On his seventh solo album After the War, Gary Moore included the song “Led Clones,” which took aim at Whitesnake and other ‘80s bands heavily influenced by Led Zeppelin. The 1989 track featured guest vocals by Ozzy Osbourne (maybe they should have targeted Sabbath clones instead of Zep clones).

Some of the barbs in the song are clever but nonspecific: “Led clones / You’ve stolen from the houses of the holy / You’ve rolled into the kingdom of the sane.” But one line is directed at Whitesnake and references their song “Still of the Night.” “Got to get it on / From the still of the night / But you’re gettin’ it wrong / You know it ain’t right.”

Though they were firmly rooted in melodic, sulky, self-deprecating Brit-rock, The Smiths delivered an abundance of sharp, cynical lyrics that have endeared them to open-minded listeners who enjoy nasty wordplay.

The Smiths’ best diss was “Frankly, Mr. Shankly,” which appeared on their 1986 album The Queen is Dead. The song was an attack against Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis, who the band blamed for withholding royalties.

In the song, frontman Morrissey addressed Travis as “Mr. Shankley.”: “I must speak frankly, Mr. Shankly/ Oh, give us your money.” Yeah, it’s kinda vague at first. Then, Morrissey delivers the money shot. “I didn’t realize you wrote such bloody awful poetry, Mr. Shankly.”

Before The Smiths got popular, Travis sent a batch of his poetry to Morrissey for constructive criticism.

He’s far better known as a shredder than a lyricist, but that didn’t stop Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen from dissing his former bassist Marcel Jacob on the track “Liar” from the 1986 Rising Force album Trilogy.

The guitar legend was miffed that Marcel, who played with Malmsteen from 1981 to 1985, gave an old demo tape they both played on, Birth of the Sun, to a new label who released it without Malmsteen’s consent.

In response, the guitarist lashed out: “You came to me, you said you were my friend / I shared my art and my mind, You found it easier to steal than create/ Then call it yours, though it’s mine.”

In the early ‘90s, Pavement were deemed the torch bearers of slacker indie rock, and while they took exception to the notion that they were lazy or apathetic, they sure seemed to oppose the capitalistic structure of corporate labels and big arena rock bands.

On the song “Range Life,” from the 1994 album Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus took a lackadaisical jab at Smashing Pumpkins:

“Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins / Nature kids, I / They don’t have no function / I don’t understand what they mean / And I could really give a fuck.”

Pavement told the press the diss was meant in jest, but Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was reportedly so angry about the lyrics he exerted his corporate rock star power to prevent Pavement from being on the 1994 lineup for Lollapalooza.

After lots of banter and buzz, British label E.M.I. offered the Sex Pistols a deal that included a £40,000 signing bonus. They also promised to release the band’s single “Anarchy in the U.K.” a month after the deal was cut. However, when the band’s name sparked controversy among executives and shareholders, E.M.I. balked, failing to fully endorse the single.

Tensions escalated, then E.M.I. completely severed ties with the band. The Pistols were briefly picked up by A&M before Warner took over the contract for the band’s only album. When Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols came out in October 1977, it featured the extra song “E.M.I.,” which pulled no punches:

“There is no reason why, E.M.I. / I tell you it was all a frame, E.M.I. / They only did it ’cause of fame, E.M.I. / …Hallo E.M.I., goodbye A&M.”

In his prime, Ritchie Blackmore was a hellraiser and control freak. He also was one of the best, most engrossing hard rock / metal guitarists and played with a level of hunger and agility that blew away most of his peers. However, his people skills didn’t match his musical abilities — not even close.

Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan was especially off-put by Blackmore’s rock star-isms and, though he was the band’s most famous vocalist, he only lasted for four albums, quitting after the group’s seventh record, 1973’s Who Do We Think We Are. Of course, before he bailed, Gillan took a subtle swipe at Blackmore’s condescension and dress sense on “Smooth Dancer”:

“Black suede, I sense your mockery / I tried to go along with you / But you’re black and I know just what to do / You’re a smooth dancer / But it’s alright ‘cause I’m a freelancer.”

Gillan also took a more personal shot at Blackmore with the lines, “You can never break me / Though you try to make me think you’re magical / I think you’re crazy / Your two-timing ways / They don’t bother me none / You’d better do it right because one day or night / I’m gonna walk to freedom.”

Of course, two years after Gillan left the band, Blackmore bailed and formed Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio. Gillan and Blackmore both returned to Deep Purple for 1984’s Perfect Strangers and remained together for another five years before Blackmore again disappeared into the night.

Between 2008 and 2015 Asking Alexandria guitarist Ben Bruce and vocalist Danny Worsnop seemed inseparable both as bandmates and party pals. Then in 2015, Worsnop abruptly quit to focus his energy on another group, We Are Harlot.

At first, Bruce was incensed and AA’s future seemed in jeopardy. Of course, the band persevered with new vocalist Denis Stoff, but Asking Alexandria’s fourth album, 2016’s The Black, is full of bitter and biting lyrics about Worsnop. One of the harshest is found in “Sometimes It Ends,” which conveys how furious and betrayed Bruce felt when Worsnop quit:

“You’re going down, you’re on your own / Blow your o-o-o-o-wn / This hate is endless / Tonight I think I’ll cross the line / I’ll cross the fucking line / I’ll cross the fucking li-i-i-ine / The hate is relentless.”

It was a short lived feud. By October, 2016 Worsnop was back in the band and in 2017 Asking Alexandria released album number five, simply titled Asking Alexandria.

Although Tarja Turunen co-founded Nightwish in 1996 with multi-instrumentalist Tuomas Holopainen and guitarist Emppu Vuorinen, the multi-octave vocalist gradually distanced from her bandmates.

In 2005 she was dismissed due to personal differences. To add insult to injury, Nightwish smacked down their former singer with the song “Bye Bye Beautiful” from their sixth album, 2007’s Dark Passion Play. In the track, Nightwish lash out Turunen for being controlling and insensitive:

“Did we get this far just to feel your hate? / Did we play to become only pawns in the game? / How blind can you be, don’t you see? / You chose the long road but we’ll be waiting / Bye bye beautiful.”

Evanescence have never been mistaken for a fury-laden or vengeful band. But when Seether frontman Shaun Morgan dumped Evanescence singer Amy Lee in 2005, following a two-year relationship, Lee couldn’t keep her calm or stay silent.

After Morgan checked into a rehab facility in 2006, Lee wrote the breakup tune “Call me When You’re Sober,” which appeared on Evanescence’s second album, 2006’s The Open Door: “Couldn’t take the blame, sick with shame / Must be exhausting to lose your own game /
Selfishly hated, no wonder you’re jaded / You can’t play the victim this time and you’re too late.”

In interviews, Lee openly discussed her motivation for writing the song, which left Morgan feeling victimized. “People would say to me, ‘Yeah, man, I know what you’re going through,’ and I was like, ‘No, I don’t think you do,'” Morgan told MTV in 2007. “’Your ex-girlfriend didn’t write a song about you, that millions of people have heard, saying you’re a bad guy. As soon as that happens, buddy, come up and tell me you know what I’m going through.'”

As heartbroken as Mr. Morgan was, the band’s 2007 album Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces didn’t feature a response to the Evanescence’s diss track, but Morgan sure vented in the press. “In any relationship, I don’t think it’s right to say and do those things when people break up, and she obviously felt the need to go out there and make me sound like a complete asshole,” Morgan told MTV. “What can I do? I just refuse to lower myself to that level.”

In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center (P.M.R.C.) — a citizenship group spearheaded by Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, the wives of then-Sen. Al Gore and Treasury Secretary James Baker — took objection to the graphic subject matter and profanity in music and worked with the heads of the record industry to come up with a rating system for albums deemed sexually explicit, violent, satanic or that endorsed drugs or alcohol.

