Prong: Logo #334

Designed by Prong lead singer and guitarist Tommy Victor in 1987.  They're on tour again, as of this writing - playing impressively small venues, which just seems really bizarre because, well, they're Prong.  Metal seems like it should be performed out in an amphitheater or at an observatory; there's a regal aspect to that particular music that remains underutilized.  Call it "Live (Voltage) at Red Rocks."

I've posted more here in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years.  I don't know whether to celebrate or be ashamed.  I'll just pass the entertainment savings on to you and leave it at that.

Logo #134: Whitesnake

This Holist design, in which the sum is greater than the whole of its parts, was created by Jim Gibson in 1978. Whitesnake dropped the snake logo in favor of a vaguely Romanesque representation of their name that said absolutely nothing. At least with the Gibson logo, they could've branched out into the lucrative custom heavy metal pasta market that doesn't even exist yet. "Here I Go Again" is a rather snazzy track, if only because it reminds me of trying to beat Crazy Climber at the little arcade in an RV park in Pismo Beach in the '80s - come to think of it, this logo is dedicated to the poor guy who got fired in 2002 for playing this song before a game at Comiskey Park in which Indians pitcher Chuck Finley got mad because he was getting a divorce from Tawny Kitaen at the time.

Logo #98: Fear Factory

Designed by Burton C. Bell in 1991.

Logo #75: HIM

The "heartagram" was designed by Ville Hermanni Valo of Finnish melodic heavy rock band HIM in 1996. To be precise, we are told, it was designed on 23 November 1996, the day after Valo's twentieth birthday. While HIM contains within it all the tiresome, traditional trappings of metal both heavy and Very, the fact that they've even tried to suggest that "love" be a part of metal is perhaps the most revolutionary concept since the lady suggested putting lemon in the dishsoap. "Kiss of Dawn" and "Killing Loneliness" are fairly emblematic - so to speak - of this idea, so here they are now. At the very least, HIM inspire so many twinkling panties that males, who are extortionately uncool in the face of it, will gnash their teeth and forge their own brilliant and insular worlds - worlds in which the cold comfort of "love metal" seems progressively less frigid at 20, 25, and 31 years of age.

Logo #74: Dillinger Escape Plan

Graphic designer Jason Kernevich chats briefly before rocketing back to his wild blue yonders about this 2003 design for the band. "That logo was designed by Dustin Summers and myself almost 5 years ago. We run a design and illustration studio called the Heads of State. We did some tour merch for them back then and the logo originated as part of a t-shirt design." Dillinger Escape Plan play what is loosely termed as "mathcore" - which essentially means that they're fond of playing in 17/2 really really quickly. Just think of the heavy metal equivalent of those autistics who can solve Rubik's Cube with their genitals in 5.4 seconds. Kernevich and Summers are blithely modest about the implications of their logo: that, in the right hands, words have teeth and will arm the faithful in times when grace and elegance wither on the vine from an onslaught of the unnecessarily stupid. To wit: right now I gird myself with the lexicon of awareness and contemplation to reach that point at which I forget completely that She Who Shall Forever After Be Referred To As "So-And-So" entered my life in the first place. At its most base and basic, this episode casts aspersions on my character, as if to hold up to God and the Pantheon that I have intensely wretched taste in women if I am to choose someone like that who would fail and implode in such a reprehensible and nonsensical way.

Somewhat unrelatedly, the new Bloodhound Gang single "Screwing You On The Beach At Night" is on my short list of best songs of 2007. "I would show up for our pottery class / dressed like a pirate with John Waters' moustache / on a unicorn that shits your name in stars." This is the peerless caliber of James Franks' writing talent, toward which I bow in reverent reverie.

We find our respective escapes wherever we can.

Logo #37: Stormtroopers of Death (S.O.D.)

Drawn by Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian (although some sources credit drummer Charlie Benante) in 1985, Sargeant D graced the cover of "Speak English or Die," the debut S.O.D. album for Roadrunner. With titles like "Kill Yourself," "Pre-Menstrual Princess Blues," and "Fist Banging Mania," it was all, in the words of Friend from "Zardoz," "just a joke" - although their 24-second magnum opus "F*ck The Middle East" still hits like a smart-bomb, timely as ever. Purportedly, Ian drew the good Sargeant as the epitome of - to strangle a phrase - life after hate. If he were drawn today, two decades later, how intense might that hatred be? Twenty years can be a long time. A new album was announced for 2005 and might just come out before the Mayans kill us all. The Not Man and Sargeant D will celebrate with beers. With Fear!

Blue Öyster Cult: Logo #9

Designed by Bill Gawlik in 1972, this symbol's level of simplicity mirrors Blue Öyster Cult's key innovation: the umlaut. The band's umlaut was suggested by either Blue Öyster Cult keys player Allen Lanier or scribbler Richard Meltzer - ironically, two occupations least associated with maximum weight. And yet for all the controversy that dogs the 35 years of this group, it virtually bleeds tradition: their folkish yet deific subject matter, about Titans as diverse as Kronos and Godzilla, harks back to the days of the wandering troubadour. The hooked cross holds alchemical significance as a logo for lead, one of the heaviest of all possible metals - just as the barber's pole signified the earliest of all possible frontier surgeons, or the giant shoe signified the shortest of all possible cobblers.