Of course! I edited a decent chunk of this video while binge-listening to the podcasts you did with TMG, so its really cool that you checked the vid out!!
We did coffee because BJ (drummer) loves coffee. Entry price is pretty high, so newer bands probably can't afford to do them vs traditional stuff like shirts. Bands likely only do them once and then never again because the profit margin is very slim and they cost a lot to ship. It'll be a while before we do more.
I appreciate the insight! I was genuinely curious! Also, I absolutely love y'all. I listen to HEALTH at least once every day (no joke) so I really appreciate you watching the video!! ❤ PS - The Bodyhammer shirt y'all have was originally included on notewothy designs but TH-cam got mad at the words on the back so I had to cut it lmao)
Re: celebrities wearing band merch. Apparently those are vintage original print shirts, which can sell for thousands of dollars if they're in good condition. So they're not really wearing it as support for the band as much as they're wearing it as a status symbol.
I own a Meshuggah rubics cube. It's impossible to solve because it got the super brown Koloss coverart all over the cube instead of rubics cube colors. I tried for days, it's impossible. It's also the cheapest rubics cube I own with no lube at all and extremely cheap plastics so it's super unfun to twist.
A band know for extremely complicated riffs and rhythms selling a puzzle that's borderline impossible to solve. The jokes practically write themselves.
FINALLY SOMEONE TACKLING THE MOTIONLESS MERCH ISSUE. It’s been bothering me for so long bc I wait for merch drops and then all the designs are disappointing. But I love the band so I end up subjecting myself to wearing their designs anyways even though they suck.
@@Sexiraina1993 Yes!! The best shirt I have from them is the one of the girl with her hands on her neck and a purple pentagram on her forehead. When I saw the shirt I had to get it because it was the first genuinely good design I had seen from them in awhile.
I've been saying this for the longest time. I mean they could team up with like.. Blackcraft ( who is obviously more in their realm of things ) for example and put out their best merch from 1 Collab . I really do hope their stuff gets better soon
Gwar also hosts an annual event in Richmond called the Gwar-B-Q and they also own a chain of dive bars, so it's not unusual for them to have a signature sauce
This is just from the hc/punk world but stickers should be your band merch first move: you can get hundreds of them for under $50, they don't take up a bunch of room and you don't need multiple sizes and you can in theory sell them, but I think they're better used as a freebie advertising item. If you're a certain kind of band, canvas patches are pretty underrated and an easy DIY silk screening project. The two mistakes I've seen here are not leaving enough of a blank fabric border around the print and trying to do some insanely detailed artwork on a patch the size of a business card.
When my college band self-released a 7 inch I really pushed for us to do stickers as well. Threw a sticker inside each of the sleeves, spread them out over whatever table we'd commandeered for the merch to make it look less empty, always had some on me so if I got in the "oh yeah i'm in a band" convo I could whip it out like "here, have a little merch." 100% worth it imo, even if I do still have a couple just hanging around in the bottom of a drawer lol. Cheap and easy way to give people something physical even if you don't have the money for shirts or physical music.
I think that Rammstein is some of the best with weird merchandise, especially Till Lindemann. From the Tilldo to the Rammstein Alcohol and Chocolate to the Tour 18 Wheeler model. It's just weird and cool stuff they sell. Oh and Till Lindemann has a 'toy' shop.
@@Gary_a_normal_human_being i cant believe i forgot about that shirt lmao i remember showing it on the website to my friends. its definitely one of the shirts of all time
9:31 So a hilarious story: My brother-in-law has an original print of this shirt. He got it from his older brother back in 01, who had bought it in 94. He loves this shirt, and if you watch the Suicide Silence wall of death from Louder Than Life 2022, you can briefly spot him in the crowd getting his shit rocked while wearing said shirt. Now on to the hilarious part. He is in the Army, and has been for a while. A few years back, he was in Germany for about 6 months. His buddies decided to go to Rome for a few days, as they had some down time, so he packed a small bag to make the trip. Absentmindedly, he grabbed his "Jesus" shirt, and did not realize it until he was changing to go out for lunch the next day. Had his buddy not checked him on what he was wearing, he was about to walk into public, IN ROME, with that shirt on.
my favorite (recent) example of celebrity's rocking band logos is Zara Larsson's Burzum dress. she had to come clean about not knowing who Burzum were & thinking it "just looked cool" to avoid even more controversy than it had already spurred
As a graphic designer that's into heavy music and band merch, this video is an absolute gem! Well done man! Your merch looks awesome, but sadly the shipping costs to Europe cost more than the shirt ☹
my defense of the Kuma’s Corner burgers is that Kuma is a metal-themed bar anyways so it makes sense lol, it’s their brand I went to a Kuma’s corner when I was like 11 and it was the only way I ever saw Fight Club lmaoo
Darkest Hour sold icecream and beer. The difference between those are hilarious on their own, but the dudes took it further and called them Savor the Chill and Savor the Swill respectively. Using a song name for a product is not only genius, but again hysterical and I love it.
I know the video is old but you asked for a insinder answer in it so here is my 2 cents. On the topic of hot sauce for bands: We made it our speciality in 2014. After launching our hot sauce brand in our area where there was not much hot sauce available, it suddently became a saturated market over night and it became pointless for us to continue on our initial path. As our main company was a production company (as in events and shows) and we had multiple friends that where in the business of festivals, labels, bands and other artitsts, we had the idea of combining our two passions together: food(more so hot sauces) and music. We got at the time a vision for hot sauce to became the next band merch that every bands should have (we still think they should) and we started making custom hot sauces that would encapsulate the band's essence in a flamming piece of bad ass merch. Couple of years later we started to see more products on the market in Canada, the US and the UK and we personally think it super great even if a big part of the sauce are just generic shit with a label that said "X band" on it, it's still cool that what we saw 10 years ago, others saw it too and the trend was born. * I don't claim that we invented hot sauce for bands but 10 years ago it wasn't really a thing either (there was the Gwar-B-Q sauce that maybe was made a few years before that and not much else widely available online). *We also make hot sauce for cool content creator too 😉😉
One of my favorite industrial and noise rock bands, HEALTH, sells and offers branded "FEEL NOTHING" condoms on their site and at their shows. Note: They also have coffee which you showed a picture of (which was damn good in my opinion) and a meat rub/seasoning; both named after their songs "DARK ENOUGH" and "WRONG BAG" respectively. They also sold a butt plug for Valentine's day 2022 iirc but that could've been an actual joke.
Bro if people got arrested for the Jesus is a Cunt shirt, **NOBODY** would be ready for the grindcore/mincecore/goregrind merch with *ACTUAL* gore photos on them 💀💀💀💀
Never once got a comment or side eye from anyone in any of my gore shirts. The two shirts I have that say anything anti Christian? Those get me screamed at every time I wear them outside the house. People are more sensitive about their religion than they are violence.
Bands have also taken up the weed route to. A lot more bands that have seen lately have been selling grinders and full sets. Just for weed, cattle decapitation recently did this, and a bunch of death core bands before did it too
I remember back in like 2010/11 a handful of bands (The Acacia Strain, Chelsea Grin) worked with Silver Surfer vapes to make rigs, back before weed vapes were commonplace. Although at the time I despised all the weed merch bands were coming out with lol.
one of thotcrime's first shirts was just the "nine inch tails" drawing with their logo edited onto it. they stopped selling it for ethical reasons because they didn't pay the original artist but every day of my life i regret not getting one when i could have.
I'm in an messenger groupchat with Thøtcrime lmao. She doesn't show up often, prolly cos she has a productive life, but, glad she made enough of a splash to get a mention in a YT comment cos she ROCKS THA HAUS🤘🏿
There is not a single piece of Misfits merch that you can show me and me be surprised after I saw the Misfits fake Uggs 15(ish) years ago. Jerry Only will put the fiend on literally anything, and people out there will buy it.
If college wasn’t expensive I’d say take some graphic design classes for fun! You’re seriously pretty good at pointing stuff out I’m actually gonna share this vid to my old college GD group.
Someone got arrested for selling a Cradle of Filth shirt to an undercover cop? What is this, an SVU episode? Great commentary on band merch btw, I've seen so many shirt designs from great bands that just don't look as great as they should and seeing the contrast between the bands that know how to have good shirt designs and the ones that don't is a lot more noticeable than you might think.
this video has balanced mix of shade and roasts, making it the perfect temperature. all jokes aside, absolutely amazing video, i cant believe i just found your channel dude!!
The only band merch weed grinder I approve and is okay to sell is Sleep. Also why in the hell do doom metal bands have such good merch most of the time
I understand completely about getting a limited band shirt. I got a limited edition sleep long sleeve when they were celebrating the anniversary of Dopesmoker and I cherish that shirt like it’s my own child.
Chiming in on the MIW merch. Pre-2012 merch was for the most part good, reason being, their original drummer Angelo was a graphic designer and did majority of the designs. Their merch designs became super corny once he left the band.
Peelingflesh absolutely deserve a shoutout in basically all these fronts, parody, weird, straight up sick designs, they've rocked them all🔥🔥 Appreciate hearing how you made your channel longsleeves too, I'm hoping to learn screen printing and run a distro, it helps to hear how the process goes from someone who's actually went through with the merch-making process, and what to avoid. Awesome video all around🖤🤘
Thank you for adressing this issue with the miw merch. Fantastic video and I absolutely love the shirt design, unfortunately shipping to my country costs more than the shirt itself, but it is awesome to see someone selling a longsleeve for under $30. Your videos always make my day!
Also remember when Dragged Into Sunlight sold a church pew? That was a real thing that they sold for money. Also their shirt designs go so fucking hard.
Thank you so much for this. Its super interesting. I’ve been learning t shirt printing for fun and it’s given me so much to thinking about. I hope the merch sales go well.
That was super in depth and insightful, so thanks. Also, I think that one of the worst things that can happen when you buy merch online is when the shirt itself, as in CLOTHING, just sucks. I've lost track of how many t-shirts I've had to turn into ugly DIY tanktops just because the cut was ugly af and I could not make them not make me look like a walking black fridge with a big ass sticker on the front.
My favourite "merch"/stuff that came with the special releases have been dark chocolate with wine filling and a vibe. Both were from Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio :D
I love listening to you talking about things that catch your attention dude, your interest on the topic really shows from the video and I find it absolutely captivating! Also, you're very well spoken, which makes everything even more enjoyable
The thing about Cradle Of Filth's "Jesus Was A Bundtcake" t-shirt (I'm keeping it family friendly here in the comments ;p) is that I find it offensive not due to the allegedly provocative nature of the statement (due to my secular sensibilities) but because of gauche it is. It has to be up there in the S-Tier of cringe try-hard t-shirt designs, alongside those "yOu lAuGh aT mE bEcAuSe i'M dIfFeReNt, i lAuGh bEcAuSe yOu'Re aLl tHe sAmE" t's. *EDIT:* I somehow managed to type up and post this entire smug diatribe, and it took me at least five minutes to remember that most of my shirts feature a lo-fi photo of some screaming Finnish dude with an axe in a snowy forest with an unreadable band logo and some text in the most "ye find yeself in yon dungeon"-est font Windows XP could muster, yelling about bumming goats or whatever. Maybe I'm not in a position to judge too harshly.
Nah, you’ve definitely got a point. Honestly one of the reasons I don’t own many death/slam metal shirts is for this reason. It’s one thing to have an edgy, gorey poster/flag on your wall but it’s another thing entirely to walk around in public wearing a shirt where the image is a dude with his guts spilled out everywhere
@@entr3_nou5 Bearing the adage in mind that "there's a time and a place", I actually don't mind gory t-shirts. Assuming we're talking about images of _actual_ bodies and viscera there are degrees of visual fidelity, artistic interpretation, abstraction that can make or break the impact of a gory image. For lack of a better word, death and decay can be tastefully displayed. The stellar album art for Caustic Wound's _Death Posture,_ with it's B&W photo of a appallingly rotted face collaged and superimposed over copies of itself into a nightmarish visage. If I had that on a t-shirt I'd wear the living daylights out of it.
The reason there's so much coffee and booze is because many of the biggest craft roasters and distillers have more manufacturing capacity than they can move units labeled under their own brand so they offer private-labelling services to anybody looking to start their own "craft" brand. For example, in Madison Wisconsin there's a distillery called Yahara Bay and something like 2/3 of their production gets labeled as somebody else's product.
The main problem with band t-shirts is that they are printed on garbage quality shirts that have an unflattering fit. I got sick of wasting money on shirts that fit like you’re wearing a tent. Long sleeves are usually fine though. Prime example at 07:38. Look at how the sleeves stick out, usually it sticks out more than that.
I learned in design school that microsoft didnt want to pay the designer of Helvetica proper money to license it for windows, so they just copied it, and that's Arial. I have no idea if it's true though. Really cool video!
This is such a good video. One of my favorite band merches to wear is my Epica tour shirt and my Blackbriar The Cause Of Shipwreck shirt. Blackbriar's merch is amazing because they hire the same illustrator for each single, EP and album so it all looks the same visually. Also Blackbriar sells handwritten lyrics from the singer and that is pretty cool
the problem is that they're very scene kid specific, i don't know. like a normal looking 30 something year old guy couldn't wear them, but a 17 year old skinny scene kid looks cool as fuck in them
Hey man, this came up on my suggested and I love your editing style and the content of the video. Great topics, made me laugh, and I love you pointed out the food merch. Great stuff!
Saw Casket Robbery in Atlanta. First off -- sweetest group of people on the planet, and they are BEASTS on stage. Secondly -- they were selling whole bean coffee. Thought it was odd, but we were out, and it was honestly really good. I can fully endorse metal bands selling coffee.
Thank you for the second half of this video! As someone who is thinking about rolling out merch in the next year or so, I found this incredibly helpful.
This is the first video I've ever seen from you, really good in-depth exploration of the topic. I love isolation man and lies from the table cloth, so to hear you shout them out was really awesome
i know this video mostly covers metal bands, but personally i feel like devo is a band that does pretty good merch. their stuff is designed pretty well thanks to most of the band members being art school graduates. they all look pretty neat and i feel like they'd be appealing to people who don't even know the band.
I know this is extremely late but Motionless really did step up their merch game with Fall tour and wave of merch they dropped shortly after. I ended up buying 2 hoodies, 4 shirts, and a poster and they all look amazing.
about parodys there's a polish stoner band called belzebong, who made shirts called "moreweed angel" and "de mysteriis dope satanas" and I think it's cool
Not 'core related, but one edible (or drinkable, whatever) merch item that I personally found extremely hilarious was Wumpscut's "Liquid Soylent" energy drink cans. It was a promo for the 2-CD release of the same name and just ridiculous, but knowing Rudy he was VERY aware of the fact 😂
Also gotta shoutout a merch item I think makes sense and have seen at a few shows: beard oils. I think I’ve seen them for Skinless and Obituary specifically. That’s a merch item that makes sense to me, lots of metalheads have beards after all
My favourite bit of strange band merch is The Locust (RIP Gabe Serbian) selling make-up mirrors, which got the band a bit of controversy because people thought they were encouraging cocaine use.
There's a lot of passion and research put in these videos, and they're well edited. My only complaint would be that you mention so many things, it makes it hard to follow for people who are unfamiliar with the subject, like me. (I'm not unfamiliar with the music, I just never buy merch)
"Thinking a system that forces monetizing every aspect of one's life in order to barely scrape by and allows for mass starvation is not a good thing - yet still supports smaller artists!! 🤣 Checkmate!!"
