and umlaut circuit" in 2002 to describe the heavy metal touring scene.
Other musical usages of diacritics
- the Australian black/trash metal band Deströyer 666
- the Finnish punk hardcore band Ümlaut.
- the name of the band Assück.
- the punk rock band Hüsker Dü. (The name is a Danish phrase meaning "Do you remember?". However, ü is not used in Danish and the correct phrase would be "husker du?" The band took their name from a children's memory game, which added macrons over each u in the phrase, replacing these macrons with umlauts.)
- heavy metal band Trojan used umlauts in their name on the 1985 release Chasing the Storm. (For Swedes the tour T-shirts from this time are particularly amusing, as "Tröjan" in Swedish translates as "the shirt".)
- the term "nü-metal" used to describe nu metal with added umlautness.
- gay heavy metal band/cabaret act Pink Stëël have two consecutive umlauts, the first such instance in a band name.
- the Spanish band Mägo de Oz.
- the German punk band Die Ärzte used three dots (triaresis?) over the "A" in Ärzte. This can be represented in Unicode: Die A⃛rzte.
- the French band Magma used a fictional language, the Kobaïan, for its lyrics. The umlaut appeared in several album titles ("Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh" or "Köhntarkösz" for instance).
- the accents in the name of the French electronica band Rinôçérôse are also gratuitous.
See also
External links
- My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond
- http://www.rockdots.com/thedots.html
