Murderdolls landed in Louder Sound's ranking of the 10 best heavy metal supergroups, a fresh reminder that Joey Jordison's side project still carries weight years after it split apart. The inclusion puts the horror punk rock band back into the supergroup conversation on the strength of its lineup, not just its catalog.
Joey Jordison's 2002 project
2002 is when Jordison formed Murderdolls during Slipknot's scheduled hiatus after its 2001 touring cycle, with Wednesday 13 on lead vocals, Tripp Eisen on lead guitar, Eric Griffin on bass, and Ben Graves on drums. That first version was built like a true supergroup: players arrived with outside identities already in place, and the band leaned on that tension from the start.
Beyond the Valley of the Murderdolls arrived that same year through Roadrunner Records and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. The band toured extensively until 2004, then reunited in 2010 for Women and Children Last before playing its final live show at the Soundwave Festival and disbanding in 2011.
Wednesday 13 on first reaction
Wednesday 13 has already described the opening problem for any supergroup with a famous name attached: at the first live performance, some people in the crowd knew Jordison and did not know the rest of the band. “They had no idea who I was, or anybody else in the band,” he said. “It was all 'Joey, Joey, Joey!' Some of them did not like us, and they let us know.”
That early reaction fits the odd place Murderdolls still occupy. They were major enough to land a No. 1 on Billboard Heatseekers Albums, but they never placed a song on the main Billboard charts, which makes the Louder Sound ranking less about mainstream chart power than about how the band fits the supergroup definition itself.
What Louder Sound is weighing
The ranking also gives Murderdolls a second-life metric that charts do not capture: legacy through association. Jordison brought Slipknot history, Wednesday 13 brought Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13, and the lineups around them gave the project enough identity to survive a 2004 touring run, a 2010 reunion, and a final 2011 bow at Soundwave Festival.
For readers, the practical takeaway is simple: Murderdolls are being judged now as part of a broader heavy metal supergroup class, not as a one-hit chart story. The unanswered issue is the criterion behind the list, because the band's placement makes more sense as a measure of cultural footprint and lineup pedigree than of mainstream singles success.