Great video! One of the weirdest type of merch I've seen, were condoms from the black metal band "Horns & hooves". While it's kinda gimmicky, it's pretty fitting considering the band has a sleazy satanic aesthetic. Also suprised You didn't mention Bolt thrower merch, It's insane how expensive it is nowadays .
When you started talking about Gulch it made me think back to when Counterparts was putting out the Nothing Left to Love hoodies. I was psyched to get my hands on the upside down text green colorway.
In 2019 the drone metal band sunn O))) teamed up with a pedal company, EarthQuaker Devices, to release a super limited addition guitar pedal to celebrate the release of their newest album. This is pedal is on its 3rd variation and is still sold today, but there is only 2000 first run pedals and they are a bit hard to find. They came in three colors, 1000 in black, 500 in silver, and 500 in gold.
"neon cartoon" shirts as you described them are so cool though. i can get why someone would dislike the text based merch as 99% of the time it's really edgy and you get side eyed a lot but i still enjoy it
i think the hot sauce thing is because everyone thinks spicy food is hardcore. and the coffee is probably related to the general modern culture phenomenon of like... centering coffee and seeing it as, like, a companion that helps you get through your days. "don't talk to me till I've had my coffee" type of thing.
Timely topic, great vid. Working on building an Alt merch business myself. I know folks are often worried about print on demand quality. Let's say, they want to go that route and leverage that while they get physical heat presses or DTG printers or Silk Screens etc so they can go full DIY and have their own creative space and do more themselves and what not? Here is a really good tip. If you DO have a heat press, get full color heat transfers of your designs (there are many companies that do print them online, Supacolor is one of them) and having them sent to you, and test the design a T-shirt BEFORE putting it out. It's a good cost effective way to test things in person. Also Tip 2: Rich Khun is a great resource on anything in the POD space. I like seeing creative people succeed in being able to live off of their work so I'm just dropping this here haha! And Good Luck with your merch endeavors! It's a lot but it is worth it! and thanks for the vid like.. theres so much richness and I learned a lot I didn't know! Subbed!
and one more tip! When pressing heat transfers in the the center chest area, remember as a good rule of thumb, place the transfer 3 fingers spaced down past the collar of the shirt! Be Awesome!
thanks for the comment. just starting out the merch printing side of my business and right now using redbubble and even have some sales there, but not much I expected. Is redbubble a bad idea? what can you say about printful?
hell yeah glad you liked the shirt bro
Of course! I edited a decent chunk of this video while binge-listening to the podcasts you did with TMG, so its really cool that you checked the vid out!!
PAPA MEATS
Penis
Papa
Holy fuck meatcanyon
We did coffee because BJ (drummer) loves coffee. Entry price is pretty high, so newer bands probably can't afford to do them vs traditional stuff like shirts. Bands likely only do them once and then never again because the profit margin is very slim and they cost a lot to ship. It'll be a while before we do more.
I appreciate the insight! I was genuinely curious!
Also, I absolutely love y'all. I listen to HEALTH at least once every day (no joke) so I really appreciate you watching the video!! ❤
PS - The Bodyhammer shirt y'all have was originally included on notewothy designs but TH-cam got mad at the words on the back so I had to cut it lmao)
HEALTH hell yeah! I'm here for the "weird" merch items.
Neat
I find the sex toy band merch to be the most out there. Rammstein and Brojob are the ones that come to mind
Motorhead has a great selection as well but are usually collectables
There not a band but Ghostemane sold condoms as merch and thongs I'm surprised he “DIDN'T” sell sex toys.
Ghost has one too
Ghost sold a buttplug
@@layneistired ah yes, the elusive Ghildo
Ok but crustbag burger when
Crustburger.
Re: celebrities wearing band merch. Apparently those are vintage original print shirts, which can sell for thousands of dollars if they're in good condition. So they're not really wearing it as support for the band as much as they're wearing it as a status symbol.
ahhhhh
I own a Meshuggah rubics cube.
It's impossible to solve because it got the super brown Koloss coverart all over the cube instead of rubics cube colors. I tried for days, it's impossible. It's also the cheapest rubics cube I own with no lube at all and extremely cheap plastics so it's super unfun to twist.
A band know for extremely complicated riffs and rhythms selling a puzzle that's borderline impossible to solve. The jokes practically write themselves.
"Meshuggah rubics cube"
Isn't that just the lament configuration from hellraiser
FINALLY SOMEONE TACKLING THE MOTIONLESS MERCH ISSUE. It’s been bothering me for so long bc I wait for merch drops and then all the designs are disappointing. But I love the band so I end up subjecting myself to wearing their designs anyways even though they suck.
The Jigglypuff shirt was legit the best shirt they made in a while. I’m happy I got one cause I had no idea how popular they would end up.
@@Sexiraina1993 Yes!! The best shirt I have from them is the one of the girl with her hands on her neck and a purple pentagram on her forehead. When I saw the shirt I had to get it because it was the first genuinely good design I had seen from them in awhile.
I've been saying this for the longest time. I mean they could team up with like.. Blackcraft ( who is obviously more in their realm of things ) for example and put out their best merch from 1 Collab . I really do hope their stuff gets better soon
all their merch is really disappointing, it just feels like it’s the album cover slapped on a shirt it’s boring
So much! Saw them in 2019, loved the show, wanted to buy merch, but didn't see anything I liked.
