heavy metal umlaut

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A heavy metal umlaut is an umlaut over a letter in the name of a heavy metal band. Umlauts and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface are a form of foreign branding intended to give a band's logo a Germanic or Nordic "toughness". It is a form of marketing that invokes stereotypes of boldness and strength commonly attributed to peoples such as the Vikings. The heavy metal umlaut is never referred to by the term diaeresis in this usage, nor does it affect the pronunciation of the band's name. Heavy metal umlauts have been parodied in film and fiction. David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) in the film This Is Spinal Tap opined, "It's like a pair of eyes. You're looking at the umlaut, and it's looking at you." In 2002, Spin magazine referred to the heavy metal umlaut as "the diacritical mark of the beast".

Umlauts and diaereses

The German word Umlaut roughly means sound change, as it is composed of um- (a prefix often used with verbs involving "change") and Laut, meaning "sound". Adding an umlaut indeed changes the pronunciation of a vowel in standard (non-Heavy-Metal) usage; the letters u and represent distinct sounds, as do o vs. and a vs. . Umlauts are used in several languages, such as Icelandic, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish. The sounds represented by the umlauted letters in these languages are typically front vowels (front rounded vowels in the case of and ). Ironically, these sounds tend to be perceived as "weaker" or "lighter" than the vowels represented by un-umlautted u, o, and a, thus failing to create the intended impression of strength and darkness. The English word diaeresis refers to a diacritic graphically similar to the umlaut; the name comes from a Greek word meaning "divide or distinguish". This diacritic is used in languages such as French, Portuguese and occasionally English to indicate that two vowels are to be pronounced separately, as in the name "Chlo" or the words "nave" or "coperation".

History

The progressive rock band Amon Dl released their first album in 1969. However, their name came from "Amon an Egyptian sun god and Dl a character from Turkish fiction" http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDMISS70406050306300345&sql=B1c8j1vsjzzza, so this use of diaereses was not gratuitous. The first gratuitous use appears to have been by the Blue yster Cult in 1970. The band's website states it was added by guitarist and keyboardist Allen Lanier http://www.blueoystercult.com/History/history3.html, but rock critic Richard Meltzer claims to have suggested it to their producer and manager Sandy Pearlman just after Pearlman came up with the name: "I said, 'How about an umlaut over the O?' Metal had a Wagnerian aspect anyway." http://www.spiraling.com/words/umlaut.html Hawkwind on their second album In Search of Space (1971) wrote on the backside of the cover: "". To add to the variation, the diacritical mark on the last "" is the "Hungarian umlaut" or double acute accent ()—two short lines slanting up and to the right rather like a right double-quote mark—instead of dots. This was before Lemmy, later of Motrhead, had become a member of the group. Motrhead and Mtley Cre then followed. The umlaut in Motrhead was contributed by the graphic designer of the band's first album cover. In the words of Lemmy Kilmister, Motrhead's front man: I only put it in there to look mean.. http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=article&articleid=21891 (Interestingly, the standard German pronunciation of "motör" is similar to the standard English pronunciation of "motor", the umlaut over the second "o" requiring, in German, the fronting of the vowel.) At one Mtley Cre performance in Germany, the entire audience started chanting, "Moertley Crueh!" Queensrche went further by putting the umlaut over the Y in their name. (The symbol is sometimes used in Dutch handwriting to display the letter IJ instead of IJ/ij, and, very rarely, in French, e.g., in the placename L'Ha-les-Roses http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Ha%C3%BF-les-Roses.) Queensrÿche frontman Geoff Tate stated, "The umlaut over the 'y' has haunted us for years. We spent eleven years trying to explain how to pronounce it."http://www.spiraling.com/words/umlaut.html Hawkwind-influenced 1980s space-rock band Underground Zer used a variation on the concept, using the Scandinavian vowel in their name. This may have been inspired by computer systems of the time, many of which used the slashed zero as a glyph for the digit 0 to distinguish it from the letter O and thus resembled . The spoof band Spinal Tap raised the stakes in 1982 by using an umlaut over the letter N, a consonant. This is a construction only found in the Jacaltec language of Guatemala, although it is unlikely that the writers of This Is Spinal Tap knew this at the time.

