- Note: some of the accented letters used in this article may not display properly in all fonts.
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 "toughness." 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 means roughly sound change, being 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 ü represent distinct
sounds, as do o vs. ö and a vs. ä. Umlauts are used in several languages, such as Icelandic, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, French and Portuguese; the sounds represented by the umlauted letters in these languages are typically front vowels (front rounded vowels in the case of ü and ö). 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 comes from a Greek word meaning "divide or distinguish". It is usually used to indicate that
two vowels are to be pronounced separately, as in the name "Chloë" or the words "naīve"
or "coöperation".
At one Mötley Crüe performance in Germany, the entire audience started
chanting, "Moertley Crueh!" Queensr˙che 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."
History
The progressive rock band Amon Düül released their first album in
1969. However, their name came from "Amon an
Egyptian sun god and Düül a character from
Turkish fiction" [1] (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
Öyster Cult in 1970. The band's website states it was added by guitarist and
keyboardist Allen Lanier [2] (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."
[3] (http://www.spiraling.com/words/umlaut.html)
Hawkwind on their second album In Search of Space (1971) wrote on the backside of the cover: "
TECHNICIÄNS ÖF SPÅCE SHIP EÅRTH THIS IS YÖÜR CÄPTÅIN SPEÄKING YÖÜR ØÅPTÅIN IS DEA̋D". To add to the variation, the
diacritical mark on the last "
A̋" 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 Motörhead, had become a member of the group.
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, because "it looks mean"; the usage stuck. In the words of Lemmy Kilmister, Motörhead's front man: I only put it in there to look mean.. [4] (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 bringing forward of the lips.
Queensr˙che went further by putting the umlaut over the Y in
their name. (It is sometimes used in Dutch handwriting to display the
Dutch Y instead of IJ/ij, and, very rarely, in French, e.g., in the placename L'Ha˙-les-Roses [5] (http://fr.wikipedia.org/pac/L%27Ha%C3%BF-les-Roses).) 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. 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 ø.
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
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", "Clearasil Messiah" and "U Stink But I Love U". Breathed eventually
had 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 bęte 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 "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 "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 Nörth Daköta.
Webcomic artist Scott Kurtz
drew a series of cartoons about a fake band called Djörk in his PvP Online (http://www.pvponline.com/index.php3) webcomic. Apart from possibly satirizing the heavy metal
umlaut, this name also refers to the Icelandic singer/songwriter Björk Guđmundsdķttir,
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 "Läther"
- the novelty rock band Green Jell˙ added an umlaut when changing their
name from "Green Jello"
- the Scottish NWOBHM
band Holocaust spelled their name Hölöcäust on their first
7", "Heavy Metal Mania."
- the Canadian thrash metal band Infernäl Mäjesty.
- the French black
metal band Mütiilation, this
umlaut cannot affect pronounciation, as u and ü have the same sounds in French as ü in German.
- the Florida grindcore band
Assück.
- the hardcore/ska-punk band Leftöver Crack
- the Florida goth/darkwave band The Crüxshadows.
- the Australian war metal band Deströyer 666
- Dürty Nelly's
Pub, a rock bar in Charlottesville,
Virginia.
- Peoria, Illinois band Mudvayne listed their members on one release as Chüd, Güüg, R-üD and Spüg.
- Minneapolis crust/hardcore punk band Stāte of Feär
- the Spanish band Mägo de Oz.
- the term "nü-metal," used to describe nu metal with added umlautness.
- gay heavy metal band/cabaret act Pink Stëël 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 Brüster.
- the Canadian thrash band Voīvod's second album from 1986 was
titled RRRÖÖÖAAARRR. 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 diæresis.
- the Finnish hardcore punk band Ümlaut (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 "Cönfüsiön" and "Höw Dö Yöü Dö It".
- the kibology inspired, Usenet-based
quasi-band Interröbang Cartel.
- the Spanish EBM duo Culture
Kultür.
- the Japanese rock band, Lä-ppisch.
- the album "Parad˙sso", recorded by Spanish rock band Sôber, who added a gratuitous circumflex after changing their name from Sober Stoned.
Other characters
- the German punk band Die Ärzte used three dots (triaeresis?) over the "A"
in Ärzte to distinguish from its normal spelling with "Ä" (double dot) diaeresis. This can be represented in Unicode:
Die A⃛rzte. The three dots may stand for the three band members.
- the American thrash band Lååz
Rockit actually used the letter "å" gratuitously in their logo, but the umlaut ("Lääz
Rockit") in some press releases.
- the French band Magma used a fictional language, the Kobaīan, for its lyrics. The umlaut appeared in several album titles,
such as Mekanīk Destruktīw Kommandöh and Köhntarkösz. 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 Rinôįérôse are also gratuitous.
- William Ørbit.
- 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 Wörld Thät Sümmer (1985) and
Thé Wäll Öf Säcrificé (1989) - and, on these releases, also in the band name, leading to Deäth In Jüne (resp.
Déäth In Jüné).
Non-gratuitous umlauts
- 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.
- the Toronto, Ontario area folk-pop/geek-rock band Moxy Früvous (perhaps not gratuitous, as the name is pronounced with long-u,
"Fruuvous")
- 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".
- Rhode Island "futurock" band Grüvis Malt has an umlaut in their name, but it may not be gratuitous, since it clarifies the
pronunciation as "oo" rather than "uh."
- The kibology inspired, Usenet-based
quasi-band Interröbang Cartel.
- The San Francisco band Children of Umlaut do not in
fact have an umlaut in their name.
External links and references
|