The motionless cyber hex ‘gamer emblem’ shirt is objectively the funniest ship that’s ever been printed and it’s not intentional
It's so bad and generic looking you almost can't even wear it ironically though
I like the cyberpunk stuff. I heard that song and like it. It needed to be more cyberpunk looking.
Gwar also hosts an annual event in Richmond called the Gwar-B-Q and they also own a chain of dive bars, so it's not unusual for them to have a signature sauce
This is just from the hc/punk world but stickers should be your band merch first move: you can get hundreds of them for under $50, they don't take up a bunch of room and you don't need multiple sizes and you can in theory sell them, but I think they're better used as a freebie advertising item. If you're a certain kind of band, canvas patches are pretty underrated and an easy DIY silk screening project. The two mistakes I've seen here are not leaving enough of a blank fabric border around the print and trying to do some insanely detailed artwork on a patch the size of a business card.
This is good advice :D Who doesn't like having a sticker or two chucked into something they've ordered online.
When my college band self-released a 7 inch I really pushed for us to do stickers as well. Threw a sticker inside each of the sleeves, spread them out over whatever table we'd commandeered for the merch to make it look less empty, always had some on me so if I got in the "oh yeah i'm in a band" convo I could whip it out like "here, have a little merch." 100% worth it imo, even if I do still have a couple just hanging around in the bottom of a drawer lol. Cheap and easy way to give people something physical even if you don't have the money for shirts or physical music.
@@TheBridgieShow hey what was ur band named?
A little mainstream but I like the "Employees must carve 'Slayer' into their forearm before returning to work" sign that Slayer sells
Thank u for being one of the most grounded and realistic people in the metal community.
The fact that the GWAR x Bad Dragon collab wasn’t mentioned is a true tragedy
I love dragon cock tbh
GWAR HAD A BAD DRAGON COLAB??
Oh yeah I forgot about this, it's so funny, love it
Bad dragon is a super good company, if I was to do anything sex toy related Id have to go to them
Whelp, didn't know this existed and I just bought one.
I think that Rammstein is some of the best with weird merchandise, especially Till Lindemann. From the Tilldo to the Rammstein Alcohol and Chocolate to the Tour 18 Wheeler model. It's just weird and cool stuff they sell. Oh and Till Lindemann has a 'toy' shop.
There’s also a Rammstein Hentai shirt for whatever reason
Glad someone mentioned Rammstein
@@Gary_a_normal_human_being i cant believe i forgot about that shirt lmao i remember showing it on the website to my friends. its definitely one of the shirts of all time
But they do it, because they want to be wierd
So true
My girlfriend got me this wonderful Ahab longsleeve that's a parody of Obituary's "Slowly We Rot", turning it into the more nautical "Slowly We Row"
9:31 So a hilarious story: My brother-in-law has an original print of this shirt. He got it from his older brother back in 01, who had bought it in 94. He loves this shirt, and if you watch the Suicide Silence wall of death from Louder Than Life 2022, you can briefly spot him in the crowd getting his shit rocked while wearing said shirt. Now on to the hilarious part. He is in the Army, and has been for a while. A few years back, he was in Germany for about 6 months. His buddies decided to go to Rome for a few days, as they had some down time, so he packed a small bag to make the trip. Absentmindedly, he grabbed his "Jesus" shirt, and did not realize it until he was changing to go out for lunch the next day. Had his buddy not checked him on what he was wearing, he was about to walk into public, IN ROME, with that shirt on.
my favorite (recent) example of celebrity's rocking band logos is Zara Larsson's Burzum dress. she had to come clean about not knowing who Burzum were & thinking it "just looked cool" to avoid even more controversy than it had already spurred
As a graphic designer that's into heavy music and band merch, this video is an absolute gem! Well done man!
Your merch looks awesome, but sadly the shipping costs to Europe cost more than the shirt ☹
You’d be the only one in your country with that shirt
my defense of the Kuma’s Corner burgers is that Kuma is a metal-themed bar anyways so it makes sense lol, it’s their brand
I went to a Kuma’s corner when I was like 11 and it was the only way I ever saw Fight Club lmaoo
Grill Em All too. The whole point is it’s metal themed.
Darkest Hour sold icecream and beer. The difference between those are hilarious on their own, but the dudes took it further and called them Savor the Chill and Savor the Swill respectively.
Using a song name for a product is not only genius, but again hysterical and I love it.
I know the video is old but you asked for a insinder answer in it so here is my 2 cents. On the topic of hot sauce for bands: We made it our speciality in 2014. After launching our hot sauce brand in our area where there was not much hot sauce available, it suddently became a saturated market over night and it became pointless for us to continue on our initial path. As our main company was a production company (as in events and shows) and we had multiple friends that where in the business of festivals, labels, bands and other artitsts, we had the idea of combining our two passions together: food(more so hot sauces) and music. We got at the time a vision for hot sauce to became the next band merch that every bands should have (we still think they should) and we started making custom hot sauces that would encapsulate the band's essence in a flamming piece of bad ass merch. Couple of years later we started to see more products on the market in Canada, the US and the UK and we personally think it super great even if a big part of the sauce are just generic shit with a label that said "X band" on it, it's still cool that what we saw 10 years ago, others saw it too and the trend was born.
* I don't claim that we invented hot sauce for bands but 10 years ago it wasn't really a thing either (there was the Gwar-B-Q sauce that maybe was made a few years before that and not much else widely available online).
*We also make hot sauce for cool content creator too 😉😉
One of my favorite industrial and noise rock bands, HEALTH, sells and offers branded "FEEL NOTHING" condoms on their site and at their shows. Note: They also have coffee which you showed a picture of (which was damn good in my opinion) and a meat rub/seasoning; both named after their songs "DARK ENOUGH" and "WRONG BAG" respectively. They also sold a butt plug for Valentine's day 2022 iirc but that could've been an actual joke.
Bro if people got arrested for the Jesus is a Cunt shirt, **NOBODY** would be ready for the grindcore/mincecore/goregrind merch with *ACTUAL* gore photos on them 💀💀💀💀
Never once got a comment or side eye from anyone in any of my gore shirts. The two shirts I have that say anything anti Christian? Those get me screamed at every time I wear them outside the house. People are more sensitive about their religion than they are violence.
@@ridleysomeliana-lauer5814yeah its sad
I love band shirts, but I hate wearing them because I like going outside and having people actually talk to me
It’s always a good day when crustbag uploads
Bands have also taken up the weed route to. A lot more bands that have seen lately have been selling grinders and full sets. Just for weed, cattle decapitation recently did this, and a bunch of death core bands before did it too
I remember back in like 2010/11 a handful of bands (The Acacia Strain, Chelsea Grin) worked with Silver Surfer vapes to make rigs, back before weed vapes were commonplace. Although at the time I despised all the weed merch bands were coming out with lol.
Dude, *huge* props for shouting out and supporting all those underground artists! I love to see designers in this niche get love.
Some dude apparantly got kidnapped by some crazy christians for wearing an agents of satan shirt which is arguably a worse fate than jail
Fantastic video, love the channel dude. I'm in the UK and broke so can't buy the shirt but it looks sick, kudos to those who do!
International shipping is STUPID expensive right now, I'm so sorry 😭
@@crustbag No worries man! Will keep supporting the channel! :D
one of thotcrime's first shirts was just the "nine inch tails" drawing with their logo edited onto it. they stopped selling it for ethical reasons because they didn't pay the original artist but every day of my life i regret not getting one when i could have.
I'm in an messenger groupchat with Thøtcrime lmao. She doesn't show up often, prolly cos she has a productive life, but, glad she made enough of a splash to get a mention in a YT comment cos she ROCKS THA HAUS🤘🏿
About 7-8 years ago I saw that Misfits is selling fidgedspinners. Knowing this was really disturbing.
There is not a single piece of Misfits merch that you can show me and me be surprised after I saw the Misfits fake Uggs 15(ish) years ago. Jerry Only will put the fiend on literally anything, and people out there will buy it.
new crustbag makes my day
new crustbag content is the reason i’m still alive
If college wasn’t expensive I’d say take some graphic design classes for fun! You’re seriously pretty good at pointing stuff out I’m actually gonna share this vid to my old college GD group.
I don’t drink, but there is something I really enjoy about Obituary’s “Hopped in Half” beer, such a fun concept
I just wanna say the editing and transitions are smooth as hell
I'm watching this video with over ten tabs of band merch open
bro that bootleg mayhem / pikachu shirt at 12:48 goes hard af 🔥
I felt the air upon release,
Grazing over the pile of leaves,
Tossing so far it can’t be seen,
It’s in the mud,Slipknot frisbee
Someone got arrested for selling a Cradle of Filth shirt to an undercover cop? What is this, an SVU episode?
Great commentary on band merch btw, I've seen so many shirt designs from great bands that just don't look as great as they should and seeing the contrast between the bands that know how to have good shirt designs and the ones that don't is a lot more noticeable than you might think.
this video has balanced mix of shade and roasts, making it the perfect temperature. all jokes aside, absolutely amazing video, i cant believe i just found your channel dude!!
The sex pistols credit card just feels so so wrong on a primal level
this is seriously like the best video i have ever watched. it combines like every niche i like and the production is beautiful.
The only band merch weed grinder I approve and is okay to sell is Sleep. Also why in the hell do doom metal bands have such good merch most of the time
I understand completely about getting a limited band shirt. I got a limited edition sleep long sleeve when they were celebrating the anniversary of Dopesmoker and I cherish that shirt like it’s my own child.
Chiming in on the MIW merch. Pre-2012 merch was for the most part good, reason being, their original drummer Angelo was a graphic designer and did majority of the designs. Their merch designs became super corny once he left the band.
Peelingflesh absolutely deserve a shoutout in basically all these fronts, parody, weird, straight up sick designs, they've rocked them all🔥🔥 Appreciate hearing how you made your channel longsleeves too, I'm hoping to learn screen printing and run a distro, it helps to hear how the process goes from someone who's actually went through with the merch-making process, and what to avoid. Awesome video all around🖤🤘
Thank you for adressing this issue with the miw merch. Fantastic video and I absolutely love the shirt design, unfortunately shipping to my country costs more than the shirt itself, but it is awesome to see someone selling a longsleeve for under $30. Your videos always make my day!
This was very funny, very informative and very helpful! As always, thank you Crustbag :)
Also remember when Dragged Into Sunlight sold a church pew?
That was a real thing that they sold for money.
Also their shirt designs go so fucking hard.
You put so much passion into these videos, always a good day when you upload, brother.
Your kitty slow-blinking adoringly at you at 17:18 is so cute!
And that's why I love Ghosts' t-shirts/merch design, they always commission numerous talented artists that make gorgeous illustrations🥰
Thank you so much for this. Its super interesting. I’ve been learning t shirt printing for fun and it’s given me so much to thinking about. I hope the merch sales go well.
That was super in depth and insightful, so thanks.
Also, I think that one of the worst things that can happen when you buy merch online is when the shirt itself, as in CLOTHING, just sucks. I've lost track of how many t-shirts I've had to turn into ugly DIY tanktops just because the cut was ugly af and I could not make them not make me look like a walking black fridge with a big ass sticker on the front.
My favourite "merch"/stuff that came with the special releases have been dark chocolate with wine filling and a vibe. Both were from Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio :D
I love listening to you talking about things that catch your attention dude, your interest on the topic really shows from the video and I find it absolutely captivating! Also, you're very well spoken, which makes everything even more enjoyable
IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE HELL YEAH!
Not only is it another really funny and well done video, it also taught me about how merch works
i love watching videos like this, it’s like getting two videos for the price of one!!
The thing about Cradle Of Filth's "Jesus Was A Bundtcake" t-shirt (I'm keeping it family friendly here in the comments ;p) is that I find it offensive not due to the allegedly provocative nature of the statement (due to my secular sensibilities) but because of gauche it is. It has to be up there in the S-Tier of cringe try-hard t-shirt designs, alongside those "yOu lAuGh aT mE bEcAuSe i'M dIfFeReNt, i lAuGh bEcAuSe yOu'Re aLl tHe sAmE" t's.
*EDIT:* I somehow managed to type up and post this entire smug diatribe, and it took me at least five minutes to remember that most of my shirts feature a lo-fi photo of some screaming Finnish dude with an axe in a snowy forest with an unreadable band logo and some text in the most "ye find yeself in yon dungeon"-est font Windows XP could muster, yelling about bumming goats or whatever.
Maybe I'm not in a position to judge too harshly.
Nah, you’ve definitely got a point. Honestly one of the reasons I don’t own many death/slam metal shirts is for this reason. It’s one thing to have an edgy, gorey poster/flag on your wall but it’s another thing entirely to walk around in public wearing a shirt where the image is a dude with his guts spilled out everywhere
@@entr3_nou5 Bearing the adage in mind that "there's a time and a place", I actually don't mind gory t-shirts. Assuming we're talking about images of _actual_ bodies and viscera there are degrees of visual fidelity, artistic interpretation, abstraction that can make or break the impact of a gory image. For lack of a better word, death and decay can be tastefully displayed. The stellar album art for Caustic Wound's _Death Posture,_ with it's B&W photo of a appallingly rotted face collaged and superimposed over copies of itself into a nightmarish visage. If I had that on a t-shirt I'd wear the living daylights out of it.
The reason there's so much coffee and booze is because many of the biggest craft roasters and distillers have more manufacturing capacity than they can move units labeled under their own brand so they offer private-labelling services to anybody looking to start their own "craft" brand. For example, in Madison Wisconsin there's a distillery called Yahara Bay and something like 2/3 of their production gets labeled as somebody else's product.
damn, i kind of want to try that darkthrone burger.
same
The main problem with band t-shirts is that they are printed on garbage quality shirts that have an unflattering fit. I got sick of wasting money on shirts that fit like you’re wearing a tent. Long sleeves are usually fine though. Prime example at 07:38. Look at how the sleeves stick out, usually it sticks out more than that.
I learned in design school that microsoft didnt want to pay the designer of Helvetica proper money to license it for windows, so they just copied it, and that's Arial. I have no idea if it's true though. Really cool video!
FYI, Gwar-BQ is also an annual show/BBQ fest in Richmond that Gwar would host.
This is such a good video. One of my favorite band merches to wear is my Epica tour shirt and my Blackbriar The Cause Of Shipwreck shirt. Blackbriar's merch is amazing because they hire the same illustrator for each single, EP and album so it all looks the same visually. Also Blackbriar sells handwritten lyrics from the singer and that is pretty cool
as a scene kid i love the ugly ass paragraph shirts and the neon monster shirts personally but i totally get how theyre not everyones taste
also dan and phils merch was meant to be hyperspecific to their jokes and their fandom, its also not cheap at all. i own a lot of it.
the problem is that they're very scene kid specific, i don't know. like a normal looking 30 something year old guy couldn't wear them, but a 17 year old skinny scene kid looks cool as fuck in them
i designed the Acacia Strain Hat at 13:00 😃
Yooo nice!! You did a great job!!
Behemoths merch looks like the tapout shirts I wore in 2009
Their merch is the best quality that you'll ever find though.
Hey man, this came up on my suggested and I love your editing style and the content of the video. Great topics, made me laugh, and I love you pointed out the food merch. Great stuff!
I really love the one Dir en grey hoodie I got in 2019. It says " the world we live in" and "hypocrisy" on the sleeves and I adore it.
Saw Casket Robbery in Atlanta. First off -- sweetest group of people on the planet, and they are BEASTS on stage. Secondly -- they were selling whole bean coffee. Thought it was odd, but we were out, and it was honestly really good. I can fully endorse metal bands selling coffee.
Thank you for the second half of this video! As someone who is thinking about rolling out merch in the next year or so, I found this incredibly helpful.
