Death Metal English (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Death Metal English (2013)

invisibleoranges.com

347 pointscdme107 comments

This article was written by my good friend, bandmate, and former co-worker Doug Moore!

Doug is best known as the vocalist for extreme death metal noise maniacs Pyrrhon. https://pyrrhonband.bandcamp.com/album/abscess-time

He is also the vocalist for the death metal band Glorious Depravity, in which I drum. This makes best use of his DME skills. https://gloriousdepravity.bandcamp.com/album/ageless-violenc.... Look at the lyrics to “Ocean of Scabs” to see a master at work.

He’s also the vocalist of the experimental black metal band Scarcity. https://scarcity-nyc.bandcamp.com/album/aveilut

And let’s not forget his epic death/doom project Weeping Sores. He writes all the songs (everything except violin) and handles guitar, bass, and vocals on the recording. I had the pleasure of mixing this one. https://weepingsores.bandcamp.com/album/weeping-sores

Finally, the HM crowd will appreciate that he — like everyone else in Glorious Depravity — is a software engineer. He works for the fitness tech startup Proteus Motion, https://www.proteusmotion.com. I worked there with him for many years. He’s a very smart, talented person and I feel fortunate to be his friend and collaborator.

Who are the lyrics for and what is expected of the audience? Are they purely artistic or do fans usually read the lyrics at some point and appreciate them and do they ever understand them in the song?

At least when I listen to death metal, the vocals are simply another instrument in the mix. And as such, the lyrics add to the ambience rather than being a focus of the song.

With a bit of familiarity with a singer, you can usually start to figure out what they're saying. And not all bands are as incomprehensible as others - Ensiferum for instance is pretty clear as far as these things go, for instance.

If you want great lyrics that make loads of sense and are easily understood, listen to the band after which the whole genre was named: Death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8256VJ4hkJU

If i were allowed only one metal track to take on an island, i'd chose this one.

…for some value of “easily understood”. ;)

His singing is clear, compared to the usual guttural growl prevalent in Death Metal. His lyrics are high art IMHO but still:

Do you feel what I feel?

The philosopher You know so much about nothing at all

So you preach about how I'm supposed to be Yet you don't know your own sexuality

I personally enjoy not understanding the lyrics, but just rarely recognizing some coherence in the noise. Bonus points for bands, like Anaal Nathrakh, who don't publish their lyrics in the first place, so even lyric sites have just a bunch of ??? where nobody understands what's going on[0]. There's also bands like Swarrrm, where there are vocals, but practically no lyrics exist.

[0] http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/anaalnathrakh/eschaton.html

As per a member of Undead Corporation, when asked what are the lyrics to one particular song, since there's no associated lyrics sheet:

"We don't actually remember"

I've got a Warcollapse album that actually comes with a lyrics sheet, but under the one song it just says "try to figure this one out. We can't." Which seems fitting for a song called Drunk, Collapsed, Destroyed.

People do read them, quite often, and once you're familiar with the vocal style you can usually make them out yourself with varying degrees of accuracy.

Amon Amarth encouraged fans at a festival to sing along even if they don't know the lyrics: "It's death metal, no one would tell the difference!"

But by the way their lyrics are in plain English and make as much sense as you can reasonably expect from a rock band, and vocal style is on the more comprehensible end of death metal spectrum.

Amon Amarth really isn't a good example, because many of their songs have perfectly comprehensible lyrics, even by people who perhaps aren't native English speakers (which the band themselves aren't)

Someone who’s committed to learning them will understand them, so that usually works backwards: someone becomes a fan of a band, they feel motivated and committed enough to learn the lyrics so they can bark along.

Screamed metal vocals are a rhythm instrument and intensity amplifier. They serve as a focal point for the atmosphere that a band is trying to create. They provide a path for the audience to connect with music in a visceral way. It’s akin to listening to music in another language. I don’t need to understand Italian to appreciate opera or comprehend the emotion behind any particular moment, the presentation alone is enough when it’s done well.

The lyrics themselves serve different purposes depending on the band, genre, and topic. They often act as a signifier of identity, something that helps readers categorize genre and properly contextualize the complete package. Sometimes they’re just fun for the vocalist to bark, offering some combination of rhythm and sound that lets them perform with the intensity that they’re looking for. Some bands use more personal, meaningful lyrics, at which point they’re poetry. The DME piece is a brilliant glimpse into one kind of death metal lyricism but it’s far from exhaustive where the genre is concerned.

it's a pretty brilliant and sweet - even loving - analysis. I sent it to a lot of friends.

I've made some of my best friends through a shared affinity for metal — I even taught myself to code in part working on web stuff for Cynic and Augury. Doug's projects are all rad.

> Normal English: “You have to mow the lawn”

  Death Metal English: “BRING DOWN THE SCYTHE OF GODS UPON THE NECKS OF THE GREEN-RIBBED LEGIONS AND SWEEP AWAY THEIR WRETCHED BODIES; THOU ART IMPLORED BY ME”

I'd listen to an album of that--while mowing!

That would be the harvest. Funnily enough, Death Metal Englism is also written in THE VOICE.

"His hollow, peculiar voice is represented in the books unquoted ; it is peculiar because since he is a tall skeleton, he has no vocal cords to speak with, and therefore the words enter your head with no involvement from your ears, the books get this across by having his "speech" in small caps."

https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Death

THE SCYTHE OF THE GODS DROWNED IN DEATHLY SILENCE DECREED BY THE LORDS OF THE INFERNAL CASTLE.

(It is banned to mow the lawn here on Sundays, by a municipal bylaw.)

Is it also banned if you don't make noise, like when using a scythe?

> Normal English: “Commuting to work”

> Death Metal English: “TRANSPORTATION OF THE WAGEBOUND UNTO THE NEXUS OF PERPETUAL QUOTIDIAN ENSLAVEMENT”

I can see that one play out very well in a job interview after realising that the job isn't as remote as promised.

The job is remote; there’s a catch, though, that you need to commute to its (sometimes very) remote location.

My current job involved a relocation to another country. Now I know how to call it: a very remote job. :)

It reminds me of that scene at a diner:

Waiter: Can I take your order?

Teenager: I wish to devour the unborn.

Parent: Eggs. He wants eggs.

I need something for the opposite (WFH the majority of the time doesn't really work for me, the company is officially “hybrid” but with all the people I work with almost always elsewhere I'm just remote but in an office with a couple of people on other teams).

Great read. Despite being into death metal for ages, I've never really paid attention to the lyrics. I tend to be overwhelmed by the intensity of the music itself, in a good way.

I did look up the lyrics to Necrophagist many years ago, and they seemed to be really goofy. There's only so many words about mutilated stillborn babies that I want to hear. Perhaps there's also a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek involved, writing these lyrics. Anyway, amazing band.

I saw them live once, in a small standing room only venue. The musicianship on display was insane. Watching Muhammed belt out those vocals while playing extremely technical guitar parts was unforgettable.

Lucky you! Considering that the likelihood of Necro putting out a new record or playing live is almost zero. One can hope though!

Their album Epitaph is what I like to call a "perfect" record, in the way that Aja by Steely Dan is a perfect record.

I understand that Muhammed got his masters in engineering and now works at BMW.

BMW is likely to pay a lot better than gigging.

THE INSPIRATION PENETRATES MY CRANIUM

IT BIDS ME UTTER INFERNAL VERBIAGE IN CONTEMPLATION OF COMPILATION

https://codewithrockstar.com/

>THE INSPIRATION PENETRATES MY CRANIUM

rather: FEROCIOUS PENETRATION OF MY VULNERABLE CRANIUM BY THORNS OF INSPIRATION WICKED MIND'S UNSTABLE BLEH!

\m/

WITNESSING THE CACOPHONIC LORDS OF NECROTIC IRON'S UNHOLY DESECRATION OF THE INNOCENT SAXON TONGUE.

EDIT: mild Baader-Meinhof at the word chronocration, since I only came across the term "the great chronocrator" a couple of weeks ago.

And now this article (and the very comment this is a reply to) are the English-language authorities on the word "chronocration" according to Google.

If it hadn't been for a 1657 French book, this article would have been a Googlewhack when published, too.

I just went from the article itself to searching Google for "chronocration" and then on to this comment from the results, the recursion is METAL.

I like to drink coffee every morning... or should I say THE RIVERS OF DARK ELIXIR COURSE THROUGH MY VEINS AT DAWN'S FIRST LIGHT; A MOLTEN BLACK POTION TO SUMMON FORTH THE AWAKENING OF MY SLUMBERING SPIRIT!

Good try but these are definitely power metal lyrics!

"Formed from the most ancient clay, by the secret ways of the deepest dwarfs, burned in the deepest kilns of the darkest mountain homes, was forged an artifact of supreme power - a mug, capable of holding both the heart of an undead goddess and the spit of a fiery dragon! This mighty mug was the only mug in the universe to hold the most powerful elixir in time and space: the dark elixir of spirits, inspiration and power. When the mighty mug fell into the hands of Kraxtan, the evil necromancer, the black elixir spilled into eternal darkness over the world..."

Yep, 100% the into to a power metal album. Just need someone like Christopher Lee to read it and off we go.

Sounds more like something from Bal-Sagoth, my favourite pretentious black metal group ever.

http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/balsagoth/starfireburningup...

I always enjoyed Bolt Thrower's brand of Death Metal English - they had a kind of brutal minimalism to their lyrics.

"Spent Rounds, The Coffin Nails, On Your Empires Fall"

Bolt Thrower never gets old.

Absolutely not. The last album, Those Once Loyal (2005), was a masterpiece and while I respect the band for not making another album just to make another album.. I would really like another album!

I can't see it happening, since Martin Kearns died they've done nothing and I expect it to stay that way. Perhaps they'll do the odd gig here or there, but tbh I'm happy not hearing a Bolt Thrower album with a different drummer.

Go listen to Memoriam, it's a sort of a successor band to Bolt Thrower. Even the name is a direct reference to Martin. Karl Willetts does the vocals and the sound is pretty much the same. It has/had other members from BT, then the rest come from Benediction and Sacrilege

They've put out five albums in six years (!), one recently

The Memoriam albums keep getting better as they go IMO, definitely worth a listen for BT fans. I got a patch from them recently and Karl mailed it himself and sent me a lovely hand written note and a signed poster. What a legend!

Suspect hostile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS3502yEvcU

Nice to see “Chuck Schuldiner of Death” referenced. An insanely talented musician, gone way too soon.

Even if you don’t like death metal, give this band a listen if only for the skill alone.

For me, Death's Human is unmatched and I don't think you'd have to already be a death metal fan to like it.

I never listened to that (probably should), but I do like Symbolic very much. Maybe in part because the vocals are much easier to understand, and I like the lyrics.

The Black Dahlia Murder had one of the greatest Death Metal Englishists of all time:

In that very moment which life doth fade away / Ejected from my human shell exempt from time or space / Floating absorbing omniscient in display / A grandiose presentation unravels before me

Not in chronology but so wildly all at once / An open dioramic rendition of events / Some horrible integral just the same a / Ll pieces are key to the sum of the being / A strobe of emotions vivid extreme / The rapturous voyage through life's victories / The man that I once was I have left him behind /

What kind of man does the assembled puzzle read / With soul spread open wide I calmly contemplate my destiny

RIP Trevor

I got to see them on the last tour with Trevor. He was as much a musician as a fan, and really loved meeting and hanging out with fans. He understood the place he held just like the bands that came before him that he idolized.

That's awesome - I saw them a few years ago but stupidly didn't even stick around for the whole set. I hope we get to meet him again somehow.

Mnyeah. I prefer simpler pleasures:

  Eyes bulging from their sockets
  With every swing of my mallet
  I smash your fucking head in, until brains seep in
  through the cracks, blood does leak
  distorted beauty, catastrophe
  Steaming slop, splattered all over me

https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/29118769/Cannibal+Corpse/Hammer...

Or, you know:

  Drink from the goblet, the goblet of gore
  Taste the zombie's drug, now you want more
  Drifting from the living, joining with the dead
  Zombie dwelling maggots, now infest your head

  Zombie ritual
  Zombie ritual

https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/124887/

Gets the point across, no fuss, no frills.

A culturally relevant favorite of mine:

  The lives of all they occupy, their eyes in dismal gloom
  The all-piercing, dead oculi, mirrors of our doom
  Oblivious to the trespass as you gaze into the black
  The demon of surveillance insultingly staring back
  Into you
  Into you

https://genius.com/Meshuggah-the-demons-name-is-surveillance...

I assume the first one is about playing Whack-a-mole?

I like Be'lakor – An Ember's Arc

https://genius.com/Belakor-an-embers-arc-lyrics

It’s a song about a photon.

Definitely a more specific patois than exists in most subgenres of music, but far from the only one. Country and R&B both have a ridiculous set of lyrical tropes. Goths have been stuck in the same limited vocab since the 80s. The coolest thing you can say about DM is it's still fairly niche.

