Almost none of it was a decision. The genre's most famous name came off a friend's shortlist for a fanzine title. One band is named after a bacterium picked out of a biology textbook because it sounded unpleasant. Another took its name from a shipping term in an Elton John lyric.
What follows is the actual provenance of the names, which is consistently stranger and considerably less strategic than the legends suggest.
Metallica
Lars Ulrich's friend Ron Quintana was trying to name a fanzine and had a shortlist that included Metallica and Metal Mania. Ulrich, who was helping, suggested Metal Mania for the zine and quietly kept the other one for the band he was assembling.
Quintana got the zine, the band got the name, and the most valuable brand in heavy music was handed over in a conversation between two teenagers who had no idea what they were doing.
Anthrax
Scott Ian found the word in a biology textbook at school. It was chosen because it sounded suitably unpleasant and evil, and the band later discovered it was one of the few genuinely dangerous things they could have named themselves after, which caused them considerable difficulty in 2001 for reasons that had nothing to do with music.
Megadeth
Dave Mustaine took it from a political pamphlet, where megadeath is a unit of measurement for casualties in a nuclear exchange, equal to one million dead. He dropped an a. The name is therefore an arms control term, which fits the band's subject matter far more precisely than most people realise.
Slayer
Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman had a shortlist and Slayer won for the reason most of these names win: it was short, it fitted on a poster, and nobody else had it.
Exodus, Testament and the Bay Area
Exodus took the name in 1979 with no particular meaning attached. Testament were called Legacy until a label suggested a change; the new name arrived from outside the band, which is unusual. Death Angel were five cousins who wanted something that sounded final.
Flotsam and Jetsam
The most incongruous name in the genre. Flotsam and jetsam are maritime legal terms for wreckage found floating and cargo thrown overboard, and the band took the phrase after hearing it in a song. It is a strange thing to call a thrash band and they have kept it for forty years.
The German ones
Kreator were called Tormentor and changed because a label asked them to; the new spelling with a K was chosen to look distinctive on a sleeve. Sodom and Destruction both took biblical or apocalyptic words for the same reason Venom did, which is that they sounded transgressive in 1982 and required no explanation.
Tankard, alone in the German scene, is named after a drinking vessel, which tells you everything about that band's career.
| Band | Source | Chosen because |
|---|---|---|
| Metallica | A friend's fanzine shortlist | It was available and better |
| Megadeth | An arms control unit of measurement | It fitted the subject matter |
| Anthrax | A school biology textbook | It sounded unpleasant |
| Slayer | A shortlist | Short, and unclaimed |
| Flotsam and Jetsam | A maritime term via a pop lyric | Nobody has ever explained this |
| Kreator | A rename from Tormentor | The K looked better on a sleeve |
| Tankard | A drinking vessel | Complete honesty |
| Overkill | A Motorhead album | The obvious debt, stated |
The Motorhead problem
A surprising number of these bands are named after somebody else's song or album, and Motorhead supplied more of them than anybody. Overkill is a Motorhead album. Several others took titles from Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
That is not laziness, it is a signal. In 1982 a band with a name lifted from a record you liked was telling you, in the only advertising it could afford, exactly what it was going to sound like.
What the names have in common
Three patterns cover almost all of them, and none involves a marketing meeting.
Most are single words, because a single word fits on a logo and a logo has to read at four feet. Most are violent or apocalyptic, because the name is doing the same job as the sleeve. And almost all were chosen in an afternoon by teenagers with no expectation that anybody would ever say them out loud.
The exceptions prove it. Flotsam and Jetsam have spent forty years with a name that will not fit anywhere. Nuclear Assault got a name that is a complete description of the lyrics. And Tankard told the truth from the beginning and never once had to explain themselves.
Several of these bands did not stay thrash bands at all, and the ones who kept going in the other direction are in Thrash Bands That Became Death Metal. The full map is in the bands you need to know.
The ones who changed them
A surprising number of these bands started under a different name, and the changes are usually more revealing than the final choice.
Testament were Legacy until 1986, when a label pointed out that another act had the name; the new one arrived from outside the band. Kreator were Tormentor and changed at a label's request. Megadeth were briefly under a different name in the weeks after Mustaine got off the bus. Anthrax's earliest line up went through two before the textbook was opened.
The pattern is that almost every change was forced by a label or by a clash rather than chosen, which fits the wider picture: these were bands whose names were the least considered thing about them.
The names that would not survive today
Worth saying, without much moralising. A number of these bands chose words in 1982 that a group forming now would think about for considerably longer, and several have spent decades explaining that they were seventeen and had read a paperback.
Anthrax is the clearest case for entirely accidental reasons: a name chosen from a school textbook because it sounded unpleasant became, in the autumn of 2001, a word attached to letters that killed people. The band considered changing it, said so publicly, and eventually did not.
The wider point is that a name chosen in an afternoon by teenagers who did not expect anybody to hear the record has to be carried for forty years, and a fair number of these bands have been carrying one ever since.
Sources and notes
Origins follow the bands' own published accounts, which in several cases have varied slightly over the years. Where an account is disputed, the most consistently repeated version is given.
