Shitty metal logos get props from the shitty design community

We all know what fags designers are, right? Fashion designers, industrial designers (I know they sound tough, but they aren't) and, of course, graphic designers. Graphic designers are the dickless shits responsible for the UPS trucks being that ugly-ass brown and for those uber-gay ipod ads. Yeah, yeah, you're cool. You know how to push a few buttons in some crappy Adobe program and you think you are better than the rest of us. I know a few graphic designers here and there and, believe me, they actually think that what they do is important. I'm not kidding. With the exception of actors, graphic designers are the most narcissistic, arrogant, big headed, proud, conceited, immodest, vain, self-important, self-satisfied, self-righteous and self-involved people in the planet. Don't believe me? Go to a bookstore and check out the graphic design section. There are hundreds and hundreds of books by designers for designers about design. They think that what they do is so vital that the world needs book after book about design. In reality, they just wanna make themselves feel better about sitting in front of an over priced ibook making pretty pictures all day.

One of these books caught my eye recently and it illustrates just how out-of-touch these black-turtleneck-wearing fags really are. The book is called "BAND ID- The Ultimate Book of Band Logos". Wow! We're lucky it's the ultimate one. See? Even in their book titles they exaggerate their importance. Anyway, this collection was put together by this dude named Bodhi Oser. He's basically a hippie looser from Venice Beach, who wouldn't last a second in a serious Biohazard pit. So, what does he know about metal? Nothing, but the combination of his ignorance and his self-righteousness make for a funny-ass book.

I know the pics are blurry and crappy, but I "borrowed" the book from this dude in my office while he was in the crapper, so I was short on time, y'know?




I can see why designers would like this logo. It's sorta symmetrical and shit, but that "L" looks like an "S" with down syndrome. I still can't get over the thought of some trendy faggy designers sitting around a conference room table discussing whether or not the Death Angel logo would "make the cut". It's just fucking preposterous.




I always loved the Anthrax logo. I'm not sure why. Maybe 'cuz it's not symmetrical, like the other thrash metal logos of the time. The Nuclear Assault logo is chuck-full-o-horribleness. I find the "E" and the double "SS" offensive on grounds of really bad typographical balance.


Emperor and their shitty logo, with skinny Ethiopian letters, can suck my balls. So can Mortiis. I'm sure he did the logo himself. God, it's as terrible as his "music". On a more positive note, Death's logo is bad-ass. Sure, the "T" is three times thicker than the rest of the letters, but it's a cross! Upside-down? Not really. It's a mystery, just like why the band started to suck shit after Leprosy. I love the Napalm Death logo, simply because it's obvious the original was rendered by a 16 year old using a ball-point pen.



Obituary and Venom are two of the radest logos in the book and they share a page! Wait, maybe the author knew something about metal after all... Nah, beginner's luck.



BARF! This whole page is shit. The Moonspell logo would be cool if the letters were fatter and more manly, but I guess that's something black metal knows nothing about, huh? My Dying Bride's logo looks like Micheal J. Fox drew it.



Cradle of Filth and Hatebreed suck, fuck'em. I probably stand alone here, but I love Pungent Stench, therefore my judgement on their logo is biased. I have the Been Caught Buttering t-shirt and I wear it all the time to this very day.



Hahaha! Overkill shares the page with a whole bunch of other shitty bands!



Morbid Angel's logo has probably won multiple awards in the design community as the shittiest logo in history. And that probably included the "logo" from "Tacos Pedrito", a tiny taqueria by my house. God, look at that "A"! It's as painful as their music! The "G" holding the pitchfork has to be the worst use of a letter form since cuneiform was invented in 3000BC.
Dark Throne's looks like it was done in ink and they left it outside when it was raining. In a Norwegian forest, of course.




I like Entombed's logo and I think Carcass' looks like a used tampon. The Chasm, Usurper and Hate Eternal's logos were designed to give Morbid Angel's a run for it's money. Congrats guys, you almost made it.



I don't know what to say about this page, other than: WTF!? Municipal Waste? I'm pretty sure Seth Putnam never thought that his retarded doodles of assholes and vaginas would end up in a book about logos. Hmmm... Nox needs to... I don't know what they need to do, but whatever it is it should be funny and make them disappear. Forever.



The only good thing about the Scorpions logo is that I could re-create it on my shitty PC as a kid by just using a pre-loaded font. Other than that this page is pretty rad. Maiden, Priest, Annihilator and Testament. Solid bands, solid logos.


If I had real testicles when I was 15, all 3 of these logos would be tattooed on my body. Thank God I didn't grow balls until I was 20! Well, I don't think the Obituary tattoo is much better.



Another 3 logos I'd tattoo on my body. The Exodus one is a little weak, 'cuz the "E" and the "S" are all slouched, but it's still pretty metal. Kreator and Destruction logos adorned every other page in my notebooks in school for years.