I once tried to start a reverse dictionary, an obscurantorium: look up a normal word to turn it into caliginous locution. I didn't get far, so I'm glad to see other people have brought it to grotesque heights.

ChatGPT does a nice job of this.

> [Prompt]: Let's create a reverse dictionary, an obscurantorium: look up a normal word to turn it into caliginous locution.

> [ChatGPT]: Absolutely, that sounds like a fascinating endeavor! Let's turn a few everyday words into some delightfully arcane vocabulary.

> Water - Aquatic Adamant

> Sun - Celestial Candescent

> House - Domiciliary Edifice

....

> In the spirit of our obscurantorium, the sentence "You have been automated" could be transmogrified to:

> "Thou hast been actuated into automatonian existence."

Nice find.

More death metallic: the occupation of your putrified soul was annihilated by a myriad of matrices, incinerating your banal enunciations in Envidia's convolution.

At long last, a proficient occasion for vast lexical colossi to unfurl their malevolent prowess.

I'm a bit confused about most death metal, are they trying to appear (as the cockney's say) "hard men" in the way that gangsta rappers are trying to portray street-level gangs?

You could watch interviews/conversations with them and judge for yourself.

It definitely depends on the band. Some of them are while others try to portray themselves as prophets or elevated beings.

Prophets? Which bands, exactly?

Death metal is indeed very silly. What I'm not sure of is whether its fans don't realise it's silly, embrace the silliness, or have simply moved beyond such pathetic human dichotomies as serious and silly.

I’d say most of us do realize it. The whole trveness is IME more a blackmetal thing. Now the question if we embrace it or have moved beyond is more personal ;)

Most fans are very aware of the silliness. There's kind of an arms-race nature to the genre to see who can come up with the most over-the-top lyrics and ambience. Perhaps the one non-silly element to it is the cathartic feeling of aggression and rage it tries to get across. Few styles of music are as tapped into that dark portion of the human psyche that revels in violence, forbidden feelings, and raw aggression. It's actually a very cathartic genre to listen to; most fans and bands are very relaxed and calm people otherwise.

On the latter point, what the Rebel Wizard had to say made a lot of sense to me:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjkx4b/rebel-wizard-heavy-me...

Sadly i did not enjoy his music in the least.

A fantastic example of a man / band that is embracing the silliness is Rainbowdragoneyes. He mixes death metal with chiptune and trash pop voice modulators but still produces very intricate and well designed albums, that tell engaging stories, like this one: https://rainbowdragoneyes.bandcamp.com/album/the-secret-mirr...

He'd fit in well at the Bangface Weekender I go to religiously, they've had both plenty of chiptunes artists and Napalm Death play there in the past :) https://www.bangface.com/

Maybe a bit back in the 90s. But most of the bands are clearly 'LARPing' and putting on a persona. Off stage they're almost all very chill and aware of the absurdity of the characters they play.

Also death metal has been around long enough that it's starting to get self referential. Many 'modern' bands sound, look and act the way they do mainly because that's how the bands loved growing up sounded/looked/acted.

Some really tried hard, with actual murder, arson of 1000 yo church in Norway and rehearsing (not live show) surrounded by sheep heads on spikes while throwing up because of the smell.

That's not death metal.

Isn't that mostly black metal? The genre is also sadly quite infested with Nazis, but it seems to be getting better.

Yup. While metal nerds can argue about the exact musical difference between death metal and black metal, from a sub-cultural point of view they come from very different places.

Ah, that's black metal, which is deeply earnest. When I explain to people about my theory of earnestness in music death vs. black metal is a great way to show "not earnest" against "earnest". Can you tell me the story of the band and the sheep heads though please? I've heard a lot of stories from the black metal scene but not that one!

Here are some very earnest album covers lol:

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2017/06/13/the-worst-black-m...

It's a line of progression from old metal stuff, which always had social transgression and horror elements as key themes. Because the genre is more extreme musically, the lyrics are adjusted to be more extreme, too. "Death Metal English" is actually not that common.

Serial murderers have always been a lyrical topic, for example, and you can see the progression directly if you look for songs about them. From Judas Priest and Iron Maiden writing about them existing, to 80s bands like Slayer writing about them more individually, to death metal bands in the later 80s and 90s very graphically describing their acts.

