I couldn't be arsed thinking of a more eloquent way of wording the title so I'll explain the premise here.
Basically after transitioning more away from 99% of brutal death in the last 9-12 months, coinciding with getting more into grind/crust/punk/hardcore, I've started to notice just how damn boring the vast majority of death metal shirts are.

Now I know a lot of you are probabyl screaming "DEATH METAL'S NOT A FASHION PARADE" at your screen, but hear me out.

Maybe it's the designer in me but is anyone else bored by the plainly bland choice of shirts DM and BM bands go for?
It's always either plain white logo on black shirt/longsleeve/hood or the derivative artwork lifted straight off the front of the CD and with a select choice of lyric/slogan on the back.

You go to somewhere like say www.shirtkiller.com or www.shirtsanddestroy.com and check out the shirts they have there and tell me that DM shirts aren't really boring.


Maybe this entire thread is just spawned from a current thought of mine so if it's completely irrelevant or I'm just being really superifical, I'll fuck off and stick to just answering threads rather than starting them haha

Then again, I don't suppose 90% of people go to death or black metal looking for something that pushes the rhetorical envelope, so the bands have to cater to the highest common denominator.


Feel free to delete this thread as I have a high feeling I'm now talking incredible bollocks.
Good night.

I couldn't agree more with you about DM/deathcore shirts in general, there is not one ounce of bollocks in what you say. Its not as if they've even become a bad stereotype either, at least that would of given them some anti-fashionista appeal. They all have this sort of surprisingly trendy posterized look to them all. Now normally I adore it when pop culture meets anti-culture but this shit has been going on to long.

The saddest part about a lot of these shirts is that they seem to be on the verge of being very eye-catching and unique. Theres a lot of strong imagery to work with on that shirtkiller site. Detailed illustrations of spiders, vorpally decapitated heads sat atop writhing tentacles, horned skulls graphics, etc. Yet shirt companies these days have the uncanny ability to take all of this potential and waste it. Its a sort of gentrified and tasteful rendering of what should be potent and provocative artwork.

I can't entirely blame the producers however. As you rightly said the purchasing public seem to like it. Its a rather saddening realization that people in the extreme music biz have to conform to genre/subculture ideals in order to sell a product to people who have the pretensions of being alternative when in reality they maintain the stylistic status quo. You can honestly find more fashion extremity on Parisian catwalks.

Mind you its worth mentiong that i'm fairly subgenre biased. I've always thought black metal has the better aesthetics and sound Plus my shirt collection ranges from the afforementioned BM, noise/PE, industrial/darkwave/ebm, modern art and illustration/anime/etc. So with that in mind my tastes are rather different than the average death metal joe. I personally like it when people mix things up a bit. Why i'm planning on getting a whole load of shirts printed depicting Alejandro Almanza Pereda sculptures and my modern art patch jacket is in the conceptual stages. I hope it will be ready by next years SuperSonic so I can be the most cutting edge high plains drifter in Digbeth!

(i'm fully aware that i'll look like a total pillock )

Do you mind if I bring this up on another forum I frequent and attribute a few of your own points? I'll point out the bits that aren't my own writings

i've always had some pleasure in turning up to kvlty BM gigs in trousers and a shirt. confuses the little darlings somewhat.

Always been my hate about metal clobber.
Hydrahead use to venture into colours every know and then.

Last gig I went to I was wearing cream pants, a plain black longsleeve shirt, an indigo Hyatari (indigo metal shirts are GRIMMMM) over it, and a lime green buttoned shirt open over that.

Here's some shirts that aren't boring!





There's quite a few shirts I'd like to post images of, but I don't want to get banned from this forum. Rectal Smegma springs to mind.

^ Real mans shirts. I'm genuinely shocked and slightly apalled by that Joseph Fritzl one

I once saw someone playing live wearing what can only be described as yellow feathered trousers.

Needless to say the band was shit anyway.