Do you understand death/black metal?
 

This may sound like some sort of deep, touchy feely thread, but unfortunately it is much more literal than that. When listening to death metal or similar genres, do you actually understand the lyrics/words they are singing? Not in a deep way, just the actual words being spoken? Now, I myself have no clue for the most part, although that being said, I often do not hear 100% of the lyrics of 'clear' vocals so not sure if it was just me, or others have the same problem.

For example:


Now this is probably a very clear song compared to others, and I do understand a lot of it, with just a few parts escaping me.

Where as this:


Other than, I ejaculate fire, it all escaped me, and when looking at the parts with the lyrics, it makes sense, I can hear the words, but without it, I am clueless. BTW, Dethklok is from Metalocalypse an animated tv series which is actually REALLY good.

Care to share what you hear?

Thanks

Sug0rt

The point of the death/black metal vocals is for them to be incomprehensible. The idea behind, say, the traditionally piercing high black metal scream is to transform the voice into a non-melodic instrument the primary purpose of which is to cause a sense of unease. Whereas with death metal, the traditionally low guttural growl is a non-melodic instrument used to add to the rhythmic flow of the music.

As far as understanding the lyrics, it depends, but it's generally pointless. If we use Panzer Division Marduk as an example; the music is bent on giving the listener such a feeling exhilaration, of power, that it is apparent without knowing the lyrics or looking at the art on the album. The lyrics are there to simply reinforce the feeling of power already apparent in the music.

Oh, ok, that makes a lot of sense, thank you. I would like to point out that I do like death metal quite a lot. One problem I have with it though, is when you look at the lyrics, they are often very smartly put together and brings up the point of if you were to just say random words that went with the other instruments, surely you'd have exactly the same outcome? Do any bands just utter random words then?

I listen to quite a bit of both black and death metal and honestly I cant decipher what they are saying most of the time. Although i dont really try to either. What I love about both genres is the atmosphere it creates, and so the actual lyrics dont mean much to me. The ambiguity sort of allows me to create my own themes without having to rely on if the real lyrics contradict my thoughts on it. The lyrics are whatever you want them to be.

Well, because the vocalist is often incomprehensible, they often skip entire words or passages of words in a song. It depends on the vocalist, but I think the common trend is to emphasize particular words (or even parts of words) because their phonetic content makes them easier to scream/growl in a pleasant way.

That actually kind of bugs me. Not because I care about the lyrics or anything, but my OCD is offended when I'm reading the lyrics along with the song and they skip a word.

:band: "RAWR GRAH URGH BLURGH"



"Hey! You missed an URGH!!"

this kind of music style shows that lyrics aren't important at all if you listen to music :p

Thanks for letting us know.

Be nice.