How can you "deeply love" metal and say that bad lyrics are the norm for the genre?
I think bad lyrics are the norm for most genres. Decent lyricists - that is to say lyricists whose words can stand up to their contemporaries in theatre, screenwriting, poetry, and novels - are pretty thin on the ground.
But, as I said before, that's very welcome. I don't really
want clever lyrics in heavy metal. Take an album like
Vulgar Display Of Power. Phil Anselmo's lyrics are just a torrent of ludicrous self-aggrandisation. But it's fine because that's what the album's for. It wouldn't work if each track was a heartfelt treatise in the vein of
Death of a Salesman - it's primal, fist in the air howling nonsense. It's great! But lyrically, you're not really going to find anything that hits you right in the heart and makes you think "oh my god, I've been getting life wrong all this time", just in the same way that you wouldn't pick up a Saul Bellow novel and expect to freak out to killer riffs and a crazy, howling redneck.
I generally feel like 'good' lyrics get in the way of what heavy metal is good at: raw, unexamined explosions of emotion. You know. You listen to Jarvis Cocker's lyrics and you can practically hear him chuckling to himself about how f___king wry and insightful and clever he's being. Urgh. I hate that. I'd much rather listen to Hetfield singing about Cthulu, and sea monsters, regardless of how absurd it is.
The only exception I can think of to this is Clutch - who aren't really metal - where somehow Neil Fallon manages to write lyrics that are witty, literate, original and thought-provoking without coming across like a pompous jerk. But you know. For the most part, I prefer the straight-up sincerity you tend to get with metal, even though it often comes at the expense of good writing.
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fdog9
15 years ago
OK---I see what you are trying to say.
But I think you mean that metal isn't pretentious. Being sincere in your lyrics is a good thing.
I think that the best metal bands have produced good meaningful lyrics. They do stand up to lyrics in other genres.
There are are few anti-war songs better than "War Pigs" or "One".
"Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest really gets to the root causes of crime.
Just a few examples.
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Kumikameli
14 years ago
what you're doing there is picking simple popular metal bands and pitting them against the most well respected writers in history
there's tons and tons of absolute garbage in theatre, screenwriting, poetry and novels
harry potter is a much better comparison to pantera than death of a salesman
if you're gonna pick the best of literature, pit them against the best of lyrics and i think you'll find there really isn't much of a gap
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