The heavy metal umlaut in popular literature

In the mid-1980s, cartoonist Berkeley Breathed parodied the heavy metal umlaut in the comic strip Bloom County with the fictional group Deathtngue, 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", "Clearasil Messiah" and "U Stink But I Love U". Breathed eventually had Deathtngue 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 bte noire Tipper Gore and the PMRC. The novel Zodiac (1988) by Neal Stephenson features a fictional band called Pöyzen Böyzen, which one character describes as "not bad for a two-umlaut band". In 1997, parody newspaper The Onion published an article called "nited Sttes Toughens Image With Umlauts", about a congressional attempt to add umlauts to the name of the United States of America to make it seem "bad-assed and scary in a quasi-heavy-metal manner". Journalist and author Steve Almond coined the term "spandex and umlaut circuit" in 2002 to describe the heavy metal touring scene. Rock critic Chuck Klosterman subtitled his 2003 book Fargo Rock City with A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nrth Dakta. Webcomic artist Scott Kurtz drew a series of cartoons about a fake band called Djrk in his PvP Online webcomic. Apart from possibly satirizing the heavy metal umlaut, this name also refers to the Icelandic singer/songwriter Bjrk Gumundsdttir, whose umlaut is genuine.

Other usages of diacritics in band or album naming

Umlaut

Frank Zappa used an umlaut in the title of the album "Lther"
the novelty rock band Green Jell added an umlaut when changing their name from "Green Jello"
the Scottish NWOBHM band Holocaust spelled their name Hlcust on their first 7", "Heavy Metal Mania".
the Canadian thrash metal band Infernl Mjesty.
the French black metal band Mtiilation, this umlaut cannot affect pronounciation, as u and have the same sounds in French as in German.
the Florida grindcore band Assck.
the hardcore/ska-punk band Leftver Crack
the Florida goth/darkwave band The Crxshadows.
the Australian war metal band Destryer 666
Dürty Nelly's Pub, a rock bar in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Peoria, Illinois band Mudvayne listed their members on one release as Chd, Gg, R-D and Spg.
Minneapolis crust/hardcore punk band Stāte of Fer
the Spanish band Mgo de Oz.
the term "n-metal", used to describe nu metal with added umlautness.
gay heavy metal band/cabaret act Pink Stl have two consecutive gratuitous umlauts, the first such instance in a band name. The library/scifi metal band Blöödhag also have consecutive gratuitous umlauts.
the Devin Townsend punk parody project Punky Brster.
the Canadian thrash band Vovod's second album from 1986 was titled RRRAAARRR. This album title actually has three consecutive gratuitous umlauts. The band's name has an umlaut over the I, but this may be acting as a diresis.
the Finnish hardcore punk band mlaut (this use is almost a self-reference).
Zee, a short-lived band formed by Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright and Dave Harris, made excessive use of gratuitous umlauts on their 1984 album Identity which included song titles such as "Cnfsin" and "Hw D Y D It".
the kibology inspired, Usenet-based quasi-band Interrbang Cartel.
the Spanish EBM duo Culture Kultr.
the Japanese rock band, L-ppisch.
the album "Paradsso", recorded by Spanish rock band Sber, who added a gratuitous circumflex after changing their name from Sober Stoned.
Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag was previously in Wrm

Other characters

the German punk band Die rzte used three dots (triaeresis?) over the "A" in rzte to distinguish from its normal spelling with "" (double dot) diaeresis. This can be represented in Unicode: . The three dots may stand for the three band members.
the American thrash band Lz Rockit actually used the letter "|" gratuitously in their logo, but the umlaut ("Lz Rockit") in some press releases.
the French band Magma used a fictional language, the Kobaan, for its lyrics. The umlaut appeared in several album titles, such as Mekank Destruktw Kommandh and Khntarksz. However, this umlaut does affect pronunciation, and thus cannot be considered gratuitous. Kobaian also uses a three-dot diacritic over some letters in song titles, and an original letter that seems to be a cursive ligature of "ie", which never appears without an umlaut.
the accents and cedilla in the name of the French electronica band Rinrse are also gratuitous.
William rbit.
The dark folk / experimental / occult band Death In June used umlauts (and in the second case, even accented e's) in the original releases of their albums The Wrld Tht Smmer (1985) and Th Wll f Scrific (1989) - and, on these releases, also in the band name, leading to Deth In Jne (resp. Dth In Jn).

Non-gratuitous umlauts

The US punk rock band Hsker D took their name from a children's memory game, which added macrons over each u in the phrase, replacing these macrons with umlauts. Without the umlauts, "husker du" is a Danish and Norwegian phrase meaning "Do you remember".
The name of the Toronto, Ontario area folk-pop/geek-rock band Moxy Frvous is pronounced with long-u, "Fruuvous", so this is perhaps not gratuitous.
The 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 "Trjan" in Swedish translates as "the shirt".
The Rhode Island "futurock" band Grvis Malt has an umlaut in their name, but it may not be gratuitous, since it clarifies the pronunciation as "oo" rather than "uh".
The San Francisco band Children of Umlaut do not in fact have an umlaut in their name.
The Icelandic artist Bjrk Gumundsdttir is using her birth name.