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Comment by idontwantthis | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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