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A heavy metal umlaut is an umlaut over a letter 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 Germanic or Nordic "toughness". It is a form of marketing that invokes stereotypes of boldness and strength commonly attributed to peoples such as the Vikings. 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.

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." In 2002, Spin magazine referred to the heavy metal umlaut as "the diacritical mark of the beast".

Contents

1 Umlauts and diaereses 2 History 3 The heavy metal umlaut in popular literature 4 Other usages of diacritics in band or album naming 4.1 Umlaut 4.2 Other characters 4.3 Non-gratuitous umlauts 5 See also 6 External links and references

Umlauts and diaereses

The German word Umlaut roughly means sound change, as it is composed of um- (a prefix often used with verbs involving "change") and Laut, meaning "sound". Adding an umlaut indeed changes the pronunciation of a vowel in standard (non-Heavy-Metal) usage; the letters u and ü represent distinct sounds, as do o vs. ö and a vs. ä. Umlauts are used in several languages, such as Icelandic, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish. The sounds represented by the umlauted letters in these languages are typically front vowels (front rounded vowels in the case of ü and ö). Ironically, these sounds tend to be perceived as "weaker" or "lighter" than the vowels represented by un-umlautted u, o, and a, thus failing to create the intended impression of strength and darkness.

The English word diaeresis refers to a diacritic graphically similar to the umlaut; the name comes from a Greek word meaning "divide or distinguish". This diacritic is used in languages such as French, Portuguese and occasionally English to indicate that two vowels are to be pronounced separately, as in the name "Chloë" or the words "naïve" or "coöperation".

History

The progressive rock band Amon Düül II (aka Amon Duul II) released their first album in 1969. However, their name came from "Amon an Egyptian sun god and 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 [2], 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." [3]

Hawkwind on their second album In Search of Space (1971) wrote on the backside of the cover: "". To add to the variation, the diacritical mark on the last "A̋" is the "Hungarian umlaut" or double acute accent (˝)—two short lines slanting up and to the right rather like a right double-quote mark—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 contributed by the graphic designer of the band's first album cover. In the words of Lemmy Kilmister, Motörhead's front man: I only put it in there to look mean.. [4] (Interestingly, the standard German pronunciation of "motör" is similar to the standard English pronunciation of "motor", the umlaut over the second "o" requiring, in German, the fronting of the vowel.) At one Mötley Crüe performance in Germany, the entire audience started chanting, "Moertley Crueh!"

Queensrÿche went further by putting the umlaut over the Y in their name. (The symbol ÿ is sometimes used in Dutch handwriting to display the letter IJ instead of IJ/ij, and, very rarely, in French, e.g., in the placename L'Haÿ-les-Roses [5].) 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."[6]

Hawkwind-influenced 1980s space-rock band Underground Zerø used a variation on the concept, using the Scandinavian vowel ø in their name. This may have been inspired by computer systems of the time, many of which used the slashed zero as a glyph for the digit 0 to distinguish it from the letter O and thus resembled ø.

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 unlikely that the writers of This Is Spinal Tap knew this at the time.

The heavy metal umlaut in popular literature

In the mid-1980s, cartoonist Berkeley 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", "Clearasil Messiah" 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, which one 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.

Webcomic artist Scott Kurtz drew a series of cartoons about a fake band called Djörk in his PvP Online webcomic. Apart from possibly satirizing the heavy metal umlaut, this name also refers to the Icelandic singer/songwriter Björk Guðmundsdóttir, whose umlaut is genuine.

