I thought about this when listening to an album from Lord Belial. I actually really liked their old logo, despite it being cheesy, and for the life of me I can't figure out why they would change it to this other logo which is just totally generic Euro-Black. Do you guys have any other examples? Or maybe you can list bands whose logos changed for the BETTER as an alternative

I was just thinking about this topic when listening to Gates of Ishtar. They went from this on their first two albums to this on their last album. Why?

Dying Fetus had a very plain text logo for the longest time until they took a more death metal logo in 2016. Now they seem to use a fusion of the two which I think is cool.

Dimmu Borgir and Immortal also come to mind. Both discontinued their original black metal logos and took on more conventional logos that were more easier to read. In those cases I don't necessarily think it was a change for the worse in terms of logos since both changes came at a time when both bands' styles evolved.

That original Lord Belial logo isn't great but it's much better than that generic Szpajdel logo.

I second Dying Fetus, the first logo was amazing. Now they combined the two.

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.

Sepultura also changed their logo at a stylistic crossroad, so it's quite understandable.

EDIT: They already had the text logo on Arise, so scratch that.

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

Speaking of this, I hate how At the Gates went from having a cool logo with actual gates in it on the debut to boring font of the next album

Yeah At the Gates is really one of the worst culprits of this. With many of the examples posted (Immortal for example) I think that while the new logos are pretty generic and boring, the originals aren't that great either. At the Gates however, got rid of one of the best logos out there.

First logo: Cool and very in line with 90s death metal, even if "Lunar Strain" and "The Jester Race" are quite melodic.
Second logo: It's fine, I guess? Just a font. perhaps HighwayCorsair has a point.
Third logo: I mean... it definitely gives off alt-metal vibes, which is what they are now, so there's that.

I prefer the old logo.

[img][/ihttps://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Slayer-Logo-History.jpg[img]

The 2000's are ass.

Old 90s death metal logos were peak metal graphic design.

They went from a cool death-y looking logo, to something that looks like it's for a hotel chain.

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

Exactly! So odd they dropped that logo super early in their career.

Hah, I just did a video about the Beneath the Remains/Cause of Death story and the logo is part of it. It happened on Beneath the Remains, when Roadrunner took a special interest in Sepultura and they wanted them to not be boxed in death metal, stand out so to speak, which is the reason they thought Lovecraft's Nightmare A (the eventual Cause of Death cover) shouldn't be used. For the same reason they changed the logo. Deborah Lauren, the resident graphic artist of RR, who has handled most RR covers of the era (layout, etc), used the font and placed the title.

I personally think the aesthetic on Beneath the Remains is a-ma-zing, bland "just a font" or not (so are so many logos that are just written in the Blackletter font), it's completely iconic to me. I like the old logo well enough but I LOVE(d) the simplicity of the new one. It suits Whelan's works great.

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As for the original question.

Flotsam and Jetsam after No Place for Disgrace. Now THAT's bland.

Surprised nobody mentioned Metallica on the Loads. One of the best, most iconic logos in all rock history for that boring nothing they used (the star logo was ok I guess, never really liked it though).

Uff..where should I start?! Lemme see...

Moonspell
Tiamat
Samael
Sentenced
Anathema
Enslaved
Katatonia
...

All iconic logs, shifted to modern bland fonts..

Possibly in minority, I prefer the normal font Sepultura logo. It's clean and looks good on a T-shirt, although they've used a couple of variants in the Green era.

Also surprised nobody mentioned Immolation, where I also kind of prefer clean font logo, but the classic death metal one is also good.

Obvious example is Metallica going to the eyesore that is on the covers of Load/Re-Load.

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.

I totally agree that the Metallica logo change was awful though. They had one of the most iconic logos in music and traded it for... not that. Fortunately they've moved back in that direction on the later albums.

No.

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.

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

The fact you can't read them is Good, Actually. But seriously, it's hard to imagine the extreme metal landscape without that type of logo. The music's not meant to be palatable to a mainstream audience so neither should the aesthetic.

Dark Tranquillity (though not the worst case scenario; the logo changing followed the style changes pretty well). From hectic to bland-ish...

k.

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 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.

Well, why do you think the bands make this sort of change in the first place? Is it because they all suddenly decide "hm, let's move on to the sucky part of our band"? Or is it because they're trying to make a name for themselves and turn this into a career? Unless you think all these bands should intentionally be as inaccessible as possible because doing otherwise is a betrayal of the values of extreme metal.

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?

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

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.

As much as I understand and appreciate that argument, I personally prefer a band's logo to at least be readable. Maybe not just stamped out in Times New Roman font or block text or whatever, but at least, you can make out what it says and it doesnt just look like a bunch of random sticks and squiggles. The original Cryptworm logo I think is a good compromise- it is obscure, hard to read but nonetheless still readable. Wolves in the Throne Room, on the other hand... Well that's just my taste anyway. If it was my band, I'd probably design my logo to look something like Dark Throne's, or the original Sepultura one.

Weird.. the second one looks like something a band member would draw for their demo! The first one is a LOT better, and it goes well with that artwork underneath.

We get it, you're one of the cool kids. Time to move on.

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.


Your edit definitely helps (I like it way more than the original), but I still think the edited logo is too "ball-shaped". It is much less versatile than the other logos because its aspect ratio is different. In the context of appearing on a tour poster alongside other bands, it will always use its space less efficiently than the modern logo does.

I'd agree that success got basement in 1_music (of course, Death is more popular firstly because of music), 2_name of the band (yes, I've seen and know a lot with names that are not good for many reason), 3_band's imagery with most of it around the logo (just like a t-shirt of a badn can be only logo but not only drawing) - to that I'd say that maybe an unreadable logo could be welldone, think Prince for example, or even NIN, but it needs to be catchy and clear enough from all the other one. If I'm looking at Lord of Logo's books that's fine but at some point you could think "ok that's just thousand bands with the same logo"

For example Metallica's change was not good to me because their old one was clear enough, no need for a change here

This one for sure

Take your pick with voivod, lol.

And i like the OG Devil Master logo more