In the end, the P.M.R.C. settled for a “Parental Advisory” label that was placed on albums that contained any of the above dubious content, but they couldn’t restrict the sales of the explicit material to minors thanks to the First Amendment. And, in retrospect, the P.M.R.C. inadvertently boosted the sales of many artists whose albums were labeled since it’s human nature to take interest in art viewed as taboo.

Even so, in 1987 Megadeth released the anti-P.M.R.C. song “Hook in Mouth” on their album So Far, So Good… So What! Seven lines in the song started with a letter that, in sequence, spelled out “FREEDOM” before frontman Dave Mustaine took a direct shot at Tipper Gore and Co.

“F is for fighting/R is for red, ancestors’ blood in battles they’ve shed / E, we elect them/ E, we eject them, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave / D, for your dying / O, your overture/ M, they will cover your grave with manure / This spells out freedom / It means nothing to me as long as there’s a P.M.R.C.”

Take that, Washington wives.

The most metallic song on Nine Inch Nails’ 1999 album The Fragile, “Starfuckers, Inc.” is a riff-heavy stomper reminiscent of Ministry. NIN frontman Trent Reznor wrote the track about his former sidekick, Marilyn Manson, whose career he helped launch. But after an abundance of drugs, alcohol, fame and ego, the two industrial rock stars had a falling out.

So, in interviews, Manson downplayed Reznor’s considerable contribution to the band’s popularity and left Reznor’s label imprint Nothing to sign directly with Nothing’s parent company, Interscope.

In “Starfuckers, Inc.” Reznor rails, “My god pouts on the cover of the magazine / My god’s a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene… / I’ll be there for you as long as it works for me / I play a game, it’s called insincerity.”

As fiery as it was, the animosity between Reznor and Manson didn’t seem to last too long. By the time Nine Inch Nails was filming a video for “Starfuckers, Inc.” the two rivals had shaken hands and made nice. Manson agreed to make a cameo in the clip and joined Nine Inch Nails on stage in New York to perform the song. The live track appeared as an Easter egg on the 2002 NIN DVD And All That Could Have Been.

When Trent Reznor called Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst a “moron” in a 1999 interview with Rolling Stone, Durst, who had been a fan of NIN, was hurt. The rapper was even more crushed when Reznor mocked his destructive Woodstock ‘99 performance: “Let Fred Durst surf a piece of plywood up my ass,” Trent said in the article.

So Limp Bizkit cobbled together the diss track “Hot Dog,” which slapped back at Reznor: “You wanna fuck me like an animal / You’d like to burn me on the inside / You like to think that I’m a perfect drug / Just know that nothing you do will bring you closer to me.”

Clearly, Fred thought the multiple references to NIN songs were amusing, but Reznor got the last laugh. When the album featuring “Hot Dog,” Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water came out, Limp Bizkit had to credit Trent Reznor as a co-writer since the song featured lyrics from NIN’s single “Closer.”

In 2004, Ronnie Radke co-formed the metalcore band Escape the Fate, which was signed to Epitaph Records in 2006. That same year, however, Radke was involved in a fight between six and eight people.

Radke’s friend Chase Rider pulled a gun during the fight and shot 18-year-old Michael Allen Cook three times, killing him. Rider got off by claiming self-defense. Radke, who pled guilty to battery with substantial bodily harm, wasn’t so lucky. He was placed on probation for five years and when he failed to appear at a mandatory meeting with his probation officer, he was sentenced to 2-and-a-half years in prison.

While Radke was behind bars, Escape the Fate hired ex- Blessthefall singer Craig Mabbitt. When Radke got out of prison in December 2010, he formed the new band Falling in Reverse. At the time, Radke was majorly pissed at Escape the Fate and Mabbitt. He finally got the chance to retaliate on Falling in Reverse’s 2011 debut album The Drug in Me is You.

