oes a rock band live up to their name?  This is a semi-objective determination, based on the sound of the band, and the connotation of their name. It has very little to do with whether or not I, or anyone, likes the band's music. If there were a band called "Wimpy Bland Crap" and that's what their music sounded like, they'd get a 10 on the "Live Up To" scale, no matter that most people loathed them more than life itself.

Quick Navigation: Click here to see the full alphabetical listing.  Click any of the letters to jump directly to that page. Each page has a full table of contents. This quick link bar can be found at the top and bottom of every individual page as well.

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In addition to the scores, each band has some editorial comments that may be sarcastic, snarky, ridiculous, petty, and downright libelous, as well as entertaining, ideally.

Adding to the imprecise formula, most bands, especially established ones, will gain or lose bonus points.  These points are added or subtracted solely at the discretion of the judges, and will be mentioned in the band summary.  Bonus point criteria is seldom musically-related, and tends to be more like how many hot models they banged, if any members successfully OD'ed, how many times they broke, up, etc.  Whether these are plus or minus points varies by the situation.  It's all quite cruel and arbitrary, much like life itself.

Send feedback here.  It would be good if you read the FAQ first. Use this address to submit new bands for ranking, and feel free to plead their case in your mail.  The more info we have about a band, the more accurate their rating will be.  You may also comment on current rankings, or this page in general.  Realize that bonus points can be changed at any time for any reason, and emails of the, "Zepplin rulez!  You sux!" quality are definitely grounds for negative bonus points.

Full Band Listing

Click any band to view their ranking, on their alphabetical page.

Scoring

• Genre: A quick and rough classification.  Rap, pop, R&B, death metal, etc.
• Name Score: An objective score from 1-10, based solely on how well the band matches up with their name.  Explained in the summary.
• Bonus Points: A subjective bonus or penalty, based on intangible attributes such as coolness, publicity, notable non-musical achievements, and more. Points may be positive or negative, and will be explained in the summary. Bonus points are hard to quantify, but usually accrue for cool rock star stuff like overdoses, random band member deaths, headline-making infighting, or scoring hot models.  Negative bonus points are less common, and must be earned with idiotic spelling of band name, especially annoying music/image, or other such unpleasantness.
• Total Score: Name Score + Bonus Points.  Remember that bonus points may be positive or negative.

Concept

This page concept came from my thinking how stupid some band names were, in comparison with their music.  I'd had that thought in mind for years and years, primarily germinated by the wimpy metal band Extreme, and once I started doing other bands when writing this section, it took off from there. So I owe Extreme some gratitude, though not enough to make me stop hating them for their name.

See the FAQ for more details.

Resources

If you want a quick overview of a band, including their genre, member names, greatest hits, album titles, and what other bands they sound like, Amazon.com is really useful.  Just search on the band name you are after, and click their summary page, or any of their albums.  The professional and/or amateur reviews will usually give most of the cogent info in just a paragraph, and they even have 30 second samples of five tracks from most albums.  All of this is a LOT more than you can say about most official or fansites for a band, which tend to have news and lyrics and such, but not the basic introductory information you are actually looking for.  The related topic info is very useful also:

Customers who bought this title also bought:

Customers who bought titles by this artist also bought titles by these artists:

If you are just after endless lists of band names, the Yahoo groups are your best stop.  There are literally thousands of bands listed for every genre, 98% of which you have never and and will never hear of. Someone somewhere likes them enough to do a website about the though.  They are fansites though, so the quality varies widely.

Artist Direct has a nice info listing for just about every band/artist you can think of. It's full of facts though, which may just slow you down.

Metal Roots: This is a summary of the careers of virtually every major metal band from the last 30 years.  They are sorted by era, with the band's first album as the date for their entry.  Few new bands are listed; an artist needed to have at least a couple of major recordings by the time the list was first compiled in late 2001, but you probably know about a new band anyway, if you are a fan of them. I found it a very interesting read, and agreed with the summaries for every band I knew about personally, so I assume the rest of them are pretty top notch as well.

Kerrang.com: This is a UK metal mag, and their main page isn't any better or worse than any other magazine's website.  They used to have an information section called Essential Artists, which had pretty much every major metal act in history, with a summary of their career origins, capsule reviews of every one of their albums ranked in order, and more.  It was very informative and a good read, though the navigation for it was dire.  You'll have to take my word for it though, since it's gone now.  I emailed them to ask if it would return but haven't heard back yet.  If it does reappear, I'll link to it from here.

There are a lot of sites with reader-submitted band name origin lists.  I didn't find them of much use when doing this section though, since there are so often conflicting stories, and none of the sites has anything approaching a comprehensive listing.

• Rock World.
• Gurl Pages.
• Teen Music.
• Am I Right?
• Heathen World.
• Progressive Dome.

On a slightly different note, Shrimp World has a long listing of potential band names, most of which are quite absurd, and this Nu-Metal band info page is filled with (intentional) hilarity.

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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.