Swedish metal bands do not frequently offer simple solutions for modern living. Swedish furniture hawker IKEA does not cover itself in beef blood and screech about satan. (Like, say Watain, shot for SPIN by Krista Schlueter at Irving Plaza, might.) The two are philosophically opposed in just about every way imaginable. But as it turns out, to the layman’s eye, the oft Nordic-sourced names of death (or black) metal bands and IKEA’s ready-to-assemble delights are pretty much indistinguishable.
The marketing geniuses at Gatesman+Dave have launched a hilarious site called IKEA or Death, in which visitors are invited to guess whether the names in randomly generated a series apply to — you guessed it — a product from the Swedish company, or a guitar-wielding gang of guyliner-ed curs. It’s good clean fun at the playful expense of two pretty awesome institutions. As the site says, “It doesn’t matter if you know who Burzum is or if you’ve ever sat in a Preben chair — it’s time to have some kvlt fun. Death to false furniture!”
Also, for the purists among us, they’ve included “an editorial note.” Let it be known that “the writer of this realizes that these are not all death metal genre bands and that most metalheads love nothing more than to put things in neat little buckets.” In any case, you’ll want to make sure you know the difference between a couch and a seven-foot pagan drum-crusher before you put your bum on anything that sounds Swedish.
