When done right, a gimmick will make your band immortal. While plenty of talented artists and albums will be lost to time, your band’s unique identity or marketing plot — the best noise band from Antarctica! The champions of short-order cook metal! — will ring on throughout the ages. That said, being remembered for the wrong thing can feel shitty, and it’s tough to write a bunch of songs and then be forever identified by your outfit and not your music. Conversely, however, gimmicks can also be a problem because they’ll scare listeners away from what is, at the end of the day, great music. Plenty of the bands we think of as “joke” or “theme” bands do a lot of hard work, and to downplay their talent due to...
