As a metalhead immerses himself into the chaotic void of despair that is metal, he eventually becomes accustomed to some of the lyrical and artistic themes that define and distinguish the seemingly unending variety of subgenres that populate the genre. Eventually he is able to guess the subgenre of a band by its name alone, even if he has never heard of the band, never heard their music, or even seen their album artwork or band logo.
Fleshcrawl? Your “flesh crawls” when you are exposed to something gross, gory, or disgusting. Probably death metal.
Bestial Warlust? Well, “bestial black metal” is often used to describe war metal, and this band has both “bestial” and “war” in their name, so they must be war metal.
Bongzilla? Oh, come on.
However, this is not a foolproof method. For one thing, many of these subgenres are all still metal and unsurprisingly share many common lyrical themes such as death, war, suicide, Satanism, gore, et cetera, et cetera, which you can find reflected in their band names. But other times certain subgenres have a near monopoly on a lyrical theme and their ensuing band names, until some of these bands come around and throw a wrench into their gears by playing music that sounds completely different.
*I will not be including names that are intentionally ironic or jokes, so you can forget about seeing Happy Days or Party Cannon on this list.
Disembowelment
What the band name sounds like:
What a brutal way to go, right? Just like Suffocation, Internal Bleeding, or Devourment. This has to be a brutal death metal or slam band, right?
What the band actually is:
A death/doom band whose lyrics are about death, depression, and despair.
To be fair, they do have some songs with a decent amount of murder and gore, but it’s more in a “look at the depraved depths mankind will go to, this jerk just disemboweled me!” as opposed to “I DISEMBOWEL ALL MY VICTIMS I CUT THEIR STOMACHS AND THEIR GUTS COME OUT GGRAAAAGHGHGH!”
Dissection
What the band name sounds like:
Dissection? You mean intricately and methodically disassembling a cadaver to better understand its anatomy? This has to be a death metal or brutal death metal band akin to Carcass or Aborted, right?
What the band actually is:
A Swedish black metal band whose lyrics are about darkness, the occult, and anti-Cosmic Satanism. They spawned an entire subgenre of melodic black/death metal bands.
However, according to Encyclopaedia Metallum, their “first song ever written was ‘Inhumanity Deformed,’ a Napalm Death-inspired grindcore piece,” so I guess the band name fit then, but it’s been out of place ever since.
Primordial
What the band name sounds like:
Primordial? Like primordial ooze? The origin of life? That’s gotta be one of those technical death metal bands that write lyrics about space and aliens and shit like Origin or Archspire.
What the band actually is:
An Irish folk/black metal band who write lyrics about Irish history and cultural heritage. Sure, I guess the word “primordial” could also refer to the origins of one’s culture and nation, but it still sounds so science-y to me.
Trouble, Mayhem, and Havok
I don’t know which subgenre these individual band names sound like they belong to, but they all sound like they belong to the same subgenre when none of the bands themselves actually do.
Ahab
What the band name sounds like:
A band from a coastal city who writes nautically-inspired music.
What the band is actually is:
A band from about 300 miles inland in Heidelberg, Germany who writes nautically-inspired music.
I also considered The Ocean Collective from not-coastal Berlin, Germany, Frozen Soul from rarely-frozen Fort Worth, Texas, and Good Charlotte from not-Charlotte Waldorf, Maryland for this joke.
Okay, Good Charlotte doesn’t write lyrics about Charlotte, North Carolina, but judging by the band name you’d think they’d be from there.
Blood Incantation
What the band name sounds like:
A death metal band who got its start in the late ’80s or early ’90s and didn’t know there was already a death metal band called Incantation around, was no way influenced by the latter’s sound, and just gave their band a similar name by sheer coincidence.
What the band is actually is:
A death metal band who got its start in 2011 and must have thought the names “Blood Autopsy,” “Blood Morbid Angel,” and “Blood Immolation” were a little too obvious.
