MMS 2 (1) pp.

109–124 Intellect Limited 2016

Metal Music Studies

Volume 2 Number 1
© 2016 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/mms.2.1.109_1

VITUS VESTERGAARD
University of Southern Denmark

Blackletter logotypes and

metal music

ABSTRACT
Text and band logos based on blackletter scripts are a common sight in visual
metal music culture such as on album covers. This article develops a framework
for analysing the affinity between blackletter script and metal music. The analytical
framework includes five themes: genre tradition, religion, history, geography and
shape. The first four themes have to do with connotation whereas the fifth theme KEYWORDS
has to do with experiential metaphor. Though these themes the article demonstrates
how meaning is produced when blackletter scripts are used on visual artefacts such band logos
as album covers. These insights provide an answer to the question why blackletter blackletter script
scripts have become part of the visual repertoire of metal music and why so many typography
famous metal band logotypes are based on blackletter. calligraphy
album covers
visual culture

INTRODUCTION
Any fan of metal music has regularly come across the curly or angular medi-
eval-looking letters seen in logos of bands such as Bathory or Motörhead.
This family of scripts is sometimes referred to as e.g. ‘gothic scripts’, ‘fraktur
scripts’ or ‘blackletter scripts’, but as we shall see later, neither name is partic-
ularly precise. Nomenclature aside, the core question is why these scripts have
become part of the visual repertoire of metal music. This article serves to first
of all demonstrate that this is indeed the case: blackletter scripts are firmly

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established within the visual metal music culture. But second of all – and more
importantly – this article presents a framework for understanding the signif-
icance of blackletter scripts when used on visual metal music merchandise
such as album covers or T-shirts.
In the high medieval period blackletter scripts were ubiquitous throughout
Europe, but today they are reserved for a few apparently unrelated niches of the
typographical realm. Apart from metal music artefacts, other places where black-
letter can often be seen are newspaper nameplates, pub entrance signs, hotels
and restaurants, beer and spirit labels, hip hop merchandise and streetwear.
But this poses some obvious questions: what do hotels and hip hop have
in common with metal music? Not much, at least on a superficial level. But as
I shall show there are connotations related to blackletter scripts that actually
go well with these different areas of culture. However, the meaning of black-
letter script on a visual artefact is of course dependent on the context, just like
a colour such as red can mean anything from love to danger dependent on the
context in which it appears. Since the focus of this article is metal music, most
examples will be from metal music, but the reader can probably imagine how
some connotations of the letterforms could also be relevant to other cultural
areas. And therefore it is also possible to make sense of why blackletter scripts
are seen on e.g. hotel signs.
In addressing the question why blackletter scripts have become integrated
into the visual repertoire of metal music one part of the answer has to do with
connotation. Semiotician Theo Van Leeuwen introduced the idea of a semiot-
ics of typography (2006). Such a semiotics could aid in determining possible
meanings of blackletter scripts from both their pure visual qualities and from
their historical or contextual qualities. According to Van Leeuwen, in semiotic
resources organized with a lexis and not a grammar (which on a fundamental
level would be true of typography) ‘meaning comes about in a relatively ad
hoc, unsystematic way, through one of two principles, connotation or experi-
ential metaphor’ (2006: 146).
I claim that blackletter scripts have some connotative meaning potentials
that make them attractive to metal music fans and artists because they can
accentuate important themes, topics and values in metal music. These connota-
tive meanings have to do with the history of blackletter scripts, and therefore, to
understand how the appropriation of blackletter into metal music makes use of
these meanings we have to explore the history of blackletter scripts.
But the question of why blackletter scripts have gained prominence in
metal music is also a historical question in the sense of the history of the
metal music genre. So another part of the answer has to do with genre tradi-
tion. This still has to do with connotation, for if one band uses a blackletter
typeface on an album cover because they want to associate with earlier bands
doing the same, this is indeed a cultural association, i.e. a connotation.
While connotation in typography is simply ‘the idea that signs may be
“imported” from one context (one era, one social group, one culture) into
another, in order to signify the ideas and values associated with that other
context’ (Van Leeuwen 2006: 146) experiential metaphors in typography
are less obvious. Here we are talking about the pure shape and ordering of
glyphs, but how do we ‘experience’ a glyph, e.g. the shape of the ‘B’ in the
Bathory logo?
To answer this question Van Leeuwen draws a parallel to Roman
Jakobson’s phonology where distinctive features are the basic unit of phono-
logical structure. Van Leeuwen suggests that it is likewise possible to identify

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 Blackletter logotypes and metal music

and analyse the distinctive features of typography, and he suggests some

features for this analysis: weight, expansion, slope, curvature, connectivity,
orientation and regularity. In this article I will not develop a thorough experi-
ential analysis of different blackletter scripts. Instead I will primarily focus on
the connotative level of meaning. However, later in the article I will return to
the question about shape and suggest that the pure shape of blackletter scripts
is likely part of the reason why blackletter scripts are relatively common in
metal band logos.

ON BLACKLETTER SCRIPTS
As mentioned earlier the scripts in question are commonly referred to as
‘gothic scripts’, ‘fraktur scripts’ or ‘blackletter scripts’ even though neither
name is particularly precise. But understanding the names is a good first step
in understanding the connotations of the scripts.
The term gothic simply links the scripts to the high middle ages and
so-called gothic art. Even though the term in popular speech has later taken
on a meaning related to horror fiction the term itself originates from the
renaissance humanists who found this medieval style crude and therefore
likened it to the Goths who much like the Huns and the Vandals were consid-
ered barbarians and primitives. It is up for debate whether the word is just,
especially considering the popularity of these letterforms reaching far beyond
the gothic art movement. The more practical problem, however, is that in
typography ‘gothic’ can also refer to sans-serif typefaces. Furthermore, it is
possible to confuse ‘gothic scripts’ with the script used for the gothic language
as seen in the Wulfila Bible. So the term gothic is not precise, although it is
very commonly used.
Sometimes the German word ‘fraktur’ is applied to the entire family of
scripts. This is not precise either. Fraktur simply means fractured or broken,
referring to the shape of the letters. Some of the scripts are indeed broken but
others have more rounded and continuous letterforms. So in most typography
literature only one type of script is called fraktur.
The word ‘blackletter’ refers to the density and weight of the letters. When
the scripts – at least most of them – are written on paper the amount of black
ink tends to be higher than with other scripts. Since the page therefore looks
rather black, the nickname blackletter came about. The name is not precise
either since there are indeed blackletter scripts that are rather thin and light,
but I think that it is less problematic than other names. So in this article I will
broadly refer to all ‘gothic’ or ‘broken’ scripts that came after the Carolingian
minuscule script as blackletter.
The blackletter scripts were of course handwritten scripts in the begin-
ning – roughly speaking, the eleventh century – but with movable type print-
ing in the middle of the fifteenth century they became typefaces. Styles and
names were adopted, one letterform inspired another, and sometimes names
and categories were applied retroactively. This has continued until the present
day, leaving the nomenclature and understanding of different scripts rather
complicated and heterogeneous. As the American calligrapher and palaeogra-
pher Marc Drogin writes:

We are today burdened with the names independent writing masters

used to refer to the scripts they practiced and taught. Added to these
are the names palaeographers have created from Latin roots in order
to indicate the scripts’ heritage. Because early printers used the finest

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 Vitus Vestergaard

handwritten manuscripts of their day as the bases for their type design,
those names given to typefaces have also come down to us as repre-
sentative of the handwritten scripts.
(1980/1989: 60)

In this article I categorize blackletter scripts into four groups similar to the
categories of the German calligrapher, type designer and print historian
Albert Kapr (1993): textura (which Kapr calls ‘gotish’), rotunda (which Kapr
calls ‘rundgotish’), schwabacher and fraktur. The descriptions of the different
scripts and letterforms will be introduced when necessary.

VISUAL ARTEFACTS, LOGOS AND ALBUM COVERS

In this article I focus on metal band logos and other visual material as seen on
the front of album covers. Most of the points in this article are also true in rela-
tion to the content of album booklets and different kinds of band merchandise
ranging from T-shirts to posters. But for the purposes of providing a clear
focus, the material used in this study is centred on blackletter-based logos as
seen on the front cover of albums and to some extent titles, artwork and other
visual resources as seen on the front cover.
My interest in the use of blackletter scripts came from studying extreme
metal band logos for a while, and this is a good place to start. Many band
logos share some interesting visual traits that make them easily recognized as
metal band logos. There are three very typical features of extreme metal band
logos: they are usually monochrome, they usually have bilateral symmetry, and
they are usually ornamental.
Many metal band logos include all three features, e.g. the logo of the
Swedish death metal band Dismember. For instance on the album Hate
Campaign (2000) the Dismember logo is white (monochrome) on a black
background, which is very common. On a bright background logos are
frequently black, although it is sometimes seen that a metal band logo
is rendered in red or other colours. The Dismember logo is also bilaterally
symmetrical which simply means that the logo is mirrored along one (verti-
cal) axis of symmetry. This is sometimes called mirror symmetry or reflec-
tion symmetry. Finally the Dismember logo is also ornamental, meaning that
there are flourishes and decoration on the edges of the letters. In this case the
edges are torn or eroded and there are jagged spikes of different sizes stick-
ing out as small thorns, oversized serifs, etc. These three features are seen
across most subgenres of extreme metal and there are famous examples in
death metal (e.g. Benediction), black metal (e.g. Mayhem), doom metal (e.g.
Morgion), thrash metal (e.g. Voivod), goregrind (e.g. Carcass) and more. Even
though these logos look very different, they are all monochrome, bilaterally
symmetrical and ornamental in their own way. Some features might be less
pronounced than others. For example the Carcass band logo is not as perfectly
symmetrical as the Mayhem band logo.
The same is true for one of the most famous band logos in the world: The
early Metallica logo that can be seen on the album Kill ‘Em All (1983). Here the
logo is monochrome and we also see a clear symmetry. But the ornaments are
much less pronounced than in the other examples. The ornamentation is limited
to the first and last letter where the elongated descenders end in a spiky serif.
There are of course also exceptions to the rule. The logo of the British
death metal band Bolt Thrower is both symmetrical and ornamental, but it is

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 Blackletter logotypes and metal music

not monochrome. Instead it mimics the visual universe of fantasy war games
such as Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. In fact some of the Bolt Thrower
album artwork was provided by the games’ publisher, Games Workshop.
Likewise there are also famous examples of metal band logos that are not
symmetrical (e.g. Opeth) or not ornamental (e.g. Pantera).
A possible fourth feature seen in metal band logos would be that many logos
are based on a blackletter script. But even though this is the case for numer-
ous logos, it is not nearly as common as the other three features. Nevertheless,
metal bands have used blackletter-based logos on seminal albums as diverse as
Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) to Behemoth’s The Satanist (2014)
and beyond. Often the blackletter logos are very clean and neither symmetri-
cal nor particularly ornamental, which leaves most of the expressiveness to the
script itself. This is what makes blackletter script such an important topic in
metal music studies: There seems to be an affinity between the script itself and
metal music. In other words, the script seems to ‘say’ or mean something that
is relevant for metal music, and the meaning is so robust that it is not always
necessary to add anything to the glyphs.

The connotative affinity between blackletter scripts

and metal music
Even though there are tendencies towards more blackletter-based logos
within some subgenres (e.g. doom metal and black metal), there are famous
and influential representatives featuring blackletter-based logos from around
the spectrum of metal music. Examples include prominent names in major
subgenres such as Motörhead (heavy metal), Blind Guardian (power metal),
Candlemass (doom metal), Possessed (death metal), Onslaught (thrash metal)
and Burzum (black metal).
It is worth noting that the presence of blackletter-based logos is not
limited to ‘classic’ bands from the 1980s and the 1990s. The phenomenon also
exists within successful twenty-first-century bands such as Sabaton, Vreid,
Endstille and others.
There may be several reasons for a band choosing a visual identity based
on blackletter scripts. Moving beyond matters of individual taste one explana-
tion would be genre tradition. Obviously bands are inspired by earlier bands
both musically, lyrically and visually, so genre tradition is the first theme I will
explore. But even if genre tradition is part of the explanation it still begs the
question of why the use of blackletter scripts was introduced and sustained
in the first place. Genre tradition has to do with connotations internal to the
genre, but there are also connotations exceeding the genre, and they can
explain why blackletter scripts were relevant to even the earliest heavy metal
bands.
Including genre tradition I suggest and explore five themes that might
shed light on the affinity between blackletter script and metal music. The
first four are related to connotation, and the fifth is in relation to experiential
metaphor:

1. Genre tradition
2. Religion and Christianity
3. History and Time
4. Geography and Place
5. Pure shape

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Genre tradition
Many people consider Black Sabbath the first real metal band, so the inves-
tigation will start there. Black Sabbath featured numerous different logos on
their albums, the best known of which is probably the logo from the founda-
tional album Black Sabbath (1970) which uses a Victorian-inspired typeface
catalogued as Daisy Rimmed in Dan X. Solo’s extensive catalogue of display
typefaces (1992). Other albums such as Master of Reality (1971) also feature
large logos with striking typography. Much less striking is the band name on
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) where the cover is dominated by a ghoulish
scene and a hand lettered album title in reddish colours. The band name itself
can be seen at the very bottom of the cover, on a black background with small
white letters. The script used for the logo is a blackletter script, specifically
a textura quadrata (with feet) much akin to what is today known as an ‘old
English’ script (see e.g. Schalansky 2008: 177). The letters are minuscules and
bring to mind the words of the famous type designer Frederic W. Goudy who
wrote that the ‘glory of the Roman alphabet lies in its capitals, while that of
the Gothic letter lies in its lower case’ (1952/1963: 67). Although fans of the
majuscule Burzum logo might disagree, on the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath cover
it does seem to create a tight, neat logotype. To the modern eye the small
logo might seem a bit misplaced or even inconspicuous, but in the history of
blackletter-based metal band logos it is significant and should earn a special
mention.
From Black Sabbath and onwards we see a steady stream of famous
metal bands using blackletter-based band logos on the covers of successful
albums. Examples include foundational albums such as Judas Priest – Sad
Wings of Destiny (1976), Motörhead – Motörhead (1977), Angel Witch – Angel
Witch (1980), Dio – Holy Diver (1983), Mercyful Fate – Melissa (1983), Bathory
– Bathory (1984), Hellhammer – Apocalyptic Raids (1984) and Possessed –
Seven Churches (1985). From these examples alone it makes good sense that
later bands would appropriate visual elements such as script into their own
album covers. It is worth noting that some of these albums are often viewed
as foundational albums for entire genres. Hellhammer’s Apocalyptic Raids
(1984) was for instance one of the albums pioneering the black metal genre
together with Bathory who is also viewed as the founder of viking metal and
who was very influenced by e.g. Black Sabbath and Motörhead. Possessed’s
Seven Churches (1985) is by many fans viewed as the first actual death metal
album. The band was among other things influenced by Judas Priest and
Motörhead, and so it goes on: In the late 1980s we saw famous albums such
as Candlemass – Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986) and Blind Guardian –
Battalions of Fear (1988) using blackletter logotypes. In the 1990s blackletter
logotypes were used on albums such as Entombed – Left Hand Path (1990),
Burzum – Burzum (1992) and Down – NOLA (1995). In the 2000s exam-
ples include Ensiferum – Ensiferum (2001), Behemoth – Demigod (2004) and
Sabaton – Primo Victoria (2005). And recently highly acclaimed albums such
as Indian – From All Purity (2014) and Tribulation – The Children of the Night
(2015) have also employed blackletter logotypes.
Three points can be seen here: first, blackletter logotypes have existed
within metal music from the very beginning and are still seen on album covers
today. Second, while blackletter logotypes are certainly more common in
some subgenres than others, it is possible to find blackletter logotypes within
all major subgenres. Third, the albums are very well known, so even though

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there are many examples from underground bands, this trend is so strong that
there are plenty of examples in the more established scene.
The above examples do not imply that the majority of metal band logos
are based on blackletter scripts. For every example given it is certainly possible
to find numerous band logos from the same period not based on blackletter
scripts. It is, however, fair to say that this letterform has been such a frequent
sight that it is an integral part of the visual repertoire of metal music in the
same way as the Rastafarian colours are part of the visual repertoire of reggae
music.
New bands are inspired by earlier bands and today there are thou-
sands of possible sources of inspiration within the metal music umbrella.
In the early days of heavy metal this was not the case. In the 1970s heavy
metal was still finding its feet as a genre distinct from rock music and the
lines between heavy metal and rock music were blurred. If we examine the
logos on some of the rock albums that might be considered proto-metal we
actually also find some blackletter logos. Examples of these albums would
include High Tide – Sea Shanties (1969), Jethro Tull – Aqualung (1971), Dust
– Hard Attack (1972) and Rainbow – Rising (1976). This is by no means
an attempt to create a genealogy of blackletter influences or to claim that
certain bands are inspired by each other. The point is simply to emphasize
that there seems to be a genre tradition of blackletter-based logotypes that
goes back to the very beginning of the heavy metal genre. On a connota-
tive level this means that using a blackletter logotype today will invoke an
entire genre tradition of metal logo visuals. Using a blackletter logotype in
the late 1970s and early 1980s might have created an association with bands
such as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest or Motörhead and the meaning might
have been understood only by heavy metal fans. Today the connotation has
moved into the mainstream, and even the popular video game Guitar Hero,
which in the beginning focused on heavy metal and hard rock, features a
quasi-blackletter logotype.

Religion and Christianity

Another connotation that might shed more light on the affinity between black-
letter script and metal music is religion, especially Christianity. It is no secret
that Christianity is a very common theme in metal music, often – but certainly
not always – in the form of explicitly anti-Christian lyrics. We need only look
at song titles such as Scars of the Crucifix (Deicide), Jesu død (Burzum), Fall
from Grace (Morbid Angel), The Four Horsemen (Metallica), Saints in Hell (Judas
Priest), In Conspiracy with Satan (Bathory) and others to get an impression of
the preoccupation with Christianity and biblical themes found in metal music.
While in some cases the themes seem to be added for pure flavour, Charlotte
Naylor Davis, who works in Biblical studies, suggests that we could see works
such as Marduk’s album Rom 5:12 (2007) as a form of Biblical interpretation
and criticism (Davis 2015). On the cover of Rom 5:12 the album title is set in
blackletter and I suggest that there is a clear connection between blackletter
and Christianity. The religious connotations of blackletter scripts are in a large
part due to the Gutenberg Bible. Not only is this the most expensive book
ever sold by auction, it is arguably also the most significant and famous book
ever printed. With printing – especially through monumental works such as
the 42-line Gutenberg Bible and later the Luther Bible – blackletter scripts

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were extended into a whole new era. Marc Drogin writes about blackletter
(specifically textura quadrata):

With the advent of printing in the mid-15th century, the script became a
model for the first typefaces – resulting in the public’s continued famili-
arity with it in printed books well into the Renaissance, while the scribes
themselves had, for the most part, abandoned the script and its monu-
mental calligraphic restrictions in favour of simpler Renaissance scripts.
(1980/1989: 137)

During the transition period where both blackletter and antiqua scripts were
used, they were often used for different purposes or different genres. It was
quite common to set academic treaties in antiqua and religious texts in black-
letter and frequently the two scripts appear in the very same text. One particu-
larly interesting example is the 1545 Luther Bible. As Albert Kapr notes, the
first uppercase letter in positive nouns like ‘Gnade, Trost, Gott, Engel’ are set
in blackletter whereas negative nouns such as ‘Zorn, Strafe, Tod und Teufel’
are set in antiqua (1993: 42). The same principle is applied to the first letter
in sentences with either an uplifting or a warning message. In an epilogue to
this Bible edition, Luther’s proof-reader Georg Rörer writes that this is done to
help the inexperienced reader. It seems obvious that this use of antiqua type-
faces could serve to establish some negative connotations if not, as Kapr (1993)
suggests, the readers already shared an aversion to the Latin antiqua scripts. In
any case blackletter was firmly established as the main Biblical typeface.
As another point of reference for the Biblical significance of blacklet-
ter scripts, the Danish librarian and print historian Richard J. Paulli provides
some interesting figures on the transition from blackletter to antiqua scripts in
Danish books. In 1843, 95% of the Danish books were printed in blackletter
while the remaining 5% were set in antiqua typefaces. In 1902 the situation
was the opposite: now only 5% of the books were set in blackletter while the
remaining 95% featured antiqua typefaces (Paulli 1940). Despite this transi-
tion, the Danish Bible continued to be set in blackletter typefaces until the
year 1912 (Paulli 1940: 13). Even after the introduction of Bibles set in antiqua,
blackletter Bibles were still being produced. Since Bibles are usually sturdy
and treasured books that are passed down from one generation to another,
it is quite common even today to own a Bible set in a blackletter typeface,
adding to the Christian connotations of Blackletter scripts.
With this in mind it makes sense that when we examine metal albums
themed around Christian themes (whether anti-Christian or not) we find
that they quite frequently employ blackletter scripts on the cover. We even
see this on perhaps the very first metal album with a blackletter logotype,
Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973). The ghoulish death scene by
artist Drew Struzan on the album cover is decidedly demonic in its appear-
ance. Although not medieval in its visual style we do see many traits of
medieval Christian depictions of witches and devils: horns, tails, claws,
webbed fingers, a snake, a rat, a lizard, skulls and so on. In the middle of the
nightmarish scene we read the number ‘666’ known from Revelation 13:18.
In this context the small blackletter logotype at the bottom underscores the
religious dimension of the cover. On the back cover we see another death-
bed, but here the scene is serene, featuring majestic lions and caring mourn-
ers. The text here is also set in blackletter. The inspiration for both images
is in fact Christian, and the album art director Ernie Cefalu explains that

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the concept was based on two illustrations ‘that were given to me on my

confirmation day in 1955, and which I still have to this day. They are from
the 1700s and depict an evil man and a good man both at the split second of
their death’ (Cefalu n.d.).
A more extreme example of the combination of blackletter script and
Christian imagery is found with the Swedish doom metal band Candlemass.
Not only is the band named after a Christian day of celebration, but a large
portion of their albums have religiously themed titles and songs, e.g. Psalms
for the Dead (2012). The cover art also reflects this and ranges from Gustave
Doré’s ‘The Creation of Light’ on Tales of Creation (1989) to a simple depiction
of the band’s blackletter logo and a cross in black on a white background on
the album Candlemass (2005). For a band so engaged with themes like witch-
craft, devils, angels, life, death, heaven and hell, the logo, which has endured
for 30 years, fits very well. The typeface is based on a textura quadrata script
and is essentially similar to the ‘old English’ typeface seen on Black Sabbath’s
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973).
Deicide is well known for their aggressively anti-Christian lyrics, and
most of their album covers eliminate any doubt that the theme is indeed
Christianity. The album cover of Scars of the Crucifix (2004) depicts a Jesus
figure with a crown of thorns, and on the cover of Once upon the Cross (1995)
we see a crucified bleeding figure covered by a white sheet. There are a
couple of Deicide album covers featuring a blackletter typeface. One is In
Torment in Hell (2001) that uses a red textura for the title, adding a hellish
foreground to the demonic grey background architecture of skulls, devils, the
number 666, inverted crosses and pentagrams. More interesting, however, is
the album cover of To Hell with God (2011). Here we see what looks like a
necromancer commanding an army of skeletons, and while it is possible to
interpret the image as representing hell, it might as well illustrate some-
thing out of a sword and sorcery novel. It is unclear whether the character
depicted is actually supposed to be God being attacked by the skeletons or a
necromancer being worshipped. The album title is set in a blackletter type-
face – a modern, rather narrow and unimpressive rotunda. The choice of
typeface appears to be an attempt at grounding the words ‘Hell’ and ‘God’,
but the clumsy typeface looks very unlike a Biblical blackletter script. Still,
it might be just enough to invoke an association with religious texts, thus
grounding the title despite the lack of clear thematic markers as we see on
the other Deicide albums.
A final example of the underscoring of a Christian theme through the
use of blackletter type is the British death metal band Sarpanitum. The cover
art on their first full-length album Despoilment of Origin (2007) features a
humanoid figure, wings, skulls and bones and as such could be seen as a
reference to themes similar to the ones mentioned in relation to Candlemass.
But there is one difference: there is no blackletter text. Reading the lyrics one
discovers that the album is thematically based on Mesopotamian, Babylonian
and Sumerian mythology, so it makes good sense to avoid a script with
Christian connotations. In contrast, on Sarpanitum’s next full-length album
Blessed Be My Brothers... (2015), the album title is set in a blackletter type-
face – a modernized textura – and here the lyrical themes revolve around
the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades. The cover art depicts a medieval
illustration of a crusader knight and a group of bishops. Here once again the
blackletter typeface helps to underscore the Christian theme.

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History and time

Another connotative dimension of blackletter script is history and time:
Blackletter scripts seem ‘old’ and ‘authentic’.
This dimension is often difficult to separate completely from the previ-
ous theme of religion and Christianity. When a blackletter title is added to
the Sarpanitum album cover image of the bishops and the crusader, does
that stress the medieval aspect of the album narrative or the Christian aspect
(as opposed to an Arabic-inspired typeface that would enhance the Islamic
aspect)? A reasonable answer would be ‘both’.
Although blackletter scripts are often used to illustrate something medie-
val, frequently the historical reference is much more abstract. Pubs, hotels and
cafés frequently use blackletter in their logos, and the same is true for alco-
holic beverages. Here most often the goal is not to suggest that the companies
are medieval (although some have medieval roots) but rather to show that
they provide a product that is authentic and belongs to the ‘good old days’.
The Mexican beer Corona was introduced in 1925 and uses a blackletter logo
with an almost eerie resemblance to the Candlemass logo. But because of the
different contexts the letterform invokes different themes: Corona plays on
royalty and the ‘good old days’ whereas Candlemass play on religious themes,
heaven, hell, life and death. Here again context influences connotation.
Sometimes the use of blackletter is rather subtle. Most people would
probably not think of blackletter when they see the logo of Disneyland in
California. But it is indeed a blackletter script, even though the rotunda letter-
form is modern and clean and the logo has a soft blue colour. Disneyland
opened in 1955, well after the abandonment of blackletter script, but the use
of blackletter goes nicely with a narrative about the traditional, the ‘good old
days’ and timeless fairy tales. In another context the typeface could easily be
modified to represent a narrative about ‘dark ages’ and mythical history.
In much metal music there is a strong sense of medievalism as well as
clear influences from medieval-inspired fantasy literature such as the works
of J. R. R. Tolkien. The names of famous bands such as Burzum, Gorgoroth
and Amon Amarth, are taken from the universe of Tolkien, and many song
lyrics of bands such as Blind Guardian and Summoning are also based in
that universe. Whether we are dealing with the Tolkien-inspired universe of
Summoning, the Robert E. Howard-inspired universe of Bal-Sagoth or the
idiosyncratic fantasy universes of Ophthalamia and Immortal, we are brought
into a mythical past and into realms of fantasy that are not just otherworldly
but also profoundly ‘old’. That is not to say that there are no futuristic metal
bands, but in metal – especially in genres such as black metal, power metal
and doom metal – the point of reference is often the past and not the future.
The ‘past’ and the sense of ‘old’ may be historical or abstract but in both cases
it makes sense to use a script that also evokes a sense of ‘old’. Bal-Sagoth’s
album A Black Moon Broods over Lemuria (1995) projects the listener into a
mythical world of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft and not into a historic
period, but the world is decidedly old and the blackletter typeface used for the
album title helps to create this experience.
To take this point a bit further, it seems that something happened in the
late modern period that has significance in a metal music context. In the late
nineteenth and the early twentieth century we saw two effects of modernism
that are relevant to consider in the context of time and blackletter type. One
effect was the gradual but relatively fast movement of blackletter type from the

