So I was wondering what was the earliest "unreadable" logos? Personally I think logos by Death, Morbid Angel, Cryptic Slaughter were pretty readable. This is the earliest I could think of (1986 and this is basically the same band):

Holocausto, maybe?

For me it was this

The Mayhem logo dates to 1986 and the samael one is from 1987. They are similar in terms of "legibility".

Necrodeath and Protector, but again 1986.

Earliest I can find is Samhain's 1985 demo:

Ghostrider (itl) has a pretty unreadable logo they used in 1984-85. It's the earliest I can think of. Damnation (can) had a pretty hard to read one too, but that was used in 86 I believe.

Damn I should have mentioned Ghostrider, the first name of Necrodeath

When I first saw the Samael logo I was like “what the fuck is Srmrel?” There was no internet guiding my knowledge, just me looking at a tape copy of Worship Him at Camelot Music in East Brunswick, NJ’s Brunswick Square Mall....

What are the two logos in the OP? They truly are unreadable.

Edit: Slaughterhammer and Bloodslaughter. Great logos

Indeed, I don't think any of the proposed entries match the unreadability of the OP, especially Slaughterhammer. That one really threw me.

Wow. It now seems like Holocausto's logo was a precursor to this black metal font. +1

I really expected to see more logos/discussion

There's definitely a similarity but I'd really doubt that the creator of that font would be that well-versed in metal history. By the way: every band that uses that font fucking SUCKS.

Yeah, looks like "5Amrair" to me. I could look at that logo 1000 times and never figure out it was Samhain.

Yeah, I read it as 5 AMA AIR. I mean I can sorta see 5=S, but in what world would you write an H and an N like that!?

Samhain (Denmark) = DesExault; just an early version of that band.

I think the general aesthetic of metal logos changed once death and black metal became popular. Back in the 80's, thrash, power and traditional heavy metal were still the biggest deal, and the bands wanted their logos to be bold, distinctive and legible- to convey a sense of power. Think of bands like the Metallica logo, or the similar fonts used for the Testament and Megadeth logos, or the angular stylized lettering of many other bands.

Death metal logos want to convey a sense of gore, rotting, and decay and that's where you started seeing unreadable ones, just like black metal wanted to convey a sense of mystery, or letters looking like branches of a forest or frost icicles.

Necrodeath, 1985

If Samhain counts, then I'm offering Bathory for just the amount of people who think it's 'Bathord' or 'Batlord' or whatever.

Yeah, some people read Batlord, I always read correctly, maybe because I knew it.

As said by Lord_Jotun, the first 2 are still the most unreadable logos.

A couple from '85:




The way this is rendered makes it more tricky than planned:



Cyrka's logo from '82 is amusing but readable I guess:

I don’t know what that says. Saber something?
(Sorry for not adding anything.)

Saber Tiger. Becomes a lot clearer when you see their basic logo without the outline: