Metal Reviews

i mean, how does it effect your opinion about a band if the lyrics suck badly, but you love the music?

personally, it really doesn't bother me.
i only check the song writing of my favorite bands, if it's good, it only makes me happier. if it turned out to be bad, i just stop reading but still absolutely enjoy the music.

but maybe it's just because i'm not a native English speaker, so it's easy for me to ignore (...the already harsh and distorted sound in most cases)

if a bands lyrics are about killing women and raping babies i wont listen to them. period. i hate brutal fag death metal that's like that.

if the lyrics are well written it's a plus, if the lyrics are terrible it's a turn off but if the music is really that great i still might listen to it.

If the lyrics are about raping women and butchering snails with handgrenads chances are the band is really fucking extreme. Even if the lyrics are incredibly hyperbolic over-the-top nonsensical its still preferable to the warm and fuzzy bullshit written by Agalloch, WITTR, Liturgy, and all of the other hack bands polluting the black/death scene.

They don't usually make or break a song for me but it's always a great bonus if bands can accompany good music with good lyrics.

Honestly i don't really pay attention to them in most of my songs but some songs the lyrics mean allot to me.

I couldn't care less. Except for ballads.

your such an elitist Steve, there's nothing wrong with there lyrics, obviously you don't understand how emotional black metal is and how it doesn't need to be all satanic or w/e but as for the death metal part i can understand what your saying a little more.

The Agalloch I remember uses lyrics that involve a lot of natural landscapes. Sentimental sometimes, sure, but a lot better than some shit about raping nuns or whatever.

exactly.

Lyrics are important because they provide the emotional framework for the music. I'm also a language nerd, so clever use of words makes me happy. Caveat: I don't normally read lyric sheets, so this only applies to bands whose vocals have understandable words.

In practice there's a handful of bands whose lyrics take their music to a higher level of awesome (La Dispute, These Arms Are Snakes, Trophy Scars come to mind), then a lot of bands where I'm pretty neutral about their lyrics (Neurosis, The Mars Volta, Sahg), then a small minority of bands whose lyrics are bad enough that they make me like the music less. Usually when there's something bad about a band I won't listen to them... so I guess bad lyrics can ruin a band for me.

Yes we need more lyrics about running naked through the forest, especially with sappy overlong ballads about how their hearts are breaking because the polar ice caps are melting. There is a reason why this band is derided by the black/death scene as pussified hipster crap for the vaginas who can't fathom actual intensity in the music, so they have to have a goff band dilute the formula and introduce these hipster elements thereby making the music more palatable. Oh well, shitty band is shitty.

Clearly you fail to see the beauty of nunraping. How sad.

You really a fucking idiot. And you play pokeman. Grow the fuck up.

Its ok old man I clearly need more The mantle to make me more mature, whilst I sip on a bit of Pabst blue ribbon gazing at the sunset wishing I was running nude in the Cascadian mountains. You need to change your name to Empresscastrated.

shakespeare wrote about raping a woman and cutting out her tongue and cutting off her hands so that she couldn't tell anyone who did it

fuck that dude

Clearly I need more Heaven Shall Burn in my life. You are a child, plain and simple. A worse poster than Ken, even. Get banned again.

Grow up dude.

'Pokeman'?

Find me one lyric about polar ice caps melting. And I'm not sure how Agalloch's meditations on nature are any different than some of the stuff contained in early Norwegian stuff that embraced the frigid climate of the region. Cascadia just happens to be a much more serene and majestic place. Emperor probably wishes they had covers as beautiful as Panopticon's.