The fine folks at Invisible Orange just did some fantastic research looking into the most overused words in band names. They did so by compiling data from Metal Archives, the most comprehensive database of metal bands on the internet.
They mostly avoided three letter words (other than important ones like God and war) and only counted words with at least 100 entries. With that said, here are the 20 most overused words in heavy metal band naming:
1. Death – 1,184 entries
2. Black – 1,157 entries
3. Dark – 1,094 entries
4. Blood – 924 entries
5. Dead – 741 entries
6. Hell – 704 entries
7. War – 731 entries
8. Necro – 632 entries
9. Soul – 538 entries
10. Night – 520 entries
11. Fall – 503 entries
12. Hate – 470 entries
13. God – 455 entries
14. Evil – 449 entries
15. Kill – 415 entries
16. Fire – 392 entries
17. Storm – 389 entries
18. Rain – 388 entries
19. Lord – 385 entries
20. Head – 383 entries
Not at all shocking that "death" is the most overused term, but I'm surprised that "metal" didn't make the top 20 (it's at #21). Invisible Oranges actually counted down the top 100 most overused words, so if you want to see the whole list, check it out here.
