Any band that went from a logo to a font. No exceptions.

Sepultura comes to mind immediately. Not that the current one is bad, but it's just the band's name in a bland font.

I mean, this one was cool AF.

You really can't go wrong with scythe blades for first & last letters!

While I'm not a huge fan of the "generic wordmark" trend I honestly do think most of the time when bands changed their logos, it made sense for their change in sound or aesthetic. For example, it wouldn't make sense for Enslaved to keep using their old black metal logo with their current prog-heavy sound, at least in my opinion.

For every ultra-online dork who says that the original Enslaved/At the Gates logo was way cooler/more complex, there are 5 people who never checked that band out because they couldn't read what the old logo was actually supposed to say.

For every ultra-online dork who says that the original Enslaved/At the Gates/etc. logo was way cooler/more complex, there are 5 people who never checked that band out because they couldn't tell at a glance what the old logo was actually supposed to say. I am completely unsurprised that bands that realize they have a chance to make it big step away from some of the ultra-illegible esoterica.

In every area of design but extreme metal, logos aim to be simple and iconic.

No.

By this logic, Blood Incantation would have 5x as many fans if they changed their logo. What a ridiculously dumb take.

The nerdery and estoteric aesthetics of Blood Incantation are contributing factors to their popularity, not a hindrance. You're arguing that an underground, niche art form should attempt to be more accessible in order to appear to more fans, which is antithetical to the entire concept of outsider art.

There are very practical issues with many of these logos too - especially the ultra-tall logos like what At the Gates and Dimmu Borgir started off with.

Below, I replaced a couple tour posters for modern At the Gates with ATG's old logo - can you spot the issue?

The nerdery and estoteric aesthetics of Blood Incantation are contributing factors to their popularity, not a hindrance. You're arguing that an underground, niche art form should attempt to be more accessible in order to appear to more fans, which is antithetical to the entire concept of outsider art.

2019-2020 Cryptworm logo was leagues better than that current one.

I mean, not only are you thinking in hypotheticals so I very well may be right "by my logic", but you picked a total outlier in that BI are one of the only bands at that level of renown that still have a totally incomprehensible spider-web logo. They are successful because, in spite of their esoteric aesthetics, they tour constantly and write excellent music. They are actively working to outshine the inaccessible nerdery of their logo and song titles.

The old ATG logo is indeed awkward in that setting because of how vertically oriented it is, but if you were to stretch it by twice the width it would fit better while still retaining its core features. So there are ways to fix those practical issues without too much hassle. I did a mock-up of my own below to demonstrate this; I would also shift the whole row leftwards to keep it centred if I had the time to do that.

Basically, I don't think there's inherent flaws keeping these kinds of logos from being usable by bands wanting to stay relevant. Though both of our demonstrations can only show so much, because any logo will look out of place on a layout it's not designed for; that Amon Amarth tour poster is a case in point.

If your takeaway is that I am against nerd stuff in metal, you are sorely mistaken. I make my own music and it is BI levels of dorky on several levels. I am not saying that metal needs to naturally converge to all sound like Sleep Token. But I have invested a lot of time and energy into my band, and I've made about $20k in revenue over 6 years. That's before the labels' cuts and costs like production, session musicians, etc. - I am almost certainly operating at a net loss to myself.

What if I wanted to sustain myself solely off of my art, where would I start? Well, following the sentiment of this thread, there are two potential options: 1) just keep slaving away at my music without much of a strategy, maybe make it even more esoteric, because that's what extreme metal fans like; 2) give up on metal and go straight to making hip-hop beats, and abandon the idea that success can even be measured in an underground art form.

I find in general that this forum lacks the perspective of artists at times and is geared far too much toward the consumer. There seems to be this mindset that music exists only for an individual listener's benefit and the musician just kinda tosses it out there without thinking much about it. But I think deep down we can all identify some very obvious reasons why the band Death has more fans than the band Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum.