In that case, I apply what I said to music which is essentially considered mood music. Something that you only listen to sometimes. It is still merely average in principle but may not be say when you are in a particular mood. Do lyrics not affect your impression of music which falls into this category?

Really the bottomline is that lyrics sure have an effect on how much you enjoy music. They may not entirely turn your opinion on its head (especially if what you are listening to is quite good) but they can still turn a great album into 'a great album with noticeable glitches'.

Okay, perhaps this points to a cultural difference in perception. Because indeed I would not even complain about substandard equipment if the performances are great...that is how living in a third world country makes you think, I guess. You can't take anything for granted and perhaps this leads you to focus on the most important things to take heart from. The next example is also not going to be metal but this builds on what I just said....I was a little amused when I read reviews for the Renaissance DVD with plenty of whining about the admittedly awful picture quality and the completely un-oomphy sound, as if recorded without amplification because I thought hearing the most incredible grand B I had ever come across was worth any price, any condition. But I guess if I had been brought up in America, I would look at things differently..be more exacting and expect more perfection in matters RELATIVELY trivial.



Ha ha, you got me there! I know the lyrics of most songs of Dark Side back and forth so let nobody get the impression that I never read the lyrics at all. I did comment on the change in Neil Peart's outlook evidenced in Snakes & Arrows too. But I cannot understand a situation where somebody would be so turned off by the lyrics as to not want to listen to the music at all. If I was next to that person, I would scream, "How could you do that, you don't know what you might miss. "

Pardon me, but what the fuck are you talking about?


No, but most of the metal I listen to has lyrics that I can mostly understand.


Yes, but the fundamental difference is that lyrics are meant to be understood. The average person does not understand music theory, but the average person does understand the language of the lyrics they're listening to. Bands know this.


I don't think anyone said that if you don't like the lyrics you are forbidden from liking the music; what people have said, is that if you don't like the lyrics (for example, I dislike Christian lyrics), it is important to acknowledge that dislike and factor it into your overall valuation of the music. I enjoy many albums with lyrics I think aren't very good, but all of my favorite albums have very good lyrics.

No. Abom got me in his post. No such thing as 'mood music' in my world. I am either breaking down something I have never heard before or listening to favourites, looking for things I missed. Can't be bothered with easy listening/background music etc. That is, when I am in the mood to listen to something but don't feel upto checking out something unfamiliar, I would rather listen to something I have already heard but don't mind repeating rather than something new but which requires me to 'switch off'.

I'm saying that, in metal, the voice is an instrument rather than a tool for conveying an idea. Rather than actually giving a message, most metal uses lyrics and rhymes because they sound good.

Yes and no to this. When the music is not very involved, this would hold good. When it is, the average person would be at sea. I am not musically educated but I don't consider myself an average listener either, so, as I have mentioned already, I hear a little more compositionally and tend to pay attention to that. When the lyrics are in English, it doesn't require much conscious effort in any case to understand them and unless the singer's diction is really bad, I can make out much of the lyrics without reading them. What I don't do very often though is to evaluate them separately in detail.



Well, that is what I understood from the question of whether it's reasonable to dislike an album because of reasons other than the music (considering lyrics now as something apart from the music, because the OP too mentioned lyrics?). My answer is no...it could at the most be a point that bugs you somewhere...that while listening, sometimes a snatch of lyrics sticks out like a sore thumb but it doesn't make sense to me to develop dislike for an album because the lyrics are not good.

No no, I am not referring to background music at all. Say you are someone who isnt huge on glam but there is a particular sound in the genre that appeals to you. I mostly listen to either heavy metal, uspm, prog rock or psychedelic rock. The 4 make about 95% of my listening but that doesnt mean that I dislike thrash. Its just that I am not always in the 'mood' for breakneck speeds. Thats why lyrics affect my options here. Musically speaking both mid era Tankard and some of early Testament are somewhat equal in terms of quality. But I still listen to Testament more, the only reason I can give is that unlike the former they dont make me go WTF in between songs. It boils down to the lyrics here.

But again I ll clarify that a 'Kill the white rabbit before it kills you' wouldnt make me think less of Morbid Saint.

Again, the short answer is the only way I would pay attention to something from say glam which indeed I don't really like is if there was something sufficiently interesting going on compositionally. Like King's X. Lyrics neither get me into some particular music nor get in the way.

Maybe your cultural perspective does have an impact on things, but I really don't think that sets and costumes should be considered trivial in opera..it's a part of the performance, and opera companies don't just spend loads of money on them so they can look stylish and attract attention away from a mediocre cast of performers. If I apply this to another media, say, television or movies, I'm not asking for state-of-the-art, seamless computer graphics..I just think that effort and work ought to be put into doing things creatively. One of my favourite shows has always been Doctor Who (the original series, of course), and while the show was always made on a shoestring budget they sometimes did a fantastic job of making use of the resources they had to do something cool and interesting. It may not look like the latest Hollywood blockbuster, but at its best you can at least tell some genuine thought and care went into making it (from all angles; not just the script writer and the actors), and that in the end counts for everything in my book.



Ha ha, you got me there! I know the lyrics of most songs of Dark Side back and forth so let nobody get the impression that I never read the lyrics at all. I did comment on the change in Neil Peart's outlook evidenced in Snakes & Arrows too. But I cannot understand a situation where somebody would be so turned off by the lyrics as to not want to listen to the music at all. If I was next to that person, I would scream, "How could you do that, you don't know what you might miss. " [/quote]

I don't know what change of heart Neil had, but I certainly wouldn't give up on a band because of poor lyrics. Actually, to be frank, I've always been pretty poor at discerning lyrics from songs when a full band is playing loudly, so I usually take in the lyrics separately anyway...that doesn't diminish their importance for me though. When I really realised how brilliant Mystifiers lyrics were I started to love the band even more...it wasn't what I'd call a bonus, it was more oamatter of digging deeper into the treasure chest.

Perhaps they shouldn't and everything you say makes sense logically, but you see it's deeply ingrained in my psyche. Maybe it's some misplaced sense of sympathy...I don't know for sure but I would tend to concentrate on say the performance in the opera. Conversely, I would be very harsh when the performance was not up to the mark and not be very appreciative at all of the set. I am not saying you advocated that because you have covered that too in your post but I am just saying that from habit, I would for instance be very critical of even slight pitch mistakes and perhaps others in the audience would urge me to look at the overall picture. For me, the performance is the picture and if that is a letdown, then I would be very disappointed.



From the lyrics of Snakes of Arrows - as opposed to 2112 or Hemispheres - I got the sense of a resigned acceptance that the world will not be perfect. I might be wrong about that, but this is the impression I got from the lyrics...of a more realistic but paradoxically half-full glass view of things.

Well, that makes sense. I can't necessarily say that artwork is part of "performance" in an album, but I would argue that the sets are a part of "performance" in opera just as the singing is. Music theatre and all.



From the lyrics of Snakes of Arrows - as opposed to 2112 or Hemispheres - I got the sense of a resigned acceptance that the world will not be perfect. I might be wrong about that, but this is the impression I got from the lyrics...of a more realistic but paradoxically half-full glass view of things.[/quote]

Wouldn't surprise me. The man has had some hard times.

Of course, it is, no doubt. I am simply saying that if the singing was unexpectedly stellar, I would forget about everything else but I am not sure people in general would. I haven't, by the way, attended opera but I have been to classical recitals so I am extrapolating my experience there. Or...let's take a rock show...I have the impression that if the stage set up was fantastic, it would make a very big impression on the audience but if the performances turned out to be flat, I am the one who would crib the longest about it and forget about the set up and special effects, et al.



Goodness me...I had completely overlooked this when I had reviewed the album, by Jove, that's the answer, that explains the 'beautifully sad' nature of the album.

Right on here. Worthless lyrics demean the art, no matter how good the music is. It's like emblazoning your pristine black Porsche with a massive hood decal of Pauly Shore's face.

I don't know what kind of metal you've been listening to.

Pan.Thy.Monium - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPmJiFkkac

Vocals are just another instrument, lyrics are completely unnecessary, but they can be nice sometimes.

Oh, I appreciate it Thanquee.

Vocals in metal are almost always both of those things (instrument and message delivery). An instance where vocals would be strictly an instrument is if someone was singing only pitches, without words.

In a given metal song where the vocalist is singing (i.e. consonance), the voice can be an instrument of pitch, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Conversely, you would have no fucking clue what Lord Worm is saying in old Cryptopsy songs if you didn't consult the lyrics. All the same musical elements are present to some degree, but in a practical sense, he is mostly a rhythmic voice that accentuates what the band is playing. The common thread is that they are singing of or about something. There is a lyrical topic, wherein some kind of message is contained. It is up to the listener whether or not they care about that message, but it is there nonetheless.

