#thearmed

RESEARCH: THE ARMED ⋈

The Armed are an anonymous hardcore-punk collective from Detroit, Michigan. The people pictured above may or may not actually be in The Armed. The Armed claim that they are, along with about 100 other people. 

However, The Armed are not to be trusted...

Formed in 2009, The Armed have made a name for themselves through misdirection both with their music and aesthetic. Many theories have circulated regarding their origins or who is even the band at a given time. Theories range from them being an elaborate performance art project to them being a corporate ad-agency, or a bunch of other equally absurd but just as likely possibilities.

Regardless of who or what they are, what is clear is that The Armed are not your average punk band. This becomes very evident upon glancing at their album artwork, pictured above. 

The top image, from their Untitled (2015) album depicts one of their “members” in what is clearly an homage to David Bowie's classic Aladdin Sane (1973). Their follow-up Only Love (2018) looks like it could be a scene from Rihanna’s ‘Work’ music video, while their most recent album, ULTRAPOP (2021) could have very easily been styled by Tyler, The Creator.

In each of these album covers, the design is sleek, the images crisp, and the content is accessible. One might even dare to say “hip”. This is in complete opposition to everything a hardcore punk band is “supposed to be”, yet The Armed have successfully melded these pop sensibilities into some of the loudest, noisiest songs ever put to record. 

NIN LOGO EXPERIMENTS: THE ARMED

So I spoke too soon when talking about my mind being blown deconstructing the ‘NIN’ logo...

My favourite band (other than Nine Inch Nails) is a band called The Armed. 

I literally cannot express in words how much I love this band and admire what they are doing with their art, but I’ll say more on that in another post as I’ve decided now that I definitely need to work them into my research for this project. 

Anyway, long story short, I realised while playing with the pieces of the Nine Inch Nails logo, that the two ‘N’s in the NIN logo merge PERFECTLY to create the logo The Armed have used since forming over 10 years ago. 

I have literally been a fan of NIN for 20 years and an Armed fan for five, and this never once occurred to me. Not once. 

I decided to go to the source and message The Armed directly about what I found. To my excitement they responded simply with many eyeball emojis. 

Anyone familiar with The Armed  know that a lot of what they do is veiled in mystery right down to who is even in the band at a given moment, so I certainly wasn’t expecting any sort of explanation from whoever it was on the receiving end of this message. In fact, the eye-ball emojis were actually quite fitting, as they left me with more questions than answers...

Is this the first time it even occurred to them? 

I very much doubt it as there have been clear cues taken from NIN in The Armed’s own tunes from time to time. 

The Armed are also extremely meticulous about what they release and how they release it, with sharp attention to detail and easter eggs littered all over their music videos. It just doesn’t make sense that this could be an oversight...

The Armed are also not opposed to “repurposing” other people’s art, as clearly seen by the Polarizer video I linked to in the last paragraph, or the song ‘FT. FRANK TURNER’, where they managed to somehow “acquire” a recording of the Engligh singer-songwriter and release it as their own, without his knowledge or even knowing him. 

Could it be possible that there is a secret link between my two favourite bands, Nine Inch Nails and The Armed?

Are they the same band? 

Or is this just The Armed f*cking with our heads, as they are partial to doing?