Top 5 Most Unfortunate Extreme Metal Band Names

5. CarnifexThere’s nothing wrong with Carnifex per se, but whenever I hear the band’s name—which is rare—I immediately think Carfax. Sure, word ‘carnifex’ has a brutal origin—meaning ‘executioner’—, but the omnipresence of the Carfax Fox on television has potentially altered my reality. And who says carpet bomb advertising doesn’t work. Oh, random factoid. Salad Works, the company that makes fast-food salads for dayjobbers, used be known as “the original salad tossers”. No joke.

4. Gonoreas
I bumped into Gonoreas during a prolonged deployment on review duty for Decibel. Actually, this Swiss power metal band was formerly known as The Gonorrheas (MNSFW), which sounds like a super-aware hardcore band from Malta. You know, “fuck the sex / there’s too many problems / they get in the way / we sure could live without them”. Well, the name change didn’t help much to dispel the fact that song titles like “Get What You Deserve”, “My Love”, “Without You”, “Break Out”, “Imagine You Were It” could all be theme songs for STD prevention commercials.

3. Deaf Auditorium
Don’t really know where to begin with Deaf Auditorium. Originally hailing from Zagreb, Croatia, the now-defunct quintet had the unfortunate option of pairing ‘deaf’ with ‘auditorium’. Guess they didn’t like high school that much. Then, they paired death and black metal, sounding like a half-competent Cradle of Filth—which is more than we can say for Hecate Enthroned and Ancient—on certain songs and then Vader clones the next.

2. Unfit Ass.
OK, there’s Ass Ache, Goat’s Ass Trumpet, and Ass Flavour (replete with the ‘u’), but the band that takes the race is Hungarian outfit, Unfit Ass. Interesting. Like fellow Eastern Europeans Deaf Auditorium in position #3, we really have to wonder what was going through their collective heads at the time. “Zoltan, what about Tractor Treads?” … “No, we’re going with Unfit Ass. It’s brutaller. Everyone’s ass should be fit.” Actually, Unfit Ass. is the shortened form of Unfit Association, and these Magyar heshers knew how to stir a Third World pit when they formed in 1990.

1. GoatPenis
Now, I’m sure poking fun at these Brazilian war metallers is akin to poo-pooing on Sarcófago’s INRI album, but the first time I heard someone—a black metaller by trade—utter the concatenation GoatPenis with the same seriousness nations consider the outcomes of all-out war, I laughed hysterically. And then he showed me the demo cover. This was back in 1994. When anything black metal had to be true and, of course, from Norway. Well, sad little GoatPenis had the true thing down—they called our lord and savior a coward of all things!—but were from the sweltering South American country of Brazil. Unlike most early ‘90s Norwegian black, GoatPenis is still trucking today. And, hey, GoatPenis is better than, for the purposes of this list, Porky Vagina.