The second track, “Tragic Magic,” wastes no time in blasting Escape the Fate: “I dug a hole ten miles wide / So I could throw all of you inside.” Then, Radke telescopes onto Mabbitt, who he accused of stealing his image. “You’re such a dumb fuck / You need to shut up / You bring a picture of me every time you get a haircut / Impostor!”

Between their formation in 2007 and their demise in 2013, Westerville, Ohio, metalcore band Attack Attack! went through seven vocalists. One of the most well known was Austin Carlile, who left in 2008 due to personal differences and co-formed Of Mice & Men.

In response, his ex-bandmates wrote the diss track “AC-130,” which appeared on their self-titled 2010 album: “You think you could be God? / Who appointed you judge? You take yourself too seriously / Keep building your walls up higher / Then you can be your own king / You’re better off dead!”

There was no way Austin Carlile was gonna take Attack Attack!’s attack (“AC-130”) lying down. As he developed as a performer and songwriter in his new band Of Mice & Men, he reveled in what he viewed as the stagnation of his former bandmates.

In his diss track “Ohioisonfire,” he gloated about his success and directly addressed Attack Attack!’s “AC-130”: “I’m not better off dead / I’m here, alive, and I’m relentless.”

Carlile also gets in some of his own jabs: “You’re going nowhere so I’m taking you with me / Myself, and I is all I’ve got and I don’t give a fuck / What you say this time, you think you know about me? / Well, I think you’re nothing, false words fall dead / I won’t pretend / I wish you were dead.”

One of the greatest deathcore rivalries, The Acacia Strain Vs. Emmure, began around 2007. Although the two bands started out as friends, beef quickly heated up as soon as members of The Acacia Strain griped to the press that Emmure stole their sound.

In 2008, The Acacia Strain released “Skynet,” a song that guaranteed the two bands would soon be duking it out. “If you think like a whore, then you’re a fucking whore,” began vocalist Vincent Bennett.

Then, he got really ugly.

“Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery / Why would you ever want to be like me?/ We are all someone else’s terrible idea / If you catch the evil twin then why would you keep it alive? / If you feel the fucking daggers / Then why not just step aside? / You are all bastard children and you’ve taken it all the wrong way / Keep fooling yourself with your unappreciation.”

Needless to say, Emmure didn’t appreciate the accusations and overt hostility and it wouldn’t be long until the metal beef turned bloody.

Emmure frontman Frankie Palmeri has proven he can take a punch, but he’s not gonna let it go without a comeback. After Acacia Strain dissed Emmure on the song “Skynet,” Palmeri declared war. Not content just to bash The Acacia Strain with boasts, he hit below the belt on “R2Deepthroat,” which was on 2009’s Felony:

“So much for plagiarism / So much for you to waste your breath running your mouth/ A rat race to the top / Sore losers never satisfied with what they’ve got / Your career is flipping, so do me a favor / The next time you see her ask your girl what my dick tastes like.”

Emmure also issued the tasteless T-shirt, which read, “Keep calm and ask your girl what my dick tastes like.”

In August 2014, Palmeri explained his motivation for skewering Bennett and his wife on the Jamey Jasta podcast. “I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna basically get on your level and top you and just completely diss you even harder. And I did it by mentioning a fellatio experience with his now current wife. It comes from a personal place for me.”

On Sept. 13, 2009, at an Emmure show in Northern Lights in Clifton Park, New York, Bennett crashed the party and angrily asked Palmeri what his problem was. The vocalist responded with a sucker punch and a bout of fisticuffs ensued.

Palmeri said it was just what both groups needed. “Here’s the thing I think that we both gained from it,” he told Jasta. “The hype and the tension just built and built and built and when we actually fought it was like the biggest thing ever… We squashed the beef… so it’s kind of become a dead subject. We’re totally cool with those guys [now].”

As if to prove the former rivals had become buds, they hit the road together in the summer and fall of 2014 on The Eternal Enemies Tour. And not a single punch was thrown.

When Stone Temple Pilots released their 2001 album Shangri-La Dee Da, no one in the band copped to the subject of “Too Cool Queenie” or even spoke ill of Courtney Love in the press.

