Belgian death metal band Omicron have announced they won’t be changing their name, despite sharing it with the new strain of COVID-19.
You may not know but coming up with a good band name can be harder than actually writing the songs.
So imagine finally settling on one, releasing music under that name, and then checking the news two years later to find that you now share your name with a variant of a disease that’s killing thousands of people around the globe.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened to Belgian death metal band Omicron, who said things got “pretty crazy” in November when news of the latest variant hit the headlines.
The four-piece admitted that they did consider changing their name but decided against it because, hey, maybe it will get their music in more people’s ears.
The group’s founder, Philippe Delhaute told Sky News, “The attention is cool, but we don’t want people to think we are using the disease to get our band widely spread”.
He clarified, “Our band isn’t built around the variant. I hope we can let people know that it is something different and simply a coincidence.”
Delhaute has a bit of an obsession with aliens and the universe, and stumbled on an article about Omicron constellations five years ago. He loved the concept of these constellations and decided it would also be a great name for the band.
Considering their upcoming album is “a movie in music form” about humans fighting back against aliens taking over Earth, we’d have to agree that the name suits these guys pretty well.
Ironically, the first confirmed case of Omicron in Europe was in the Belgium band’s home country, but hopefully they’re able to shake off any negative connotations and bring us some extraterrestrial inspired stonkers.
