Just consult this helpful chart from Comic Vs. Audience. Primary categories are pretty much what you'd expect: Death, Deadly Things, Animals, Religion, and Badass Misspellings (e.g., Deth, a twofer). Personally, I'm drawn to the minor categories: Pleas for Help (Sick of It All), Adolescent Poetry (Thine Eyes Bleed), and Faulkner References (As I Lay Dying, another twofer).
Via Kottke.
I'm disappointed with that chart. It misspells Led Zeppelin as Led Zepellin and Judas Priest as Judas Preist, and drops the final e from Mötley Crüe.
This taxonomy is a mess, too. Megadeth is in the Death category but not in Badass Misspellings. Iron Maiden goes with Deadly Things, sure, but it's also pretty Medieval too, isn't it? Angel Death is only in Angels, not also in Death. Of course, nobody has a monitor large enough to display a chart that puts these names in every category they belong to.
Posted by: Amy Reynaldo | January 13, 2009 at 01:36 PM
That was hilarious. (Maybe flawed, but still hilarious.) I'm glad there were sub-categories dedicated to rock dots.
MTV put out a Beavis & Butthead book at one point, and in the book there was a page with three columns of words (mostly nouns). You pick one word out of each column and, ta da, there's the name of your grunge band. (And it looks like someone actually put it online: http://www.danbala.com/dirck/beavis/)
Posted by: Nancy C. | January 13, 2009 at 03:05 PM
Right, then. If I ever start a heavy metal band, I'm gonna call it Rëkwïëm før å Nünn. (Death, religion, misspellings, diacritics, and Faulkner! We've got it all! Or at least we've got it most.)
Posted by: Q. Pheevr | January 14, 2009 at 09:18 AM
If it's Faulkner, I'm going with Sankuary.
Posted by: Jon Carroll | January 14, 2009 at 10:01 AM
I was always charmed by the name of the 90's altie-indie rock band who started playing out as You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Dead. After they started having some success, they added a word and an ellipsis, and became ...And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of Dead.
Never charmed enough to actually buy one of their albums, though, I guess...
http://www.amazon.com/And-You-Will-Know-Us-By-The-Trail-Of-Dead/e/B000AQ791W
Posted by: Mark Gunnion | January 14, 2009 at 10:50 AM
@Mark Gunnion: The next exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco celebrates kitschy Jewish pop music. (Real example: an album called "Bagels and Bongos.") The exhibition title: "And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl." http://is.gd/cJwq
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | January 14, 2009 at 11:25 AM