Later, however, Scott Weiland revealed in his autobiography that he penned the track about Love when she was at odds with the surviving members of Nirvana. A glance at the lyrics make the confession all too obvious:

“There was this boy / He played in a rock-n-roll band / And he wasn’t half-bad / At saving the world / She said he could do no right / So he took his life / His story is true.”

Others have blamed Love for Kurt Cobain’s death, but few have done so quite as flagrantly as STP.

After Kurt Cobain’s tragic suicide, Courtney Love became locked in a battle with her late husband’s bandmates regarding who had the rights to Nirvana’s royalties and how the money would be split. Novoselic fought from the sidelines, but Grohl and Love were more directly involved. Love spoke out in interviews about how Grohl was greedy and undeserving and Grohl lashed out in his lyrics, especially in the song “I’ll Stick Around” from Foo Fighters’ 1995 self-titled debut.

In the chorus Grohl shouts, “I don’t owe you anything,” which is a reference to both Grohl’s belief that Love shouldn’t benefit in any way from Nirvana’s songs and a declaration that Love had nothing to do with Grohl’s success in Nirvana.

For years, Grohl wouldn’t cop to the meaning of the song. Then, in a 2009 interview with Paul Brannigan for the unofficial Grohl biography, This is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl,Grohl admitted the song was about Love. “I’ve denied it for 15 years, but I’m finally coming out and saying it. Just read the fucking words!”

Indeed: “Every word I said was true and that you’ll see / How could it be I’m the only one who sees your rehearsed insanity? / I still refused all the methods you abused / It’s alright if you’re confused / Let me be / I’ve been around all the pawns you’ve gagged and bound / They’ll come back and knock you down and I’ll be free.”

Love later told Howard Stern that another Foo Fighters song, “Stacked Actors,” from 1999’s There is Nothing Left to Lose, is also about her. Grohl responded to NME, “I wrote ‘Stacked Actors’ about everything that is fake and everything that is plastic and glamorous and unreal, so if that pertains to anyone that comes to mind, then there you go.”

In the wake of Dimebag Darrell’s murder, William Grim, a contributing editor for the conservative website The Iconoclast wrote a vicious, vile, ignorant and elitist essay about Dime, Pantera fans and metal.

“The squalor, inhumanity, filth (both in the metaphorical and hygienic senses), depravity, ugliness and ignorance of everything that heavy metal represents (Like rap, I cannot use the noble term music in a description of heavy metal) creates a mindset among its devotees in which Mr. Abbott`s assassination was an event that was all but waiting to happen,” wrote Grim.

He added, “It was highly amusing, and also terribly sad, to watch on television fans conducting a ‘vigil’ for the slain Mr. Abbott outside of the Alrosa Villa. It was an assemblage of ignorant, semi-human barbarians who were filthy in attire and manner, intellectually incoherent and above all else, hideously ugly to the point of physical deformity. Here is a definite case in which the outer appearance of these ‘fans’ accurately represented the hideousness of their souls. That the physical deformity of their ugliness was self-inflicted makes the spiritual tragedy of their misspent lives all the more tragic. But one can see why the heavy metal fans so closely identified with Mr. Abbott. He was an ignorant, barbaric, untalented possessor of a guitar and large amplifier system. Freakish in appearance, more simian than human, he was the performer of a type of ‘entertainment’ that can be likened only to a gorilla on PCP. Lacking subtlety, wit, style, emotional range and anything approaching even the smallest iota of intellectual or musical interest, Mr. Abbott was part of a generation that has confused sputum with art and involuntary reflex actions with emotion.”

After reading Grim’s brutal diatribe, Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn couldn’t stay silent. After screaming his lungs out, he grabbed a pen and started a vitriolic response, which turned into the song “Aesthetics of Hate” from Machine Head’s 2007 album The Blackening.

