From the Minds of Madness: The Origins of Heavy Metal Band Names

A friend of the blog, Blair Gibson from Canada, has compiled and self-published the book above called "From the Minds of Madness: The Origins of Heavy Metal Band Names". Book's whole idea is how metal bands, from past to present, took their names.

Blair for the past two years came in touch with bands asking them the history behind their names and their replies are included in this book. He managed to gather over 350 bands. I read the book and I found it very interesting, covering the wider area of metal scene. It's a great, entertaining reading and of course you can learn a couple of things more about the bands you're interested to.

You can find it either in psychical either in digital form. The digital one costs 6$ and the physical 15$. I believe it's worth buying it and supporting self-financed efforts like this one.

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Below you can read book's introduction by Blair Gibson:

"Around 2009, I started getting interested in why and how some bands chose their names. There were a multitude of sites out there with information like this but sadly they were lacking any heavy metal band name origins. Sure there some of the big names like AC/DC, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Black Sabbath and the list goes on.

Other than that, the rest of the bands on these websites were pop music, punk, rock, country and even some rap. I was pissed off by the lack of heavy metal bands that were included (or not included) on these websites. That’s when I decided to do something about it myself! I scoured the internet for weeks and months and looked up every metal genre and subgenre that I could find.

After I had compiled a list of said genres, I started to hunt down bands from each of these genres to ask them the ever important question of how the hell they came up with their band name. I touched on every genre from black metal to stoner rock to death metal to doom to grindcore to power metal and every genre in between.

I contacted thousands of bands and heard back from a good number of them. Some of them chose not to tell me their story, some of them told me the story was boring and not worth putting in my book and some people even told me they were embarrassed about their band name and didn’t really want to talk further about it.

The responses I got from the band members themselves are sometimes humours (Skinless) and sometimes very well thought out and comprehensive (Virgin Steele). The heavy metal community are a loud and proud bunch of people who want their music heavy and fast and the volume knob turned up to an 11!

I made this book for you guys. Read on to see how some of your favourite bands got their names. Check out why My Dying Bride chose their name. See how Borknagar and Dimmu Borgir came up with theirs. Every entry is an interesting read and you might even find some new bands to listen to along the way.

So sit back, put on some headphones, crank up your favourite heavy metal album and open the pages of this book and read it from front to back and enjoy the hell out of it!"

Blair E. Gibson
Author