?!?!?! – The Best Non-Word Titles And Band Names

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Allen Halas

Earlier this week, FaltyDL released an album titled ///|\||\\\\ , and that got me thinking. There are a a lot of titles and band names out there, generally associated with indie artists, going by names that are either impossible to pronounce or not actual words at all. Not even restricting yourself to the structure of language?! That’s some next level non-conforming. With that said, here’s some of my favorites.

!!!

Pronounced “Chk Chk Chk” This electro-rock group has been around since the mid-90s, keeping that ridiculous moniker. This was the first band that I had ever seen without a pronounceable name, and I originally thought that they were too indie to function. Probably my favorite band name of all time, though.

XXYYXX

With a moniker that looks more like a Playstation code than a band name, 19 year old Marcel Everett is all about the lo-fi, downtempo music. He even has a song in Grand Theft Auto V, and I’m pretty sure that if you hit those buttons while you play his song in the game, your Playstation just freezes up and shuts down forever. Don’t quote me on that.

MIA – “/\/\ /\ Y /\”

While yes, it’s technically pronounced “Maya”, MIA put out this album with these slants to get away from internet search engines and “Wall Street dudes”. Because why should people be able to find your music?!

GL▲SS †EE†H

I had to break out the Character Map just to find this one. What a pain to deal with if you’re trying to write about this techno group.

(həd) p.e

You see kids, in the late 90’s, we had a style of music called rap-core. It wasn’t pretty, but we survived. In the process, though, we created some pretty stupid things. One of them, as you can see, was this band name. In hindsight, it’s just as dumb as the music seems now. And they’re still around! Here’s (həd) p.e’s biggest hit, “Bartender”:

FaltyDL – “///|\||\\\\”

Well I couldn’t just say that this inspired the whole article and not share the album with you, right? Seriously, there aren’t even letters involved here. I think the goal here is to just make everyone never talk about the album at all, because you can’t even say the name!