IKEA or Death-Metal | Hacker News Reader

IKEA or Death-Metal

ikeaordeath.com

217 pointsklaustopher82 comments

Easy for me as I know black metal (extreme metal in general) quite well, so I got 18/20 (they did put some obscure bands in there). But that is funny how close some names look/sound.

As someone else pointed out, they should've added more Swedish bands (was Marduk there? I don't think so?) so that it would be harder even for Swedes, I guess. But then again, Sweden is better known for death metal and melodic death metal (that must sound funny for non-metalheads!), and those bands tend to have english names, such as At The Gates, In Flames, Dismember or Entombed. Hard to mistake for Ikea brands!

Oh well, I guess even Swedish names would be pretty easy for Swedes, when you have he choice between "hell" and "kitchen table" :D

I think the Ikea products are named after places.

Depends on the products, many are places, some are given names, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikea#Product_names

Some are, others are more or less punny/witty/semi-relevant nouns/adjectives/adverbs. One example I remember from the quiz is the oven called "Dåtid", which sort of means "past time".

Edit: Of course there's a relevant section on the Wikipedia page, should've guessed. :)

Edit 2: Never knew there was such a system to it!

And funnily enough some floormats or toilets are named after Danish places.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ikea-and-loat...

Back in the 1990s, I used to wander around IKEA with death metal friends, reading out the names of products in the "death metal" voice.

According to staff there we weren't the only ones.

Sorry if this is unrelated, but you've reminded me of a band I used to like (Atom and his Package) and his song "Me and my Black Metal Friends":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPFbfrNkn_s

I'm Swedish, like metal and only got 18 of 20. [Edit: Time to get more into Black Metal :-) ]

(My absolute favorite Swedish [Technical] Death Metal is Meshuggah -- complex, fast.)

20/20 here. Several of my favourite bands in that list (Watain in particular).

20/20 here too. Did not know a single black metal band, but on the basis of being Swedish I aced it with the following logic:

Swedish word? Ikea. Not a Swedish word? Band.

That's basically how my Swedish coworker aced it too, I faired much worse.

I'm a little familiar with IKEA stuff and not at all familiar with the bands, and I got 13/20. I recognized a couple of IKEA names, so those were easy. Otherwise, I pretty much used the heuristic of, "if this is reasonably pronounceable by the average American, it's probably IKEA". That didn't work great, but it seems to have done better than chance.

I had a similar background and strategy and got 14/20. I call it statistically significant :)

I went straight ikea and got the same score (sample size=1)

I hate to be THAT guy but I got 19/20 because Norden, whilst being a table, is also a very kvlt black metal band.[1]

I picked up their full length at Wacken 2006 for €3. It was not good.

[1]: http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Norden/11433

Being from sweden and a metal fan I got an easy 20/20 but since I said Norden => Ikea I'm obviously less kvlt than thou.

Todays lesson, numbers lie.

Yeah. I screwed up. Only 19/20 and I shop at IKEA occasionally, am Swedish and play metal...

I posted my reply prior to reading yours, but that's exactly what I missed, as well.

Every metalhead on HN right now is debating with themselves on whether or not to remark on the the fact that most of those bands were black metal. Metalheads love genre taxonomy (well, music fans do in general). To 'get it wrong' can stir a whole cauldron of reactions!

Interestingly enough,

> IKEA is that friendly shop where you get cheap furniture from the inside of a giant, unending warehouse. Black metal is the kind of music that sounds like someone screaming while trapped inside a burning church. They each possess a fervent fan base. And to tell you the truth, the names of the furniture in IKEA sound a lot like the names of black metal bands.

In the body text down at the bottom of the front page.

Not going to see, seeing IKEA or Death and then reading the description mentioning black metal kinda irked me a little. And in that moment I was that guy.

Fun idea! Too easy for us Swedes though, as the names of almost all of IKEA's furniture are Swedish words.

LMAO, it is true, I only have a very basic knowledge of Swedish but i helped a lot "True Kvlt".

Much too easy as a metal-head as well. My only gripe is that there are a lot of bands in there that aren't death-metal. Every kind of extreme music isn't death-metal people!

