It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

I was sitting in my office about to begin the night's drinking when Roky Moon and BOLT's Aaron Echegaray came in without knocking. He looked fair the devil, all wild-eyed and needing a shave. He took a seat at my desk and whispered just five words to me.

Knights of the Fire Kingdom.

Then he dropped an address written on the back of a lottery ticket into my empty glass and headed back out into the night to do whatever evil things musicians like him do. I knew that a band of such powerful nameology required explanation and hardcore sleuthing.

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

Posters extolling the virtues of Austin's Electric Touch were freakin' everywhere at SXSW, so when the band decided to bring their dog-and-pony show to Houston we were keen to investigate their alleged awesomeness for ourselves.

Their EP Don't Stop is not bad, not bad at all. Drawing water from the same well as the Killers and Kings of Leon, the music is high-energy and full of plaintive wails for love. You can hear a unique mixture of American and British musical approaches in tracks like "Dominos," a rather hopeless little ditty that nonetheless seems to find some kind of comfort in a failing world.

All in all, Electric Touch reminds us of music you would've heard played at the Bronze in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so we're more than OK with it, but that name...

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

Recently your humble nameologist has been on a fervent quest to chronicle the history of goth music in our fair city of Houston. One of our rediscovered loves is the act known as Morgue City.

Currently the band is made up of two of Houston's most pedigreed goth performers. Spike the Percussionist has been in projects like Astrogenic Hallucinauting, Childman, Doggebi, Delicate Terror and as the music director for the world renowned flesh suspension group CoRE (Constructs of Ritual Evolution). His partner Raul Bertot hails from M-87 and Bozo Porno Circus.

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

HPMA-winning group the Handshake's music sounds like it's being pulled out of an old radio one note at a time by an angst-ridden teenager with a pair of pliers. The sound is somewhat thin and stretched, with high-pitched vocals and guitar melodies that dance above you on the ceiling just out of reach. Songs like "Soldier" speak poignantly, even with elegance, but at the core the music remains something unsettled and waiting.

That being said, the band's American Arguments EP does speak wonders for the band's potential. Indie-rock, Radiohead sensibilities collide with a distinctive Texas semi-country sound in a way that cleaves both sides together on "The River." David Elkin's guitar brings a solid blues presence on "South," including a simple but tremendously powerful solo outing near the end, but drummer and singer Lucas Eason doesn't really have the tortured voice of good blues. He's much more at home in the Canned Acoustica version of "Soldier," where he pulls in his performance down a half-step and shows his obvious connection for roots a bit more clearly.

We'd like to see the Handshake in the grip of Magnolia Red, guiding them into the full exploration of what they can do. Until then, we'll impatiently watch them level grind into something grand. That name, though...

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

It's been a while since your nomenclature specialist had a good name to tackle a juicy band name. We've been up in the Himalayans learning ancient Buddhist secrets of... sorry, we meant to say Batman: Arkham City came out. Suddenly music journalism seemed meaningless next to screaming, "I am the night!" at the TV while punching Joker.

So who is this group that roused us from hibernation?

Experimental ska band Small Dog Syndrome, that's who. We didn't really know how much you could experiment with ska beyond making it all about Jesus and loading your name up with religious puns. Small Dog Syndrome, though, does some rather interesting things with the genre.

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

Beth Burton

We try real hard to avoid metal bands here in the old What's in a Name? column. We still haven't forgiven Owl Witch for the absolutely horrific research into Native American black magic they made us do, and that makes us damn leery of the delving into the mindset of metalogists ever again. But here we have an Arlington thrash group called Warbeast, and we like that word. It gets more fun every time you say it. Warbeast. Warbeast. Warbeast.

We've been slowly returning to a love of metal thanks in large part to a growing love of the excellent work being done by Cradle of Filth, who tricked us into being their fan again by putting topless chicks in their videos. As far as our untrained plate goes, we can get behind Warbeast. They do the Cookie Monster vocals, but unlike so many of their erring brethren they've decided that intelligibility is a plus and so we actually find ourselves singing along with track like "Born With a Blackened Heart."

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Just as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary constantly adds new words, so does Rocks Off enrich the English language through our explorations in the meaning behind band names. Below are the entries that made it into our lexicon in 2011.

Art of Dying (n) 1. The reverse of suicide 2. Upbeat, hard rock 3. Neither a human piñata or a human centipede.

Black Leather Jesus (n): 1. An act of particularly brutal sadomasochism. 2. An experimental noise band from Houston. 3. Pain.

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

Photo by Travis Shinn

Fun fact, Rocks Off is always sort of thinking about killing ourselves. Part of it is the music we listen to, part of it is because we think our afterlife is way cooler than anything the rest of the world has come up with, and the remaining balance is a desire to not have to pay back a student loan. Don't worry, as long as there's a place for snarky prose we're sticking around, but yeah, it's there in the background.

So when a band called Art of Dying comes to town we're going to perk up our ears. After all, maybe they have some ideas on methodology. We were thinking about stuffing our clothes full of candy then jumping off a building to become a human piñata, but we're open to other suggestions.

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're working hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

That says, "Seal the Abyss" in case you can't read ancient runic metal.

Rocks Off was looking at the weekly concert listings when we noticed a weird coincidence. On Friday White Swan will host Seal the Abyss, and on Saturday you can catch HPMA nominee for Best Rock the Abyss at the 19th Hole. That's a whole lot of abyssing, far too much in our opinion, and as usual with people suffering from severe mental disease we have begun obsessing over what this portends.

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It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.

Originally this week's What's in a Name column was to be a breakdown of the Radio Dept.'s name. Oh it would've been glorious, but they went and cancelled their tour and we had to scramble to find someone new to misrepresent. That's how we met the Static Jacks.

At this point we can't really tell you if we like the band or not. They reminded us of the aggressive indie rock stylings of Houston's own 71s when we first sat down to listen, but there are shades of the more rock and roll moments of Duran Duran in the voice of Ian Devaney. The songs, especially tunes like, "My Parents Lied" sometimes dance dangerously close to the edge of the hipster wasteland, but it's precisely those kind of songs that make us remember how cool it was the first time we heard Simon Le Bon belt out "Union of the Snake."

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