This is the first video I've ever seen from you, really good in-depth exploration of the topic. I love isolation man and lies from the table cloth, so to hear you shout them out was really awesome
bro i was genuinely excited to see my favorite football team as a meme in a heavy nusic YT channel at 5:39 COLO COLO MENTIONED🗣️❗❗❗
i know this video mostly covers metal bands, but personally i feel like devo is a band that does pretty good merch. their stuff is designed pretty well thanks to most of the band members being art school graduates. they all look pretty neat and i feel like they'd be appealing to people who don't even know the band.
I know this is extremely late but Motionless really did step up their merch game with Fall tour and wave of merch they dropped shortly after. I ended up buying 2 hoodies, 4 shirts, and a poster and they all look amazing.
Yet another great day with crustbags great videos👍
about parodys
there's a polish stoner band called belzebong, who made shirts called "moreweed angel" and "de mysteriis dope satanas" and I think it's cool
Not 'core related, but one edible (or drinkable, whatever) merch item that I personally found extremely hilarious was Wumpscut's "Liquid Soylent" energy drink cans. It was a promo for the 2-CD release of the same name and just ridiculous, but knowing Rudy he was VERY aware of the fact 😂
Also gotta shoutout a merch item I think makes sense and have seen at a few shows: beard oils. I think I’ve seen them for Skinless and Obituary specifically. That’s a merch item that makes sense to me, lots of metalheads have beards after all
bro brings up food items but doesn't talk about fleshgod apocalypse selling pasta back in the day
Wearing my cof Jesus is shirt to school with a hoodie zipped half way up was some of the Most exhilarating moments of my lil baby child lyfe
My favourite bit of strange band merch is The Locust (RIP Gabe Serbian) selling make-up mirrors, which got the band a bit of controversy because people thought they were encouraging cocaine use.
There's a lot of passion and research put in these videos, and they're well edited. My only complaint would be that you mention so many things, it makes it hard to follow for people who are unfamiliar with the subject, like me.
(I'm not unfamiliar with the music, I just never buy merch)
Goes from hating on capitalism to promoting artist, printing companies, and your own channel.😂😅
"Thinking a system that forces monetizing every aspect of one's life in order to barely scrape by and allows for mass starvation is not a good thing - yet still supports smaller artists!! 🤣 Checkmate!!"
@@crustbag I still like you, your channel, and capitalist endeavors. I think I will sub.
I had no idea Behemoth made satanic MMA merch
Great video!
One of the weirdest type of merch I've seen, were condoms from the black metal band "Horns & hooves". While it's kinda gimmicky, it's pretty fitting considering the band has a sleazy satanic aesthetic.
Also suprised You didn't mention Bolt thrower merch, It's insane how expensive it is nowadays .
The same friend has given me Rammstein vodka, soap, and gummy bears. Not sure what that says about me
When you started talking about Gulch it made me think back to when Counterparts was putting out the Nothing Left to Love hoodies. I was psyched to get my hands on the upside down text green colorway.
For the controversial merch, I really thought Emmure was gonna be on there somewhere.
Mastodon had a Mastobong at one point. It looked like a decent bong too.
GREAT GODDAMN VIDEO. This is officially the first TH-cam Merch I’ve purchased
I need that Disclose toilet seat
In 2019 the drone metal band sunn O))) teamed up with a pedal company, EarthQuaker Devices, to release a super limited addition guitar pedal to celebrate the release of their newest album. This is pedal is on its 3rd variation and is still sold today, but there is only 2000 first run pedals and they are a bit hard to find. They came in three colors, 1000 in black, 500 in silver, and 500 in gold.
Amazed to find out Portrayal of Guilt has a burger
"neon cartoon" shirts as you described them are so cool though. i can get why someone would dislike the text based merch as 99% of the time it's really edgy and you get side eyed a lot but i still enjoy it
awesome video! thank you for motivating me to make merch for my first ever music project :) keep up the great content, I love it!
i think the hot sauce thing is because everyone thinks spicy food is hardcore. and the coffee is probably related to the general modern culture phenomenon of like... centering coffee and seeing it as, like, a companion that helps you get through your days. "don't talk to me till I've had my coffee" type of thing.
Timely topic, great vid. Working on building an Alt merch business myself. I know folks are often worried about print on demand quality. Let's say, they want to go that route and leverage that while they get physical heat presses or DTG printers or Silk Screens etc so they can go full DIY and have their own creative space and do more themselves and what not? Here is a really good tip. If you DO have a heat press, get full color heat transfers of your designs (there are many companies that do print them online, Supacolor is one of them) and having them sent to you, and test the design a T-shirt BEFORE putting it out. It's a good cost effective way to test things in person. Also Tip 2: Rich Khun is a great resource on anything in the POD space. I like seeing creative people succeed in being able to live off of their work so I'm just dropping this here haha! And Good Luck with your merch endeavors! It's a lot but it is worth it! and thanks for the vid like.. theres so much richness and I learned a lot I didn't know! Subbed!
and one more tip! When pressing heat transfers in the the center chest area, remember as a good rule of thumb, place the transfer 3 fingers spaced down past the collar of the shirt! Be Awesome!
thanks for the comment. just starting out the merch printing side of my business and right now using redbubble and even have some sales there, but not much I expected. Is redbubble a bad idea? what can you say about printful?