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VITUS VESTERGAARD
University of Southern Denmark
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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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:
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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.
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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.
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.
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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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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.
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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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REFERENCES
Cefalu, E. (n.d.), ‘The Golden Age Of Custom Album Packaging 1970 to
1984’, Original Album Cover Art, http://www.originalalbumcoverart.com/
struzan/sabbath-bloody-sabbath.php. Accessed 11 November 2015.
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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.
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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