Have you checked out the new Doomed Prophet record yet? Did you know that there's a Skullvoid album coming out later this year? Did you see that Eternity's Flame are going to be playing The Sun Of Doom in full on the road next month?
There's no need to worry, you haven't missed out on any future metal classics. Because none of those bands exist. But they sure sound like they could, don't they?
That's because they are the work of This Band Isn't Real, or @ai_metal_bot, a Twitter account dedicated to producing fake band names, album titles and artwork. Band names and album titles. Functioning since February 2021, the account has amassed over 21 thousand followers, all searching for albums that they will never get to hear.
The band names and album titles have been generated via gpt-2 and the artwork to accompany them has come via big-sleep and stable diffusion. And the results are uncanny.
There's some nautical death metal in the form of Tentacled Death's It Waits In The Deep, existential prog from Dread Fate’s As I Walk Through The Desert of Despair, industrial girt from Artificial Decomposition’s Machine Made Of Dying Stars, pummelling hopelessness from Gravefog and Wearing My Crown of Lead, to Doubt and Fear the Gods of Night, the Stars Above the Earth, the Wind Beyond the World, to Live and Die, One Moment Is All That We Will Ever Live and proper nasty deathcore from Roots Of Misery and Devour The World, just to select a few.
Tentacled Death - It Waits in the Deep pic.twitter.com/TshWbpu9jgFebruary 17, 2023
Dread Fate - As I Walk Through the Desert of Despair pic.twitter.com/YML1vrDVpCJanuary 29, 2023
Artificial Decomposition - Machines Made of Dying Stars pic.twitter.com/iS4TN2mTlMDecember 11, 2022
Gravefog - Wearing My Crown of Lead, to Doubt and Fear the Gods of Night, the Stars Above the Earth, the Wind Beyond the World, to Live and Die, One Moment Is All That We Will Ever Live. pic.twitter.com/Ad720iL7XaNovember 15, 2022
Roots of Misery - Devour the World pic.twitter.com/t2ODmw8sBSNovember 11, 2022
The account is the latest in a long line of crossovers between metal and artificial intelligence.
For example, here's a video for Slipknot's Psychosocial, where every lyric is a dystopian nightmare.
And here is Cannibal Corpse's Hammer Smashed Face interpreted through disgusting visions of Homer Simpson: