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's self-titled debut album]] The heavy metal umlaut, or "'''rock dots'''", is an Umlaut over letters in the name of a Heavy Metal band, such as Mötley Crüe or Motörhead . The use of Umlauten and other Diacritic s with a Blackletter style Typeface is a form of Foreign Branding intended to give a band's logo a Teutonic quality. It is a form of marketing that evokes stereotypes of boldness and strength commonly attributed to peoples such as the Vikings ; author Reebee Garofalo has attributed its use to a desire for a " Gothic Horror " feel.Garofalo, pg. 292 ''Some groups, for example Blue Öyster Cult and Motörhead, added gratuitous umlauts to their names to conjure up a more generic gothic horror, a practice that continued into the 1980s with Mötley Crüe and others.'' The heavy metal umlaut is never referred to by the term '' Diaeresis '' in this usage, nor is it intended to affect the pronunciation of the band's name, with the exception of Green Jellÿ . Heavy metal umlauts have been parodied in film and fiction. In the Mockumentary film '''' (spelled with an umlaut over the ''n''), fictional rocker David St. Hubbins ( Michael McKean ) opines, "It's like a pair of eyes. You're looking at the umlaut, and it's looking at you." In 2002, ''Spin'' magazine referred to the heavy metal umlaut as "the diacritical Mark Of The Beast ." UMLAUTS AND DIAERESES The German word ''Umlaut'' roughly means ''change of pronunciation'' or ''sound shift'', as it is composed of ''um-'', "around", and ''Laut'', "sound". Adding an umlaut indeed changes the pronunciation of a Vowel in standard (i.e. not heavy-metal) usage; the letters ''u'' and ''ü'' represent distinct sounds, as do ''o'' vs. ''ö'' and ''a'' vs. ''ä''. Umlauts, or visually similar Grapheme s, are used in many languages, including Brazilian Portuguese , Estonian , Finnish , German , Hungarian , Icelandic , Spanish , Swedish and Turkish . The sounds represented by the umlauted letters in these languages are typically '' Front Vowel s'' (front Rounded Vowels in the case of ''ü'' and ''ö''). Ironically, these sounds tend to be perceived as "weaker" or "lighter" than the vowels represented by un-umlauted ''u'', ''o'', and ''a'', and thus in the languages which use it normally, the umlaut does not evoke the impression of strength and darkness which its sensational use in English is intended to convey. The English word '' Diaeresis '' refers to a diacritic graphically similar to the umlaut; the name comes from a Greek word meaning "divide or distinguish". This diacritic is used in languages such as Greek , French , Spanish , Dutch , and Brazilian Portuguese with varying purposes. Occasionally English employs a diaeresis to indicate that two Vowel s are to be pronounced separately, as in the name "Chloë" or the word "naïve", or in the obsolete spellings reënact and coöperate. HISTORY The German Progressive Rock band Amon Düül II (aka Amon Duul II) released their first album in 1969. However, their name came from " Amon , an Egyptian sun god, and Düül , a character from Turkish fiction",1 so this use of umlauts was not gratuitous. The third part of Yes 's progressive rock epic "Starship Trooper" is entitled "Würm" (on The Yes Album , released 1971). However, this again is probably not gratuitous, seemingly coming from the Würm Glaciation . The first ''gratuitous'' use appears to have been either by aspect anyway."3 In that same year, Black Sabbath's record label, on a rare picture-sleeve 7" single version of Paranoid (with the b-side Rat Salad ), for no apparent reason, retitled the song "Paranoïd" with a diaeresis above the "i". Paroid/Rat Salad cover (In French, the words ''paranoïa, paranoïaque, paranoïde'' properly have the trema.) On their second album '' and Norwegian letter Ø and Danish/Norwegian/Swedish letter Å are added. While the Å being a separate letter sounding like the word "Oh", the Danish Ø is actually pronounced exactly like the German and Turkish Ö. And also the diacritical mark on the last " " is the "Hungarian umlaut" or Double Acute Accent ( )—two short lines slanting up and to the right rather like a right double-quote mark—instead of dots (Hungarian uses neither the ( ) nor the traditional German umlaut ("Ä") over the letter "A", though, and ( ) is used only on the letters "Ő" and "Ű"). This was before Lemmy , later of Motörhead , had become a member of the group. debuted in January of 1978, though they were based in Punk and not Heavy Metal , and their use of the umlaut was not gratuitous; it affects the pronunciation of the vowels. Mötley Crüe formed in 1980; according to Vince Neil in the band's Behind The Music edition, the inspiration came from a Löwenbräu bottle. They subsequently decided to name their record label " Leathür Records ". At one Mötley Crüe performance in Germany, the entire audience started chanting "Meutley Crew-eh" - a pronunciation often used in Hungary as well. stated, "The umlaut over the 'y' has haunted us for years. We spent eleven years trying to explain how to pronounce it." In contrast to other examples, the spelling of Queensrÿche was chosen to soften the band's image, as it was feared that the original spelling, Queensreich, might be misconstrued as having Neo-nazi connotations. Queensrÿche FAQ parodies the Heavy Metal Umlaut by putting an umlaut on the "n" in Spinal Tap]]1980s Space Rock band Underground Zerø used a variation on the concept, taking the Scandinavian vowel '' ø '' in their name. This may have been inspired by Computer System s of the time, many of which used the Slashed Zero as a glyph for the digit 0 to distinguish it from the letter '' O '' and thus resembled ''ø''. The Dutch band Bløf also uses ''ø'' in its name, even though the letter is not used in Dutch ; ironically, Bløf is pronounced neither ''blof'' nor ''bløf''. The Spoof band Spın̈al Tap raised the stakes in 1984 by using an Umlaut Over The Letter ''n'' , i.e. over a Consonant (it also makes use of a Dotless I ). This construction is in fact found in the Jacaltec language of Guatemala and in some orthographies of Malagasy , a language of Madagascar . THE GRATUITOUS UMLAUT IN POPULAR CULTURE
EXAMPLES OF DIACRITICS IN BAND OR ALBUM NAME Umlaut
Other characters
Non-gratuitous umlauts
SEE ALSO
NOTES SOURCES EXTERNAL LINKS AND REFERENCES
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