My perception is that there’s 2 schools of what they’re trying to appear like:

- lovecraftian cult leaders, talking about esotericism, religion, forbidden knowledge etc etc

- narrators of horror stories, talking about gore and violence

In both cases, the singer rarely sings about themselves as a person. If they say « I » it’s usually impersonating a character (a murderer, a god, a sorcerer…), not literally them

A lot of the themed metal is knowingly over the top in all regards. It's a show, and most fans to everyone knows it's a show. And if you get into the front rows, you get to be part of the show, whatever mess that entails with some bands. Recently we had people fencing with the frontman dressed as a pirate with blowup swords.

I'd say it's mostly not serious, in the same [kayfabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe) tone as "professional wrestling" where it's known to those that are in the know that it's all a show.

The website linked in this post (invisibleoranges) is a reference to a hand gesture a lot of metal artists and audiences make when performing/listening that appears to look as though they're holding invisible oranges, tongue firmly in cheek.

Nah, it has nothing to do with aggression, violence or crime. That's a misconception of outsiders who hear the loud music and growled vocals and assume they are an attempt at intimidation. In truth it's just a very strict art form, and I know it's hard to see it as an art form but that's what it is. It has a certain range of emotions that it chooses to express but it doesn't really have a message, like, go out and eat some babies alive.

There's going to be exceptions to the rule of course, but the majority of kids who dig this stuff are nerds. They finish school and go into a STEM field in science or work in the industry as coders. Like, my best friend in high school was into Cannibal Corpse and splatter gore bands like that, and now he's a doctor. And, hey, I was all into Black Metal and now I got a PhD in computer science. Yeah?

In fact, for me and my friends at least, being into this stuff was also a way to draw a clean line between us and the kids who wanted to grow up and be rich bimbos like their moms and dads, that sort of thing. Not that my friend who's a doctor is poor, but in my school at least we had lots of the kind of kid who comes in with expensive new clothes and brags about her dad's car or where the family is going skiing this Christmas, and it was fun to flip them the bird every day by coming into school with a Kreator t-shirt with a severed head sinking into blood (albeit very stylised; and Kreator aren't death metal). So for some kids at least there was a bit of that. Nerd solidarity, like.

The 1991 metal album "Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious" [0] by British band Carcass was a landmark work which took the use of unusual vocabulary in metal lyrics to a new (and arguably-satirical) level [1]. Here are some examples, lists of the uncommon words included in a few of the songs lyrics:

Track 1, "Inpropagation" : atrabilious, crevet, ebullition, beatrific, exequiet, coronach, humous, fecundate, defalcating, lacrimation

Track 2, "Corporal Jigsaw Quandary" (see [2] for YT video of song) : evulsed, deviscerated, chondrin, decollate, quiescent, detrital, sequacious, commensated, convented, uliginous

Track 4, "Pedigree Butchery" : spumous, crubescent, martilinear, desparental, primparal, sporulate, chimerical, rheological, fluxing, "illegitimeat", contumely, ebullient, despumation, desipient

Back then it was common belief that the band members were medical students, and that the terminology in their lyrics came from their studies, but this ultimately turned out to be a myth.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necroticism_%E2%80%93_Descanti...

[1] http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/carcass/necroticismdescanti...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5nGo7yUtlE

I loved that album so much when I was 17, and I don't remember anything other than HP Lovecraft that made me look up so many words in a dictionary - unfortunately this was back when I didn't have internet access, and most of the medical terms Carcass used weren't in my dictionary lol. And I guessed that they were medical students from that, seems I wasn't the only one to make that assumption!

But never since have I come across such philial odes to corpses and the cleaning thereof.

Edited to add I'm thinking of Symphonies of Sickness as the one I listened to the most, although Necroticism came a close second.

The article hits the hammer smashed face right on the face. Great read!

In more recent years I've really come to appreciate the Death Metal English of bands like Obscura. Nothing crushes your significance like song titles and lyrics of the IMMENSITY OV ORBITAL ELEMENTS TREMENDING DESOLATE SPHERES THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE MOMENTUM VASTNESS... Yes, it's about space.

And the musicianship is just bonkers.

Oh man, amazing Obscura is. If you enjoy them a lot, check Allegaeon. They’re my favourite technical extreme metal band. And very nerdy lyrics, they have a whole range of melodies and rymthms. Also with classical guitar passages.

ChatGPT makes a great regular-English-to-Death-Metal-English translator when prompted with the examples from this article: https://chat.openai.com/share/261034ff-f5d5-404c-b354-c9d58e...