Yeah I guess, the only problem was that: IKEAorDeathVikingDoomDroneSludgeCelticPaganGoreGrindThrashMetal.com was already taken so they had to shorten it a little.

Agreed. They should make a sequel.

And the Swedes helped invent death metal via Bathory. It's all your fault!

While I Bathory was a big influence for a lot of bands, Possessed and Death were both producing rehearsal tapes and demo tapes in '84. Hellhammer (of Switzerland) was arguably more important with their Satanic Rites demo, in '83 [1]. Note I'm not disagreeing with you, just discussing degrees of influence. Bathory's influence would be much more important in the first and second wave of black metal.

[1] http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Hellhammer/Satanic_Rite...

I generally cite the triad as thus: Bathory, Hellhammer and Slayer, all of which had releases in the 1983-1984 period. Sodom is also important. Death, less so, since its demo at that point sounded more like speed metal (it was only after the time spent with Repulsion, formerly Genocide, that Chuck hit on the death metal formula). If we're into the 1984-85 period with Possessed, we also need to include Sepultura, Master/Deathstrike, and Morbid Angel.

I wasn't aware of the Repulsion/Death bits. Awesome!

Even easier if you're both swedish and have at least some knowledge in metal bands (coming from a guy that shared rehearsal space with Meshuggah in the late 80's).

A friend of mine grew up in Norrland and sings punk.

Long ago, when I talked to her about the obvious superiority of Death Metal and why Meshuggah is the Answer, she said -- "Oh, drool... some of those cute boys were a few classes below me in school." :-)

For me, the algorithm was as follows:

    Do I own it? -> IKEA
    Else         -> Death

Seriously, is there anyone who doesn't have a GRUNDTAL?

Me.

I have like 5 things from Ikea... and this is done of them. Damn.

Fun fact: Grundtal means "cardinal number" in Swedish.

"It doesn’t matter if you know who Burzum is..."

Yes, because if you would and you are not an ignorant being you wouldn't make free publicity for band run by a neo-nazi. [1, 2]

[1] Varg Vikernes founded the one-man music project Burzum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes

[2] "Police in France are questioning Norwegian neo-Nazi Kristian "Varg" Vikernes over a suspected terror plot": http://www.dw.de/norwegian-extremist-arrest-recalls-breivik-...

That's a crazy overreaction, but for the record, I would have had no idea who Burzum was if you didn't just give them free publicity.

It's a bit overreacted but the creators know for sure who Burzum is, that's what annoys me.

Take out your headphones, or mute them before trying it.

Yeah, I was surprised to hear so much sound coming out of my earbuds sitting on the desk.

You scored 20 out of 20! Congrats you are... True Kvlt.

Either you work at IKEA or you played drums for Bathory, because your knowledge is at the level of dare we say it, the cloven hooved one himself. That’s right, we’re talking about Ingvar Kamprad. We’re almost afraid to ask you to peep out our agency site. But please do, oh dark master.

And I don't even listen to a quarter as much Black Metal as I do Death or Thrash... yikes. I've only been to Ikea once though, so my strategy was to guess Ikea for every name that I didn't specifically recognize as a metal band. "Norden" almost tripped me up.

>> "Norden" almost tripped me up.

It got me. I associated it with "Nordegren" for some strange reason. As in Erin Nordegren, Tiger Wood's now very rich ex-wife.

I landed an 18/20 and I've been a Death Metal fan for a while so I'm not too disappointed.

Funny idea. But my colleagues must have been really surprised by the sound of Burzum coming from my laptop, even though it was during a lunch break. Anyway, nice to see so many metalheads here on HN, stay trve! \m/

Akercocke's entry is wrong. I choose death, and it says:

>WRONG! IKEA Item...Akercocke is an English progressive blackened death metal band, known for their Satanic and sexual lyrics.

I had a really good laugh at some of the furniture descriptions. "Lack is the name of an IKEA side table that isn’t lacking in style!"

Incidentally, the LACK table has legs with an almost perfect 19" spacing, making it perfect for your home data center:

http://lackrack.org/

I really hope I never have to have a LACK table in my home again ;) For what they cost they are a great and functional piece of furniture, but once you have like $100 worth of LACK tables, you should really stop.

