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The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same Name


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I'll keep this one somewhat short, but with enough information to spark some discussion. As some of you may know, there are quite a few bands that share the same moniker and spark heated debate on Last.fm (and other places). Take Warrant for example. You have the German Warrant in one corner, and the American Warrant in the other. One is speed metal, the other hard rock. The Germans put out one fairly good album. The Americans' output ranges from mediocre to worse, though they have some decent songs here and there like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Mr. Rainmaker." However, in today's age, the American Warrant easily has more fans, and the German one has unfortunately has fallen into oblivion and ultimate obscurity. This is the case for most of these bands. One is still going, while the other is defunct and, for all intents and purposes, forgotten. Can these bands coexist peacefully or does one group have rights to the name? Rights could be based on popularity or on which one was established first. Your call. Other examples: Slaughter (death/thrash metal from Canada) vs. Slaughter (poppy hard rock from the USA) Poison (death/thrash metal from Germany) vs. Poison (poppy hard rock from the USA) Torch (Swedish heavy metal band) vs. Torch (German rapper) ^ Just a handful of examples. Many, many more exist, but these (incl. Warrant) seem to bring up the most controversy. Feel free to bring up other bands, as well as post music.

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Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same If it's coincidental and if both bands form in around the same time period then people should just accept that these things happen. If a new band came out today calling themselves Slayer then no, that's not cool.

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Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same First band that came to mind was Incubus, its drives me mad when I mention them as 99.9% of people think its that horrible poppy rock band that was all over the mainstream charts, when in fact the band I do be refering to is a Death/Thrash Metal band from Brazil. (also I might add that their first release was out in 1988, while the poppy band was in the mid '90's) Incubus-ST.jpg

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Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same That can be quite annoying. It's acceptable in some cases, when they form around the same time, but it's slightly annoying when they're both on Spotify. I for once bought an album by a Norwegian group called Airbag, then I discovered that Last.fm has information of 7 or 8 acts with that very name. There may even be more.

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Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same @Valfar: Incubus is another good one. Nice contribution. Personally, I'm pretty neutral toward this issue and don't mind bands sharing names. It's especially fun when I tell one of my friends I'm going to play some Poison and then they get smacked in the face with some death/thrash. They expect the American Poison. I must admit, however, that doesn't happen very often as I literally have no friends into metal or hard rock. It's a rough life. :P My whole fraternity thinks I'm a freak for liking metal. But I'm getting off topic. Excuse me. :mrgreen:

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Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same Personally, I wouldn't like anyone else to have a band name that I do already. It seems to bring even more competition to what is an already hard to achieve goal of being noticed by even the smallest fan-base. There is one band name that seems to have this problem really bad. Look up Hate in any respectable metal archive and you will see about seven different bands named Hate. If every band could be a bit more creative, I'm sure this problem wouldn't be such a big deal.

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Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same I think that bands should do the research and stop naming themselves with names previously taken. I hate it when I try to talk about a good band, Incubus for example, and someone thinks I'm speaking of trash, most of the time, American pop rock...

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  • 3 months later...

Re: The Metal Advisor Discussions Part I: Bands of the Same I hear that it is illegal to have exactly the same name and I can't remember what country it is illegal in or where I got that from. Could someone please elaborate on these laws where you are so I get my information correct?

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