Other usages of diacritics in band or album naming

Umlaut

• Frank Zappa used an umlaut in the title of the album "Läther" (the pronunciation approximates to "Leather," and the album cover features a cow)
• the novelty rock band Green Jellÿ added an umlaut when changing their name from "Green Jello"
• the Scottish NWOBHM band Holocaust spelled their name Hölöcäust on their first 7", "Heavy Metal Mania".
• the Canadian thrash metal band Infernäl Mäjesty .
• the Australian thrash/black metal band Deströyer 666 .
• the French black metal band Mütiilation , this umlaut cannot affect pronounciation, as u and ü have the same sounds in French as ü in German.
• the Florida grindcore band Assück.
• the hardcore/ska-punk band Leftöver Crack
• the Florida goth/darkwave band The Crüxshadows.
• Dürty Nelly's Pub , a rock bar in Charlottesville, Virginia.
• Peoria, Illinois band Mudvayne listed their members on one release as Chüd, Güüg, R-üD and Spüg.
• Minneapolis crust/hardcore punk band Stāte of Feär
• the Spanish band Mägo de Oz.
• the term "nü-metal", used to describe nu metal with added umlautness.
• gay heavy metal band/cabaret act Pink Stëël have two consecutive gratuitous umlauts, the first such instance in a band name. The library/scifi metal band Blöödhag also have consecutive gratuitous umlauts.
• the Devin Townsend punk parody project Punky Brüster.
• the Canadian thrash band Voïvod's second album from 1986 was titled RRRÖÖÖAAARRR. This album title actually has three consecutive gratuitous umlauts. The band's name has an umlaut over the I, but this may be acting as a diæresis.
• the Finnish hardcore punk band Ümlaut (this use is almost a self-reference).
• Zee , a short-lived band formed by Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright and Dave Harris , made excessive use of gratuitous umlauts on their 1984 album Identity which included song titles such as "Cönfüsiön" and "Höw Dö Yöü Dö It".
• the kibology inspired, Usenet-based quasi-band Interröbang Cartel.
• the Spanish EBM duo Culture Kultür .
• the Japanese rock band, Lä-ppisch .
• the album "Paradÿsso", recorded by Spanish rock band Sôber , who added a gratuitous circumflex after changing their name from Sober Stoned.
• Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag was previously in Würm

Other characters

• the German punk band Die Ärzte used three dots (triaeresis?) over the "A" in Ärzte to distinguish from its normal spelling with "Ä" (double dot) diaeresis. This can be represented in Unicode: Die A⃛rzte. The three dots may stand for the three band members.
• the American thrash band Lååz Rockit actually used the letter "å" gratuitously in their logo, but the umlaut ("Lääz Rockit") in some press releases.
• the French band Magma used a fictional language, the Kobaïan, for its lyrics. The umlaut appeared in several album titles, such as Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh and Köhntarkösz. However, this umlaut does affect pronunciation, and thus cannot be considered gratuitous. Kobaian also uses a three-dot diacritic over some letters in song titles, and an original letter that seems to be a cursive ligature of "ie", which never appears without an umlaut.
• the accents and cedilla in the name of the French electronica band Rinôçérôse are also gratuitous.
• William Ørbit.
• The dark folk / experimental / occult band Death In June used umlauts (and in the second case, even accented e's) in the original releases of their albums The Wörld Thät Sümmer (1985) and Thé Wäll Öf Säcrificé (1989) - and, on these releases, also in the band name, leading to Deäth In Jüne (resp. Déäth In Jüné).

Non-gratuitous umlauts

• The US punk rock band Hüsker Dü took their name from a children's memory game, which added macrons over each u in the phrase, replacing these macrons with umlauts. Without the umlauts, "husker du" is a Danish and Norwegian phrase meaning "Do you remember".
• The name of the Toronto, Ontario area folk-pop/geek-rock band Moxy Früvous is pronounced with long-u, "Fruuvous", so this is perhaps not gratuitous.
• The heavy metal band Trojan used umlauts in their name on the 1985 release Chasing the Storm. For Swedes the tour T-shirts from this time are particularly amusing, as "Tröjan" in Swedish translates as "the shirt".
• The Rhode Island "futurock" band Grüvis Malt has an umlaut in their name, but it may not be gratuitous, since it clarifies the pronunciation as "oo" rather than "uh".
• The San Francisco band Children of Umlaut do not in fact have an umlaut in their name.
• The Icelandic artist Björk Guðmundsdóttir is using her birth name.

See also

• Foreign branding
• Leet
• Language game
• word play
• ISO-8859-1

External links and references

• Hell Holes: Spinal Tap's main man explains the importance of the umlaut (Lisa Gidley, CMJ, 2000)
• My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond
• The Döts (Dave Krinsky)
• Would you like umlauts with that? (PDF) by Bruce Campbell
• PvP Online: Djörk
• Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie Story of this page (Jon Udell)
• The Heavy Metal Umlaut in the Liff Dictionary