Heavy metal umlaut Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
A heavy metal umlaut is an umlaut over letters 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 tough Germanic feel. They are also called röckdöts. 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.
In 2002, Spin magazine referred to the heavy metal umlaut as "the diacritical mark of the beast."
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."
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2 Languages that use umlauts or diaereses 3 The heavy metal umlaut in popular literature 4 Other musical usages of gratuitous diacritics 5 See also 6 External links |
History
The progressive rock band Amon Düül released their first album in 1969. However, their name came from "Amon being an Egyptian sun god, Düül a character from Turkish fiction" [1], 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 [1], 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." [1]
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 DEÄD". To add to the variation, the last "Ä" has short lines 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.
used the umlaut in an unexpected place — above a consonant.]]Queensrÿche 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 used in French.) 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.
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 questionable whether the writers of This Is Spinal Tap knew this at the time.
Ironically for speakers of languages which rely on umlauts, such as German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian or Turkish, the umlauted vowels represent a weaker, lighter sound rather than the intended impression of strength and darkness.
At one Mötley Crüe performance in Germany, the entire audience started chanting, "Moertley Creuh!" Queensrÿche 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."
The German word Umlaut comes from "um-, meaning "to change" and Laut, meaning "sound"; the U and Ü and O and Ö are pronounced differently. 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 word coöperation.
In the mid-1980s, cartoonist Berke 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" 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 bête noire Tipper Gore and the PMRC.
The novel Zodiac (1988) by Neal Stephenson features a fictional band called Pöyzen Böyzen, whom another 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.
This is an Article on Heavy metal umlaut. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Heavy metal umlaut Languages that use umlauts or diaereses
The heavy metal umlaut in popular literature
Other musical usages of gratuitous diacritics
The San Francisco band Children of Umlaut do not in fact have an umlaut in their name.See also
External links