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mainstream to the niche. As referenced earlier, in Denmark the percentage of

books printed in blackletter went from 95 per cent to 5 per cent in the period
from 1843 to 1902, and other Northern European countries saw a similar shift,
albeit sometimes faster or slower. Another effect was the blossoming of gothic,
horror and fantasy literature that invoked images of medieval architecture, dark
dungeons and timeless fairy-tale horror. The late nineteenth century gave birth
to famous gothic horror novels such as Gaston Leroux’s series The Phantom of the
Opera (1909–1910) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) while the early twentieth
century presented the reader with the weird, fantastic and mythical universes of
Robert W. Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard.
In different ways they are all preoccupied with a mythical past and ancient evils
and often the stories take place in mediaevalesque castles, prehistoric ruins or
primordial dungeons. When these themes are invoked in metal music it can
be seen as the same artistic counter-reaction to the modern world. Religious
studies scholar Marcus Moberg has described the introduction of dark alterna-
tive spiritual themes and ideas in metal music as a process of re-enchantment
(2009). He adopts the concept from Christopher Partridge, who is inspired by
Max Weber’s concept of disenchantment (which was ultimately borrowed from
Friedrich Schiller). The point is that in a disenchanted modern world where
everything is focused on rationalization of the present situation we actually see
many attempts to oppose this and to re-enchant the world. Moberg explains
that these ‘alternative spiritualities typically emphasise “the resurgence of
ancient traditions” and continuity with an often “mythical past”’ (2009: 113).
My claim is that very often blackletter scripts are used precisely to emphasize
mythical pasts whether these take the shape of dark medieval periods or more
abstract notions of the ‘old’, ‘ancient’ or ‘past’. The shift of blackletter from the
mainstream into the niche makes the ‘old’ connotation possible. Even though
Roman letterforms are in fact much older than blackletter they appear modern
primarily because they are mainstream.

Geography and place

Blackletter scripts do not only invoke a sense of a certain time (the ‘old’) they
are also connected to place. Geographically speaking, blackletter is genuinely
European, and just as the religious connotations of blackletter cannot always
be separated completely from the historical connotations, neither can the
geographical connotations.
When the German reformers used the so-called ‘Wittenberger Schrift’
– a schwabacher variant – and later fraktur, this was in large part because
these scripts were considered fundamentally German. There is quite a strong
connection between blackletter scripts and Northern Europe, but during
certain periods blackletter scripts of the softer and more curved rotunda type
were popular in Southern Europe. However as mentioned the antiqua scripts
came from Southern Europe and were advocated by the renaissance human-
ists who generally found the blackletter scripts gothic, i.e. barbaric. So, during
many times in history there have been conflicts between proponents of the
‘Roman’, ‘Latin’ or ‘Southern’ antiqua scripts and on the other side propo-
nents of the ‘Germanic’, ‘Protestant’ or ‘Northern’ blackletter scripts. One of
the results is seen in the 1545 Luther Bible where antiqua letters were used
only in negative words and sentences.
A common misunderstanding is that blackletter scripts are purely German
or even that they are in some way connected to the national socialist era of

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German history. Many blackletter typefaces have been developed by German

printers, but as Albert Kapr concludes ‘nur die Schwabacher und Fraktur
können als deutsche Schriften bezeichnet warden’ (1993: 72). In relation to
the national socialist era, it was actually the national socialists who in 1941
abandoned the use of blackletter, claiming that it was a Jewish script (Kapr
1993). This claim is utterly false and the real reason for the abrupt transition
to antiqua scripts seems to be based on taste (antiqua fitted the Roman ideals
of the Third Reich better) and practicalities: all other countries had aban-
doned blackletter scripts so it would be much easier to print and distribute
national socialist literature if the scripts were harmonized. Still, many people
associate blackletter with national socialism, and albums and bands thematiz-
ing World War II Germany, such as Endstille, often use blackletter typefaces.
Here, again, the lines between the historical and geographical significance of
letterforms are blurred.
There are, however, two important points related to the geographical
significance of blackletter and the use of blackletter scripts in visual metal
music culture: The first point is that blackletter has a special – although not
exclusive – relationship to Northern Europe. The second is that metal music
has a special – although not exclusive – relationship to Northern Europe.
The first point has already been discussed a bit. But it is worth noting
that not only were blackletter scripts used into the early twentieth century
in German-speaking Scandinavian and Baltic countries, they were also
considered to be part of a national culture. Blackletter – specifically fraktur
– is sometimes referred to as ‘deutsche Schrift’. But as the Norwegian litera-
ture researcher Tore Rem points out, it was a matter of nationalism, so for
Denmark there was ‘dansk skrift’, for Sweden there was ‘svensk skrift’ and for
Norway there was ‘norsk skrift’ (2009). The opposite of the national script was
the ‘Latin’ script, i.e. antiqua. And quite contrary to the modern eye, many
people actually found the antiqua scripts foreign, elitist and difficult to read.
Some people outright rejected the antiqua scripts based on their national
sentiments. Kapr (1993: 68) mentions a letter from Otto von Bismarck in reply
to a medical treatise that was sent to him. In his reply Bismarck writes that
unfortunately he does not know the content of the treatise because he, in
principle, rejects reading printed material in the German language that is set
in Latin letters.
So even though Northern Europe is not exclusive in the use of blackletter
scripts, the relationship between the region and the scripts is special.
The second point has to do with the relationship between Northern Europe
and metal music. With the massive impact of early British bands such as Black
Sabbath, Judas Priest and Motörhead on the foundation and development of
metal music it is tempting to say that the roots of metal music are not only
Northern European but specifically British. However the influence of espe-
cially Scandinavian, German and also American bands on the genre makes
the equation a bit more complicated. Today there are of course metal bands
from all over the world but when we turn to the visual side of metal it seems
that a lot of bands look towards Northern Europe. In the late 1960s and the
early 1970s when the lines between hard rock and heavy metal were blurry,
the ‘heavy metal umlaut’, as it is now called, appeared. It is an example of
foreign branding, i.e. adding value to a product by associating it with a foreign
country. This is quite common, and for example the American ice cream
brands Häagen-Dazs and Frusen Glädjé both try to invoke a Scandinavian
mood with their somewhat Scandinavian-looking names. The umlaut in some