And people complain about politics stories making it to the HN frontpage..

Obligatory mention of the 'Snowden' missing from this list. No matter how tight you assemble it, it still leaks.

This was easy:

  >You scored 20 out of 20!
  >Congrats you are...
  >True Kvlt.
  >
  >Either you work at IKEA or you played drums for Bathory,
  >because your knowledge is at the level of dare we say it,
  >the cloven hooved one himself. That’s right, we’re talking
  >about Ingvar Kamprad. We’re almost afraid to ask you to 
  >peep out our agency site. But please do, oh dark master.
  >
  >We bow to you, Your friends at Gatesman+Dave

Nice.

What a hoot. I ended up with 16/20 and I know nothing about Death Metal. Not sure if I'm proud that I know so many pieces of Ikea furniture...

Some of those band pics are downright scary.

Not surprisingly, my Swedish coworker got 20/20. I got 10/20 which given I was basically guessing/coin tossing every time is statistically sound.

Apparently, its so easy because while Ikea names are kind of random, they mean something or are a name for a person/place, etc. Where as unlike most black metal bands here (whose names usually are based on some actual word with a dark meaning), the words for Nordic bands are mostly made up and basically mean nothing.

Cargo Kvlt Programming: When an "IKEA or Death-Metal"-style quiz is included in your product unnecessarily.

> You scored 17 out of 20! Congrats you are... True Kvlt.

I don't know anything about black metal, but I build my kitchen with Ikea and spent some time in their stores!

I would have hoped the black metal sound was from the band itself, but alas it was the same sound every time...

Nice idea! What really bugs me though is that when you try to use the back button in your browser you lose all progress and have to start again... maybe implement a router component or something! apart from this great job

I was surprised not to see "every Swedish metal band's logo for the past 20 years": http://i.imgur.com/8SSyUkz.jpg

This map of death metal bands per capita surely helps explain the similarity: http://i.imgur.com/P5Yfz.png

There's something really wrong in Africa :P

They've already got more than enough death as it is.

There appears to be a negative correlation between the popularity of black metal and one's risk of premature death on a day to day basis.

OK, I'm moving to Finland.

This map is of metal bands in general, not just death metal.

The site that this data is sourced from, www.metal-archives.com, might be of interest to some non-metalheads. It is an excellent example of a impressively complete crowd-sourced archive and a testament to the huge nerd/collector/aspie population in metal.

20/20

I'm from Sweden, born and raised with IKEA furniture.

I can actually name much IKEA furniture when I see it. Half decent party trick.

Also: 'What's up ladies, want to check out my "SULTAN"?'

OMG genius idea. Didn't think it would be so hard. You scored 7 out of 20! And i guessed. And I've been going to IKEA quite a bit.

Not bad, but 'Just Another Ikea Catalog' (look it up on the wayback machine) is still the Ikea-related humor high water mark.

Don't know about death metal references, but I just can never calmly pass by a cornucopia of KAKA products in their grocery shop.

Would have been cooler to play a sample by each band instead of "Burzum - Lost Wisdom" everytime.

http://i.imm.io/1i2eK.jpeg

19/20. Trve kvlt.

Surely there's some overlap.

I was thinking the same after getting the first 6 or so right. I ended up with 14/20 right, and I'm not familiar with metal bands, IKEA, or Scandinavian names.

19/20, didn't get an American band. Glad to see this here \m/ :)

Dear Gatesman+Dave. Don't use Lobster if you're a design agency

lobster?

Console: function loadAudio(e){}

Much better.

As a regular IKEA customer it is easy: True Kvlt.

I scored 13. Sadly, your design sight is down.

Knowing nothing about either, I got 11.

is it because Death metal bands take swedish names?

Oh wait, I can plug a project here!

http://www.deathmetal.org/

The net's oldest and longest-running metal site.

The zine archive is excellent, thanks. I may have a few to contribute after I spend some time digging through my files.

This site is somehow affiliated with ANUS? It doesn't seem to bear their characteristic writing style or ideological bent.

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