About Grim, Flynn wrote in part: “Oh, the words I read on the screen left me fucking sick / I felt the hatred rising, you son of a bitch / You branded us pathetic for our respect / But he made us driven, deep reverence far beyond the rest / For the love of brother I will sing this fucking words / Aesthetics of hate, I hope you burn in hell.”

Half mad and always angry, Guns N’ Roses’ frontman Axl Rose honed the chip on his shoulder with “Get in the Ring” from 1991’s Use Your Illusion II. Although the song started out as Duff McKagan’s “Why Do You Look at Me When You Hate Me,” it quickly morphed into the hostile “Get in the Ring” once Rose wrote the lyrics and spoken interludes.

He starts by flexing his paranoia, lashing out at jealous backstabbers, smack talkers and groupies. Then Axl really lets it fly with a direct attack against members of the media he accused of spreading lies about him and the band.

He doesn’t just make hostile generalizations, he names the writers: Andy Secher at Hit Parader, Circus magazine, Mick Wall at Kerrang! and former SPIN owner Bob Guccione Jr., son of Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione.

Axl’s rant against Bob Jr. displays the singer at his most unhinged: “Bob Guccione Jr. at Spin / What, you pissed off ’cause your dad gets more pussy than you? / Fuck you, suck my fucking dick / You be ripping off the fucking kids while they be paying their hard-earned money to read about the bands they want to know about / Printing lies, starting controversy, you want to antagonize me? / Antagonize me, motherfucker, get in the ring, motherfucker and I’ll kick your bitchy little ass, punk!”

Now, there’s the Axl Rose we know and love.

Back in 2009, Godsmack supported Motley Crue on the Crüe Fest 2 tour, and soon a rivalry began that lasted more than six years. According to Godsmack vocalist Sully Erna, Crüe bassist and songwriter Nikki Sixx disrespected Godsmack and treated them “like shit.” Godsmack smacked back at Sixx with the song “Cryin’ Like A Bitch,” which was about Nikki. The track appeared on Godsmack’s fifth album, 2010’s The Oracle, and included the lines, “Blinded by your sacred faded past times / Only time is your enemy / Granted a second chance to prove that your arrogance is stronger than you’ll ever be / It’s stronger than you can be / … And you wonder why no one can stand you / There’s no denying you were cryin’ like a bitch.” In 2015, Erna reiterated his disdain for Sixx on the podcast “The Jasta Show.” “I’ll say it straight out,” Erna said. “I’ve never met a bigger fucking dick in my life than Nikki Sixx. He’s a douchebag. He’s straight-up a fucking douche, and I don’t give a fuck what he says… I don’t know what his deal is, man, but I can just tell you that he is the most… I don’t even know what the word is for it. I’ve never met anyone like that. He’s just so pompous and egotistical and he feels like he’s still on top of the world. He just thinks he’s so relevant, and he’s just an old, fat washed-up has-been.” In response to Erna’s rant, Sixx replied on Facebook, “Poor baby.”

A hate anthem to rival Slayer’s “Payback,” (you know, the tirade of rage with the lyrics “I’m going to tear your fucking eyes out / Rip your fucking flesh off / Beat you till you’re just a fucking lifeless carcass”) “War Nerve,” which appeared on Pantera’s 1996 album is one of Pantera’s most brutal songs. Unlike Slayer’s rant, which is a generalized declaration of aggression “War Nerve” is primarily directed at the media, which vocalist Phil Anselmo felt victimized him and always tried to sensationalize stories about the band, even CNN: “For every fucking second the pathetic media pisses on me and judges what I am in one paragraph / Look here, fuck you all / Expect the worse, you bleeding heart, but kill me first before it starts / Yes my cock is getting hard, we are born different after all/ Invite mayhem, produce weapons, shoot out, burn down / No CNN or media now.” In an interview with Classic Rock, electronic artist and metal fan Moby said “War Nerve” featured, “the most unrelentingly evil lyrics you can imagine. They make church-burning Norwegian Satanists sound like Sunday school teachers. It’s just that whole vituperative expression of anger and rage.”