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 Blackletter logotypes and metal music

band names serves the same purpose. The umlaut is a German diacritical mark
that was imported into other languages such as Swedish and Finnish, and the
American rock band Blue Öyster Cult is the first example of a band using the
umlaut to make a foreign association. The German linguist Jürgen Spitzmüller
recalls an anecdote ascribed to ‘rock critic Richard Meltzer, who allegedly
claims to have suggested the umlauts to Blue Öyster Cult’s manager, retro-
spectively arguing that “Metal had a Wagnerian aspect anyway”’ (2012: 270).
He continues to write that the umlaut turned from a symbol of ‘Germanness’
and ‘foreignness’ into an icon of the metal scene itself – a genre cue – and
suggests: ‘Blackletter typefaces were most likely subject to a similar process’
(Spitzmüller 2012: 272). In the case of umlauts a range of rock and metal
bands adopted the Germanic looking umlauts, most famously Mötley Crüe,
Motörhead and Queensrÿche (the latter being pronounced like the German
word ‘Reich’). It is impossible to know how much humour was involved at
the birth of the heavy metal umlaut but quickly it became a trademark of
..
humour and satire on heavy metal ranging from the parody band Spınal Tap
to the video game character Lars Ümlaüt in Guitar Hero. Today it would be
almost impossible to employ the umlaut without invoking humour or at least
a tongue-in-cheek attitude.
The same is not the case with blackletter script, and contemporary bands
that are very serious about their national association (e.g. Taake) frequently
use blackletter logos or titles on album covers. One example is the Italian
black metal band Naudiz who, despite their own nationality, are clearly asso-
ciating with Northern Europe to the point of singing in Icelandic and titling
their debut cassette Aftur till Ginnungagaps (2014). On the cassette there is no
visual indication of the band’s Italian background and both the band name
and the album title are set in a classic textura script.
In summary, the metal genre has a special connection with Northern
Europe and therefore it makes sense to use scripts that have Northern
European connotations. Not all metal bands associate with Northern Europe,
but those who do frequently use blackletter scripts as a means to strengthen
the association with this area.

The pure shape of blackletter scripts

The final theme in the exploration of the affinity between blackletter scripts
and metal music has to do with the shape of the letterforms themselves. As
mentioned in the beginning of the article a common trait of metal band logos
is ornamentation, often to the point where readability can suffer greatly. But in
many blackletter-based logos there is no additional ornamentation of the letters,
and I want to suggest that this has to do with letterforms themselves. Here we
are returning to the idea that typographical meaning is not only produced by
connotation but also by experiential metaphor (Van Leeuwen 2006).
To the modern eye most blackletter scripts seem rather ornamental and
difficult to read. The difficulty lies in several aspects of the scripts in addition
to inexperience with reading the scripts today. For instance, uppercase letters
such as A and H in some scripts look almost like a Roman U and S. The
lowercase letters are usually much easier to read individually, but in words
the letters are very uniform and difficult to separate because they appear
woven together. This is why textura is called textura, and as Marc Drogin
explains ‘the terms textus, texture and textura, meaning weaving or woven
in Latin, are frequently used as a description’ (1980/1989: 59). He continues

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 Vitus Vestergaard

to explain the result: ‘Done with any degree of competence, a word penned
in textura forms so graceful a unit that, if the manuscript page is turned
upside down or even sideways, the word will still remain a balanced artistic
design’ (Drogin 1980/1989: 59). So not only do blackletter scripts in them-
selves provide a sense of the ornamental illegibility so common in metal
band logos, they are also able to provide a sense of symmetry and regu-
larity. This is in many ways dependent on the particular usage of upper-
case or lowercase letters and on the individual letters involved in a word.
The lowercase band logo on Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)
is easy to read because the vertical strokes of letters like ‘l’ ‘t’, ‘b’ and ‘h’
are mixed with less vertical letters such as ‘a’, but it still provides a sense
of symmetry because of the relative uniformity of the lowercase letters. On
the other hand Bathory’s logo, while still providing some sense of symme-
try, is more difficult to read because of the ornamentation of the uppercase
letters. In other words, in blackletter logos lowercase letters can create illeg-
ibility and symmetry through woven uniformity while uppercase letters can
create illegibility through their ornamental shapes, while symmetry may be
compromised because of the heterogeneity of some letters.
It should be mentioned that blackletter logos range from the very simple
logos like Candlemass or Bathory, where the logo is typed letter by letter, to
the very complex hand drawn logos like the Wolves in the Throne Room logo
on the album Black Cascade (2009). The latter logo is also based on a blacklet-
ter script, but much has been done to add more symmetry and ornamenta-
tion. Nevertheless I suggest that even the simple typed blackletter logos have
some of the same visual qualities as intricate hand drawn logos.
It is possible to analyse distinctive features using e.g. the categories of Van
Leeuwen (2006), but we have to take each individual logo and analyse the
particular script used. However there are enough similarities between different
blackletter scripts to enable us to give a somewhat general description of the
pure shape and in extension the experiential metaphors involved in blackletter:
Typically blackletter scripts are thick (weight), narrow (expansion), upright
(slope), angular (curvature), disconnected (connectivity), vertical (orientation)
and regular (regularity). These features are more pronounced in some black-
letter scripts than others. For instance textura scripts are much more angular
than rotunda scripts. Furthermore, sometimes when the scripts are used in a
hand lettered logo some of the typical features of blackletter are disregarded
to create a unique design or to obtain more extreme expressions of other
features. For example the Sabaton logotype is neither particularly narrow nor
oriented vertically, but on the other hand it is very thick leading to what Van
Leeuwen (2006) describes as a ‘daring’ or ‘assertive’ meaning. In other logos
such as the Emperor logo, a distinctive, elegant and mysterious experience is
obtained by letterforms so thin that the word blackletter seems almost like a
misnomer. Additionally, elongated arms of the first and the last letter as well
as ornamental descenders of the middle ‘P’ and ‘R’ create connectedness – a
trait that in metal band logos is often added to the otherwise disconnected
blackletter scripts.
Although some blackletter logotypes have moved far beyond basic black-
letter scripts to create unique experiential meanings, even the most basic
typed blackletter-based logotypes will do as metal band logos. The reason
for this is not just the connotations of blackletter scripts but also the distinc-
tive features of the scripts themselves, which make these scripts excellent for
powerful, symmetrical, uniform yet ornamental logos that to a certain degree
are experienced as a shape rather than read as a text.

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CONCLUSION AND FURTHER STUDY

I have discussed a framework and suggested five possible themes that shed
light on the affinity between blackletter script and metal music: genre tradi-
tion, religion, history, geography and shape. The first four have to do with the
connotations of blackletter scripts whereas the fifth has to do with experiential
metaphor. In some cases the themes overlap but they are useful in understand-
ing some of the intersections between the realm of blackletter script and the
realm of metal music. Maybe it is possible to identify more themes, and at least
one reason for choosing a blackletter script could be added: taste. It is quite
possible that some bands or cover designers simply pick a blackletter typeface
because they like how it looks. In this article I have tried to avoid discussion of
personal taste, but it might be argued that taste to a large degree is formed by
the very topics I have discussed regarding connotations and experience.
There is of course further study to be done. In relation to the discussion
of shape and experiential metaphor some metal band logos, for example, look
pointy and sharp while others look smooth and heavy. It would be interesting
to know more about the relationship between visual experiences of ‘sharpness’
or ‘heaviness’ and auditive experiences of the same concepts. It might be the
case that band or genres with a ‘sharp’ sound also tend to have ‘sharp’ logos
while bands or genres with a ‘heavy’ and ‘monolithic’ sound also tend to have
‘heavy’ and ‘monolithic’ logos. In 1929 the German American psychologist
Wolfgang Köhler discovered a perceived relationship between speech sounds
and the visual shape of objects. It would be interesting to explore something
similar with band logos and musical sound.
Further study could also include a quantitative analysis of the relationship
between genre and the use of blackletter scripts. In connection with building
a recent exhibition on visual metal music culture I went through around 2000
metal band logos, but the selection was not systematic, and in the Encyclopaedia
Metallum alone there are already more than 100,000 bands and more than twice
as many albums. It certainly seems that it is much more likely to find blacklet-
ter script on e.g. a black metal or doom metal album cover than on a goregrind
album, but there is no statistical evidence to back this up. However if this was
found to be the case it would support some of the theses in this article. Black
metal frequently focus on (anti-)Christian themes and Geographical themes
related to Northern Europe, and doom metal frequently employs Christian
themes and imagery such as Christian crosses, churches and graveyards. Both
genres also have early examples of influential bands in their respective genre
traditions using blackletter script, such as Black Sabbath and later Candlemass,
Witchfinder General and Saint Vitus in the case of doom metal and Mercyful
Fate, Bathory and Hellhammer in the case of black metal.
In this article, however, the aim has not been to establish a relation-
ship between genre and script but rather to demonstrate the prevalence of
blackletter scripts in visual metal music culture and to establish a framework
that explains the intersections between the realm of blackletter script and
the realm of metal music, generally speaking. Hopefully the framework has
answered the overall question of why these scripts have become part of the
visual repertoire of metal music.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Vestergaard, V. (2016), ‘Blackletter logotypes and metal music’, Metal Music
Studies, 2: 1, pp. 109–124, doi: 10.1386/mms.2.1.109_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Vitus Vestergaard holds a Ph.D. in media and museum studies and is assis-
tant professor of media studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Having
worked with audio-visual media and museums for a number of years, in 2014
he took the initiative to develop an exhibition on the visual side of metal music
in collaboration with the Media Museum of Denmark. The exhibition was titled
‘Marks of Metal’ and featured artists such as Christophe Szpajdel and Necrolord.
Later part of the exhibition was displayed at the Copenhell music festival.

Contact: Media Studies, Department for the Study of Culture, University of

Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M, Denmark.
E-mail: vitus@sdu.dk

Vitus Vestergaard has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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