WTF NME?

The website for the UK music magazine NME has published a pictorial of “31 illegible black metal band logos,” which is all well and good, except… a substantial portion of these band logos don’t belong to black metal bands. Bloodbath, Short Bus Pile Up, Sperm Swamp, Torsofuck, Gut Rot… these are just a few of the death metal and grind bands (well, pornogrind, if we’re being really specific) that the magazine as incorrectly labeled as “black metal.” Hell, I wouldn’t even call Finntroll black metal, even if they have elements of black metal in their music.

I know there isn’t any point getting upset with NME, the same way there’s really no point getting upset with that ridiculous Rolling Stone readers poll of history’s best metal albums, but… seriously, you don’t even have to listen to Sperm Swamp to know they’re not black metal. Just look at their name! If they were black metal, they’d be called Sperma Palude or something. And even if, for some reason, you didn’t know that a black metal band is very unlikely to be called “Torsofuck,” you could spend ten seconds listening to them, or even just Googling them, in which case you’d find that the very first page to come up is Encyclopaedia Metallum, who list them as “Brutal Death Metal/Goregrind,” and who, the editors of NME could safely assume, know more about metal than they do (I mean, the dude from The Streets is on their current cover.). This would be akin to me categorizing Kanye West as gangsta rap just because he’s a rapper and has used the word “gun” in his lyrics. Sheesh.

Check out their pictorial here, then tell me I’m overreacting in the comments section below.

Thanks: Charles