Not sure if this has already been done before, but I was wondering what unreadable band logos you've seen while looking through bands. From sloppily put together logos where everything just blurs together, to logos with all the letters stacked next to each other/blurred together, to logos where the letters have a lot extending off of them/"hanging off", what are some of the most interesting/notable (or just whatever comes to mind)? Also, if you find any of them look aesthetically pleasing, which ones and why? I already know I'm going to get tons of black and death metal logos, maybe followed closely by grindcore and then deathcore, and that's fine, although any genre of metal is acceptable here.

Here's a few I've seen recently (some of these can be read with effort):
Abyssal

Vials Of Wrath

Cosmic Putrefaction

Signs Of The Swarm

Wolves In The Throne Room

Reverorum Ib Malacht

Ingested

Benighted In Sodom

Borgne

Carpe Noctem

Chaos Echœs

Ehnahre

Echtra

Krallice

Krypts


P.S. these are just what I could find quickly, feel free to chime in with anything else you have.

We've done Worst Band Logos.

Is that too similar do you think? I was hoping to discuss here all unreadable or hard to read band logos, regardless of their quality. In fact, I just clicked on that thread and the first logo I saw was very easily readable; thus it wouldn't belong here. In fact I would say some of the logos I included were very high quality, just unreadable. What do you think?

Might be more interesting to take unreadable band logos and have us try to decipher how to read them - i.e. where the letters actually are.

But I guess that also depends on how much time we all have and how keen we are to fuck around on MS Paint.

I was about to say, we could post illegible logos and try to read them.

Here's one I managed to read a while back, if someone wants to take a crack at it.

That would definitely be interesting, as I still have no idea how to read a few of these. Krallice, Wolves In The Throne Room, Abyssal, Echtra, and Carpe Noctem I find particularly difficult, Carpe Noctem being the only one I can fully read. I also can't see certain words in Reverorum Ib Malacht or Benighted In Sodom. Should I remove the band names though to make it harder? By the way, what does that logo say I have no idea

Your thread. Do what you want.

Signs of the Swarm was easy to read imho but I concur the resto of them are hard. This one took me a while for some reason. It isn't that hard but for some reason my mind refused to let me see it.

Did I miss something Signs of the Swarm is not only easy to read but with the insect wings makes for a pretty logical logo. Also I know deathcore isn’t held in high regard around here but they are a great band, and Bobby and Dave are really cool dudes. Can’t wait to see them again in concert this weekend.

That actually is hard, if there aren't tons of o's, a's, v's, w's, and other letters that can be formed by bending two lines in an acute angle. Am I somewhat on the right track here?



Thanks for that! I could vaguely see some of those letters but you really demystified the whole thing. I think once I got a feeling for what the letters were I could pretty easily decipher it by looking for an I, then an N and an O, and so on. But on a related note, with the Krallice, Abyssal, and Wolves In The Throne Room logos, I don't know how to do that. I know it was mentioned earlier here



But with those three logos, I don't even know how to go about it, even though I know what all the letters are to look for are. I think I might be able to see half the letters in the Abyssal logo after looking extremely carefully, and then with the Krallice and Wolves In The Throne Room logo, it's even more difficult. Does anyone know how to best do that? Maybe with Microsoft paint, I saw it mentioned (although I must admit I can't recall using it myself at the moment, and definitely not for this purpose).

I still have trouble understanding how that certain Swedish band isn't actually called "Siletter." Because it's one thing if a logo is unreadable, another thing if it actually looks like something totally different.

They are and always will be Siletter.

Some of you are missing the point of logos. They are meant to be primarily recognizable, not readable. Think of company logos which quite often don't even feature the name of the company. Metal logos have their own aesthetics, so the shapes are more convoluted than simple golden arcs or stylized outlines of an apple, but the OP has plenty of uniquely shaped logos which are instantly recognizable once you know them.

That Cosmic Putrefaction one looks awesome though.

Black Cilice's logo is borderline illegible:

Yeah, it's Oksennus.

It's possible to read a bunch of the logos in the OP if you squint. For me, being hard to read to fine if it looks cool. Carpe Noctem and Vials of Wrath look good, but Ehnahre is just bland AND illegible.

Okay, now that I know what the name is, this one's actually really clever.

That Oksennus one is almost an optical illusion. Pretty cool.

https://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn22/Mathwards/Untitled_zpsjl3tj0wd.jpg

This is apparently the "solution" to Wolves in the Throne Room, courtesy of an old Reddit post.

Dammit i knew it was familiar! Also killer band. Also also, great bands in this list, nevermind the logos

Having the W on its side when every other letter is upright is just plain cheating, lmao

I feel stupid but I can't read it...

I always viewed logos as a piece of art instead of it supposed to be immediately read, cause that's kinda dull even though I've used those for some of my bands.

But here some I've done up over the years.

i'm seeing "ac annihilation"?

the one that looks to begin and end with s looks pretty cool as well ("spells" or something?)

f me... now it's actually pretty clear... thanks a lot!

Thanks you pretty much got it. It's tacit annihilation.

The other one I think you are referencing is subterranean birthright

ah, i was looking at those tits there as well, but didn't remember tacit was a word, so figured they were just part of the graphic as they didn't jump out like the ac

and tbh i couldn't actually make out the full "annihilation", but given how much is clear it's a pretty obvious guess what the word is, even if i'm not sure which scribbles make out the ihil + ion (i'm guessing the last N is mirrored)

with the s-s thing, i meant the one above subterranean birthright

Is the stuff in this logo, beneath the eye, the same pulsar signal as in the Unknown Pleasures LP artwork?

what about it? it's a completely different topic

Yea, I guess that's technically right (the best kind of right).

Oh my bad! That one is Spawning Vats. and yeah the N i mirrored in tacit

Damn that would've been awesome if I was that smart. I was just basically doing like cobwebs. lol.

Propitious Vegetation:

^no way are there actual words in there.

This is an actual logo to a black metal band. Good luck figuring out the band name!

reference much appreciated

I can make out the P and V that starts the words (they're both on the left side) but yeah everything else is a mystery.

On the contrary, you can pretty much trace every single possible word in that pile of nonsense. It's a blank slate. Also, it's instantly recognizable once you know the band, but that of course doesn't equal good design.