Triangles Everywhere
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 12:01AM 
The other day, my friend Sean came to visit and brought me a little present: the Gary Moore record Corridors of Power. And when I say record, I mean it: vinyl. So I'm looking over the record and I say "What was with all the triangles in the 80s?"
Boom.
Sean and my husband both looked at me with wide eyes. They knew I'd found an awesome topic for this blog.
Seriously, what is with all the damn triangles? Half of the 80s logos were made out of triangles - or at least looked like them. A few of Gary's covers featured triangles. Def Leppard most certainly used triangles (think of the D's in their name for starters)...not to mention the blatant triangle on Hysteria. Then there is Stryper. The classic Stryper discs mostly use triangles...but even the more recent Murder By Pride features a man sitting in a way to resemble a triangle. Iron Maiden uses a triangle shape to form the "O" in Iron...ditto for the “A” and “D” in Maiden. The cover of Motley's Shout at the Devil is a pentagram: a lot of triangles surrounded by a circle.
Van Halen's Best of Both Worlds uses Eddie Van Halen's famed red, white and black stripes to form triangles. Heck the Van Halen logo itself looks like a long triangle. If you want to get modern, the cover of the Chickenfoot debut is a squared-in peace sign which forms...you guessed it...triangles.
For Stryper, the triangles make sense. Upright triangles are said to represent divinity. Others have said the way a triangle points even represents gender: an upright triangle is male while the inverse is female. A Star of David is both upright and inverse triangles put together...and on and on.
Maybe the most iconic use of a triangle on an album cover is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. So simple, yet it says so much. Maybe the bands we love meant nothing by their triangles although I suspect this is not the case. Triangles are a strong shape, literally indicating three sides to every story. Why do you think so many bands - especially rock bands - gravitated toward triangles?
Reader Comments (4)
I smell conspiracy. Haha.
TNT's logo is triangle dominant, too.
Check out the KIX logo on the cover of "Midnight Dynamite". Yes, even our beloved KIX was briefly "triangulated", too!
This post actually made me go through my entire CD collection in search of triangles and I will comment here this weekend with a list and my take on "The History of The Heavy Metal Triangle" then.