I'm not sure what to make of the little bat flying over the Kind Diamond logo, but other than that KD's is a classic logo and, like their music, way better than Merciful Fate's. I know I'm gonna get the typical "you don't know what you're talking about, MF rule." blabber. Save it, MF sucks.



You know what doesn't suck? Slayer logos. It's tough to judge the logo of such an awesome metal band without allowing their awesomeness get in the way of your judgement, but the sword pentagram is SO bad-ass that just drawing it makes you more metal. The newer one they used on "Seasons" sucks. It's basically a font. It's called Ironwood. It fucking sucks.


Hmmm... I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you all that I'm a graphic designer

Reinterpretation Of A Deicide

Dear Metal Inquisition readers, I would like to introduce to you the internet's Acutewit. In this video she attempts to sing Deicide's "Once Upon the Cross." Consider yourselves warned.

A SkullKrushing Vinyl Collection (part 2)

As I stated in part 1 of this post, the idea here is not to "show off". My collection, while adequate, is not what it used to be. Maybe at it's peak it was descent, but after moving several times, selling some, losing some, getting a few records stolen and shit, I'm left with only few crates. Here's a few pieces I picked for part 2. For a while there I was really into getting shit signed. Carrying CDs around was way easier, so I didn't get that much vinyl autographed. Anyway, I pulled a few pieces that had sorta interesting stories with them and here they are:

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I met Dino and Raymond from Fear Factory, the first time they came around the midwest in '92, I think. Dino was really fucking cool and got my brother and I passes telling the people at the place we were his guitar techs. I know he's a bit of a joke these days, but he was really cool to a couple of stupid metal kids with no tickets. Every time they came back to town we'd hook up and bullshit before their show. They always remembered me, which was awesome to me as a teenager, you know? One of those times, I showed up with a Brujeria 7" and asked to get it signed. Dino looked at Raymond and looked back at me and said he didn't know what band I was talking about. He said Raymond played in Phobia and maybe I was getting confused. At the time "no one" knew who was in Brujeria and they played it off well, 'cuz for a bit there I felt like an idiot. 'What a moron I am', I thought, 'These guys aren't in Brujeria and now they think I'm a retard'. After like an hour of me feeling like a monkey's ass, Dino broke down and asked me for the 7". As he signed it, he told me no one had ever called him out on Brujeria outside of California. When Raymond was signing it, he said it was "the first and only" Brujeria record they'd ever sign. I don't know if that is/was true, but for a while I got a lot of 'awesome metal-brownie points' out of the story.

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I went to some metal fest in Jersey a while back. DRI was playing later in the night and I was looking through crates of records for sale. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here, those fests are THE worst places to shop for records. Sure, they have good shit, but everything is marked up 400%. Still, I was bored and the last thing I wanted to do was sit through another shitty Gorguts-like death metal band on stage 3. So, I started going through the tables. You know when you are going through records, sometimes you run into the dude coming the other way, checking out the crates from A toward Z, while you are going Z to A? Well, we met right by the "D" crates. I picked Crossover out of a crate. I have 2 other copies of this record, so it's not like I was seriously considering buying it, but I took it out just too look-at-it type thing. Well, the dude going the other way said "that's a great record, you should buy it." I turned around to tell him I knew it was an awesome record, but that I already had it when I realized it was Kurt Brecht. Well, I bought the record (for like $10!!) and got him to sign it. Now I have 3 copies of Crossover.

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If anyone knew me in the early 90's they can tell you I was obsessed with Swedish bands. Johnny Helund from Unleashed was like my hero. I have their first 3 CDs autographed and I have tons of photos with the band. These photos are fucking hilarious and and all-around pathetic. Anyway, I can't remember who Dismember were playing with (maybe Deicide and Vader?), but I know that I missed every band that night except them. I just sat backstage with them and they told me 1000 stories about Carbonized, Unleashed, Entombed, Nihilist and all those bands that, at the time, I worshiped. Their manager Oli and I wrote a few times back and forth after that. David Blomquist was the first death metal guy I met who didn't smoke or drink. I'm not sure he was nailed to the X, but I remember him talking about being a vegetarian and shit. Nice guys, nice guys.

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Here's a weird one... My friend Jaime (I have talked about him here before, we went on road with Kreator and Paradise Lost), somehow knew the guys in Sacrifice. I didn't really like them, but for some reason I had the record. They came to town and Jaime told me they'd get us in free. So, I went down and met up with them. They needed to exchange some Canadian dollars, so we ate something and headed to the bank. The people in the bank were pretty fucking rude and made them wait like 15 minutes before even talking to them. So, when the lady at the counter was finally talking to them I pretended not to know them, walked up and asked them to sign the record. I thought I was "teaching the lady a lesson" by showing her that she had been rude to "rock stars", but I'm sure she could not have given 3 shits.

Before You Dive In, Suit Up!

Just in case you were wondering, I wanted to make it known that we here at Metal Inquisition fully endorse the use of the "Warrior's Shield" Manowar Condom. As the description says, "Now you can not only say 'fuck the world,' you can do it as well!"