Look, we’ve all made fashion choices we regret. But as a professional music journalist who spent the 90s convinced his credibility was directly proportional to his t-shirt collection, I elevated questionable band merch decisions to an art form. My closet wasn’t just a fashion disaster; it was a timeline of metal and rock trends that did not age well. At all.
I was recently cleaning out my storage unit (a task I’d put off for approximately seven years) when I found a box simply labeled “THE SHIRTS.” Opening it released a cloud of dust, ancient cigarette smoke, and poor decisions from 1990-1999. Let me share with you, dear reader, this archaeological excavation of my younger self’s terrible taste, ranked from “mildly embarrassing in retrospect” to “why did nobody stage an intervention?”
## 10. The White Zombie Shirt With Mysteriously Faded Armpits
This was from the “La Sexorcisto” tour, featuring a grotesque cartoon demon surrounded by psychedelic imagery. Actually cool design that I genuinely still appreciate. What lands it on this list is the mysterious yellow armpit stains that appeared after approximately three wears. I convinced myself they were “battle scars” from particularly intense mosh pits and continued wearing it for another two years. They were not battle scars. My roommate at the time, Jason, finally staged a minor intervention: “Dude, your shirt pits look like someone highlighted them with neon markers. It’s disturbing people at shows.” Still kept wearing it for another six months.
## 9. The Oversized Coal Chamber Jersey
Remember Coal Chamber? That nu-metal band that was basically the Walmart version of Korn? Yeah, me too, unfortunately. For reasons that made sense only to 1997 Mike, I bought a basketball-style jersey with their name on it that was approximately four sizes too large. It hung to my knees and made me look like I was a child wearing my father’s clothes. The worst part? I consciously sized up because that was the “look.” I paired it with absurdly wide JNCO jeans that could have comfortably housed a family of four in each leg. There’s a photo somewhere of me interviewing Max Cavalera while wearing this monstrosity. I look like I’m being slowly devoured by fabric.
## 8. The Limp Bizkit “Three Dollar Bill, Y’all$” Shirt
I have no defense for this. Zero. I reviewed their album somewhat positively (a professional lapse in judgment I still receive emails about), and subsequently bought the shirt at their show. It featured their original logo and the album cover with the grotesque face. I wore it to the office at Riff Raider magazine, where my editor saw it and visibly reassessed his decision to hire me. “Interesting choice,” he said in a tone that clearly communicated “I’m questioning everything about you right now.” The shirt mysteriously disappeared during a laundromat visit a month later. I’m convinced someone stole it, but in retrospect, I think the laundromat attendant may have actually incinerated it as a public service.
## 7. The Incredibly Graphic Cannibal Corpse Shirt That Got Me Banned From Thanksgiving
Death metal shirts are supposed to be offensive – that’s part of their charm. But the particular Cannibal Corpse design I chose to wear to my family’s Thanksgiving in 1994 crossed several lines, violated multiple state laws, and possibly constituted a war crime. I won’t describe the imagery in detail, but it involved zombies, entrails, and activities that should remain private even among the undead. I thought it was hilarious to wear it under a button-up shirt and then “accidentally” reveal it while reaching for the mashed potatoes. My aunt Martha, a devout Baptist, nearly fainted. My mother didn’t speak to me for two weeks. I was formally uninvited from family gatherings until I “reconsidered my choices.” Worth it? Absolutely not. Did I wear it to several more inappropriate venues? Unfortunately yes.
## 6. The Misfits Shirt That Marked Me As A Poser
This one hurts because I thought I was being legitimately cool. I bought a vintage-style Misfits Crimson Ghost shirt in 1996, thinking I was displaying my deep knowledge of punk history. Problem: I could not name more than three Misfits songs if you had held a gun to my head. This became painfully apparent when I wore it to a local show and the actual opening band’s vocalist stopped mid-set to quiz me about “Last Caress.” I stammered something about “really appreciating their historical importance” while the entire venue silently judged me. I slunk out during the headliner’s set and relegated the shirt to “at-home only” status. I later learned enough about the Misfits to wear it legitimately, but the damage was done – somewhere in the San Diego punk scene, I’m still known as “that poser music journalist guy.”
## 5. The Marilyn Manson “Bigger Than Satan” Shirt
There’s edgy, and then there’s “wearing a shirt that explicitly claims the artist is more significant than Satan himself” edgy. I wore this profoundly subtle garment to my cousin’s college graduation party, where multiple relatives questioned my spiritual well-being and mental health. The front featured Manson in full Antichrist Superstar regalia, while the back proclaimed “BIGGER THAN SATAN” in font size visible from low Earth orbit. What made this particularly embarrassing wasn’t the satanic implications, but rather my earnest 20-minute defense of Manson as a “serious artist making profound statements about American hypocrisy” to my increasingly uncomfortable uncle, who just wanted to discuss the Patriots’ draft picks. I was that guy.
## 4. The Korn Shirt I Wore To A Job Interview
In 1998, I somehow convinced myself that a shirt featuring five disfigured child silhouettes was appropriate attire for an interview at an alternative weekly newspaper. The hiring editor, a former punk rocker turned respectable journalism professional, stared at my shirt for an uncomfortable five seconds before sighing deeply and proceeding with the interview. I did not get the job. She later told me at a music convention that while my writing samples were good, she “couldn’t hire someone with such catastrophically poor judgment.” Fair. Entirely fair.
## 3. The Machine Head Shirt That Disintegrated At The Worst Possible Moment
This was from the “Burn My Eyes” tour – a black shirt with the album cover and tour dates on the back. I wore it religiously for approximately three years, washing it maybe seven times total. By 1997, it had achieved a structural integrity similar to wet tissue paper. The catastrophic failure occurred while I was interviewing Deftones backstage at a festival for a major magazine. Mid-question, the entire front seam simply gave up, causing the shirt to dramatically split open like a badly planned stage reveal. Chino Moreno looked genuinely concerned as I attempted to hold my shirt together while maintaining professional journalistic composure. The photographer accompanying me got several shots of the incident, which briefly circulated in the office under the filename “Mike’s Wardrobe Malfunction.” I finished the interview while wrapped in a towel borrowed from the band’s dressing room.
## 2. The Type O Negative Shirt That Was Actually Just Embarrassing
This shirt featured a design that I can only describe as “aggressively inappropriate.” Peter Steele had a particular sense of humor, and this shirt exemplified it with imagery combining religious iconography and sexual content in ways that would make even hardened pornographers say “perhaps we’ve gone too far.” I wore it exactly twice in public. The first time, a woman at a record store told me it was the most offensive thing she’d ever seen and that I should be ashamed. The second time, I wore it to a local metal show where even the guy with “SATAN IS LORD” tattooed on his forehead thought it was “a bit much.” It spent the rest of its life wadded up in the back of a drawer, too offensive to wear but somehow too expensive to throw away. I finally used it as an oil rag while changing my car’s oil in 2001, which felt like an appropriately ignoble end.
## 1. The Custom Airbrushed Shirt That Haunts My Dreams
This wasn’t even an official band shirt, which makes it infinitely worse. In 1994, I paid an airbrush artist at the mall (first red flag) to create a custom shirt featuring the logos of all my favorite bands in a “metal collage.” The result was a visual catastrophe that looked like the bedroom wall of a serial killer with graphic design aspirations. Slayer, Pantera, Death, Sepultura, and about twelve other logos were haphazardly arranged around a central skull with flames shooting out of its eyes (my specific request, God help me). The piece de resistance was my last name airbrushed across the shoulders like a sports jersey, as if I were a player on Team Bad Decisions.
I wore this abomination to a major festival where I was covering bands FOR WORK. Multiple publicists visibly reassessed letting me near their artists. The photographer from Metal Hammer actively moved away from me during the press pit. A member of Machine Head (I won’t say who) pointed at my shirt while onstage and made the universal “what the fuck?” face. The worst part? I thought the negative reactions were because people were intimidated by my metal credibility. It took a brutally honest girlfriend later that year to explain that I looked “like the before picture in a public service announcement about taste.”
The shirt mysteriously disappeared during a move in 1997. I suspect my mother, who was helping me pack, seized the opportunity to destroy it. If so, Mom, I owe you a debt I can never repay. If that shirt had survived to the social media age, my career would be unsalvageable.
The box of shirts went straight to donation after my storage unit excavation, except for a select few that I kept for purely nostalgic reasons. The White Zombie shirt (now properly laundered), a worn-but-dignified Black Sabbath “Master of Reality” shirt, and ironically, that Coal Chamber jersey, which has somehow come back around to being so unfashionable it’s almost fashionable again.
Looking back at these sartorial disasters, I’m struck not by embarrassment (well, not only embarrassment) but by the earnestness they represent. Every cringeworthy shirt was a passionate declaration of identity, a flag planted in the cultural landscape saying “THIS is who I am!” The fact that “who I was” changed approximately every six months just made my closet more archaeologically interesting.
And if you’re a young person reading this while wearing a shirt that your older self will one day find mortifying—good. That’s exactly as it should be. Our embarrassing band shirts aren’t just fashion mistakes; they’re documentary evidence that we once cared enough about something to wear it emblazoned across our chests, consequences be damned.
Just maybe avoid wearing the satanic ones to family Thanksgiving. Trust me on this one.