> “Some of them early songs were, instead of actually singing something, it was maybe just a series of growls or screams that kind of went along with it,” he says.

The first Obituary album doesn't always have lyrics even though you can find fans that transcribed them. :)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/obituary-t...

Necrophagist[0] is also a good example of this technique. They also employ almost magical instrumental ability both in studio and live which is a hard feat to accomplish--especially with blast beasts and hyper-technical solos. Too bad they have pretty much retired. Rumor has is Muhammed Suiçmez (lead singer/songwriter, main force behind the band) went to work for BMW, would not be surprised if it were as a SE :)

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BalLk6uOMzw

Leveling pillars of towering fear

Rational instincts and insight to spare

End of falseness, end of grace

I think you forgot the caps lock.

I'd wonder whether an LLM could make a coherent translation engine. It's like cognoscenti of the cthulic void rhyming slang.

I gave chatGPT4 the "common traits of Death Metal English" and then asked it to translate "Commuting to work" into death metal English. The response:

In the parlance of Death Metal English, "Commuting to work" might be translated as "Transversing the Dreaded Pathway to the Monolith of Enslavement."

That's pretty metal...

That's pretty fascinating, as there are values inherent in the language, where a death metal flavoured AI might create different associations and have a different logic - and then reify it. Whoops. Awesome.

I did this on ChatGPT then found your comment.

prompt: translate: "I love football. Go bears!"

response: I EMBRACE THE GRIDIRON'S FURY. GO FORTH, O BEARS!

Side note - I told chatgpt I wanted it to serve as a Death Metal English translator and that I would share the article for more details then make translation requests in follow up prompts. It responded by translating the article. It did a good job of translating after that but I wasnt sure if there was a better way for me to prompt it.

For that phrase chatgpt4 offered me:

In Death Metal English, "I love football. Go bears!" could be translated as "I am enthralled by the Battle of the Spherical Beast. Ascend, Ominous Ursine Legion!"

ChatGPT was made for this. Here is a link to a conversation I just made so anyone can test it: https://chat.openai.com/share/807fddd2-4628-4052-9e65-096317...

Here are some examples:

Normal English: "My boss needs this report by 5 PM"

Death Metal English: "THE OVERSEER OF OUR TOILS DEMANDS THE MANUSCRIPT OF ACCOUNTABILITY ANON UPON THE QUINTESSENTIAL HOUR OF THE SOLAR DECLINE"

Normal English: "That sounds like a win-win situation to me!"

Death Metal English: "UNTO MINE EARS, IT RESONATES AS THE DUAL FACETED TRIUMPH OF FATE'S INEXORABLE CONFLUENCE!"

And, for those of you trying to explain the Single Responsibility Principle to your colleagues for the umpteenth time:

"THE SOLITARY OBLIGATION DOCTRINE THUNDERETH FORTH THE DECREE THAT EVERY CONSTRUCT, STRUCTURE, SEGMENT, OR SERVITUDE MUST BEAR A SINGLE, UNMISTAKABLY ETCHED DUTY. IN THE TONGUE OF THE MORTALS, EACH CLASS, FUNCTION, OR MODULE SHALL BE GUIDED BY ONE AND ONLY ONE CATALYST OF TRANSFORMATION."

I woner if all these pointless "I wonder how LLM could be used here" ponderings could be generated by an LLM.

Oh, that was fun; great article! During my MA, I wrote a paper on Swedish Melodic Death Metal lyrics and what common themes they have. I can't seem to find the paper now, but I remember having a blast. I think the result was something like anger, violence, and loyalty/brotherhood.

Great, now I'm going to have to use GPT to re-write all my work memo's in Death Metal today.

I love death metal but hate so many of the vocals. If an instrumental version of “none so vile” existed I would pay good money for it.

Cradle of Filth have highly entertaining lyrics.

INSECTS ENCIRCLE ME, INFEST MY SOUL

I find these almost laughably stupid. An eight year old boy might find them neat because they’re gross, but surely this is the lowest form of use the English (or any) language can see?

Until you realize that entertainment is subjective, most are tongue in cheek, or are presented in the same way one presents a horror movie. From your comment, I don't think it would be helpful for me to point you to bands that are death metal and also have deep, meaningful lyrics, but they exist.

I am pleased to learn this, actually. I enjoy the music of death metal but the lyrics seem so cliche, so…laughably childish…that I’d appreciate some recommendations to something with some…erm…meat.

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