Typophile

What's a Heavy Metal Typeface?

sumitpaul

Hi everybody,

I am currently working on a Kinetic Typography project. I have to animate the lyrics of a song. The one I chose was ... Rob Zombie - Two Lane Blacktop, because I recently watched the movie by the same name.

If you've heard the song, you would know that, it is a very "in your face" track. I wanted to ask what kind of a typeface would go with it? ... I don't want to use "decorative fonts", and when I use Helvetica, DIN, Avant Garde, Rockwell etc. they seem to be very neutral, or just inappropriate.

Here's the kind of stuff I've done earlier this year:
http://www.vimeo.com/user2388063

Thanks,
Sumit

Patrick Witmer

What about Black Slabbath? :)

dinazina

What about Metal Lord by Ray Larabie?

Or Wolf's Bane by Iconion Fonts

Hrant H Papazian

Please see the second paragraph here:
http://themicrofoundry.com/s_latin.html

hhp

Nick Cooke

One made from lead?

Patrick Witmer

Maybe something similar to Heavy Metal Fantasy Mag logo.

Hrant H Papazian

BTW, one interesting advantage of uniwidth* fonts like the ones in Daam Entity for animated text is that you can swap (or wait, morph!) the fonts in the system without affecting how they sit within the body of text.

* Where a given character has the same set-width in all the fonts.

hhp

Lozz_berry

Tungsten maybe

Patrick Carter

Incredible options here:

http://www.merchline.com/hydro74/category.3998.c.php

Tomi from Suomi

How about Tension?

http://www.t26.com/fonts/734-Tension

Iy is spikey, but also legible…

Hrant H Papazian

De Groot has a very cool font like that.

hhp

Tomi from Suomi

Jesus loves?

Hrant H Papazian

No, Punten:
http://www.lucasfonts.com/fonts/punten/

hhp

Tomi from Suomi

I would go with JesusLovesYou

Paul Cutler

How about Bastard from Virus:

http://www.virusfonts.com/fonts/bastard#characters

Jesus Loves You All would be good for Black Metal.

Comic Craft also has some fonts that are funny/scary - which is kind of how I view Rob Zombie.

pbc

Tomi from Suomi

I'm glad that HIM does not use Tension. I prefer that Nightwish uses it; they play more true heavy rock.

Paul Cutler

I did an ad mat for HIM. I used Boomshanker by FontFont.

pbc

Christopher Short

I would try looking for a combination of horror and hot rod fonts for Rob Zombie. Go check out House Industries, they have TONS of fonts that fit either category. If you go with the more "traditional" blackletter, Blaktur is a good way to go.

James Montalbano

I think the heaviest metal typeface was 120pt Cooper Black. That California Job Case weighed a ton.

Reed Reibstein

Some choice Gothic fonts for Metal (though perhaps not the standard weathered and ornate options):

Fakir
Moyenage
American Text
FF Brokenscript
Kaas
DF Wexford Oakley
Saber
Darka
Gotica Lumina

Ray Larabie

Graveblade

James Montalbano

The type metal is melting in the studio, I think it's time to go now!

See ya!

Captured from web.archive.org on 1 Mar 2012. view this capture