Band Names

ORIGIN OF BAND NAMES
ANTHRAX.
Scott Ian heard about the virulent bacteria anthrax in a high school biology class. He decided it would be a great name for a band. The band’s official website jokingly mentions changing their name to Basket Full Of Puppies to distance them from the deadly Anthrax letters that were delivered in the United States.

CIRCLE JERKS
A circle jerk is a group of guys in a circle masturbating. The motivation was probably smart-ass shock value. Their first album fit the theme nicely; it was called “Group Sex”. Their second album “Wild in The Streets” was named after a classic movie from the late 60’s.

LACRIMOSA
This European Goth band took its name from a Latin word that means “The part of the tears”, which is a common part of the Latin rite of a Requiem mass.

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
They were called “Tony Flow and Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem”. Anthony Kiedis says he was inspired to change the name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers after seeing “ a psychedelic bush with band’s name on it”. It may be a coincidence, but the famous pimp and piano player Jelly Roll Morton had a band called Red Hot peppers in 1920’s.

FUGAZI
Vietnam War slang meaning “f**ked up situation”. This is what the band had in mind. Some say Fugazi is an acronym for “F**ked Up, Got in an Ambush and Zipped In”, or something similar, but Heathen friends in the military say that’s a load of crap and maybe people are thinking of FUBAR (F**ked Up Beyond All Recognition). Fugazi is also Italian slang for fake.

JACK OF JILL
Originally the band name was JACK AND JILL until Marilyn Manson inspired the name change.

JAMIROQUAL
A quote from their official website: jay, the vocalist, chose the name –synonymous with both the man and the band –for its reference to the Iroquois tribe, reflecting his own empathy for their displaced status and earth aware mentality.

TWISTED SISTER
When Twisted Sister didn’t really have a name and they were performing, a drunken old man at the end of the show came up to them and said “You guys look like a bunch of twisted sisters”, because of the way the members were dressed in drag.

A PERFECT CIRCLE
Minutes before their first gig, the band was still nameless, so the band members laid all the lyrics to their songs on a table and decided to name themselves after a randomly picked line of one of their songs. The line was “ Metaphor for a missing moment/Pull me into your perfect circle”, off the song Orestes.

BURZUM
Varg Vikernes created this Black Metal sensation. He is currently in prison for the murder of euronymous of the Norwegian band MAYHEM. Varg took the name BURZUM from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien described BURZUM as “the supreme and wide darkness, the plural form of BURZ”.

311
Apparently the band is named after the police code for indecent exposure in Omaha, Nebraska.

MORTIIS
Rumor has it that he originally thought it translated to “death” in Latin. He noticed it was spelled wrong a couple years later but liked the look anyway. Mortiis used to play bass in Emperor (a legendary Black Metal band from Norway).