People get caught up in disagreements about these things because some widely accepted tenets of music are heard through the lens of subjectivity. I myself am not concerned greatly with metal bands' lyrics, but I recognize them as a part of a whole within the context of a song.

That's complete nonsense. Lyrics don't have to be deep philosphical tresties to give a message. "Drink, fight and fuck" and fanciful retellings of myth-o-history are messages as much as "Whites must dominate the earth 14/88" and "Money stinks".



Posted while I was typing, but Unearthly is completely right.

I think what everyone is missing is that the outside factors affect how you enjoy the music. Take this example with drinks (Which I stole from Malcom Gladwell's Blink, which you should read if you get the chance)

Consider two firms producing brandy, A and B. A consistently wins in blind taste tests. B however sells far more units. Both are just as available, same price, same brand awareness. So how is a Brandy that tastes better consistently selling less? Because you never consume Brandy in an anonymous plastic cup, you buy it in the store based on packaging, the bottle it comes in, how the name sounds etc. And that not only affects your judgment, it actually affects how it tastes to you. When they tried another taste test, this time with each brandy in their respective bottles, B won. Then, when they placed both in the bottle from B, A won by an even wider margin. A changed their bottles to be more like B's, and ultimately gained a great deal of marketshare.

My point being that it isn't that most people are saying "I like the music, but I don't want to support Nazis". They cannot enjoy the music, physically and spiritually, because they dislike Nazis and the music, now that it is associated with them, suffers from that dislike. Similarly poseurs, ridiculous band images, lyrics etc. If something about the band makes you uncomfortable, than the music itself will often suffer. I think alot of people who dislike NSBM and decry it as trash, are actually just making this attribution error.

The real unspoken demon here is people not wanting to admit that they let their humanity cloud their otherwise robotic, logical judgement. "Oh no, I judge everything by the music and no other factor even entires my mind while I contemplate my feelings and blah blah blah". So high and mighty, and so obviously full of bologna.

christian Metal. I have hated it since first hearing it in the early 90's. christianity doesn't belong in heavy metal, and the entire thing disgusts me. Keep christianity in church, and out of heavy metal.

That's certainly true, although they wouldn't think of it as an error. I don't think most of the haters go around thinking, "damnit, I wish I could enjoy more of those nazi bands who make awesome music!" Your point is well-taken, though. Actually, a growing number of nationalist bands understand this point exactly, and so they're more reluctant to adorn their albums with swastikas and bold slogans, because when it comes down to the truth of things, they actually do want people to take them seriously and perhaps be inspired to think about certain things after being exposed to the music. Subtlety is everything. Now you get lots of paranoid guys starting threads on metal-archives and other sites every so often wondering whether Drudkh or some other band is NS< because they can't tell..and that upsets them!

I factor it in, I just don't give a shit.

This is a good example but the problem is, say I for one will do a 'sound check' before deciding whether I want to listen to an album. And if the album fails the sound check, even if it is grandly packaged it won't sway my opinion. Actually, wait, if even the first time I heard the album was in its grand package, it would still make no difference. This has happened too. I know this is not the normal tendency but a)I am only talking about myself b)to give any reason other than the music itself to dislike an album doesn't make sense to me. It means ultimately that you care more about the packaging than the music.

What is reasonable is to say you are not able to enjoy an album because the ideology that it espouses directly threatens your community. I probably would not care about that either but we'll see when the litmus test arrives. But to say that you dislike an album because of lyrics or artwork doesn't make sense to me. Yes, as failsafe put it, it might be taken into account in the overall evaluation but if the music is good, those should not tip the balance against the album.

I don't think anyone can beat this.

Aside from NSBM, there is another band that's earned a stamp of "no support, no matter what" from me.

Velvet Cacoon.

Any band that just outright steals someone else's recording, I'm not giving them a cent.

Did I ever said I do that? In fact I've said quite the opposite: just as you can't separate the musical aspects from the lyrics, you can't separate the lyrics from the musical aspect. Because, let's face it, as poetry practically all metal lyrics fail pretty hard - because they're not written as poetry.


Well now we're just talking a question of degree. What if there were an album where the music was pretty good, but the lyrics were just FLUBBA FLOO FLEE FLAM FLOW? It doesn't matter if it "makes sense" to you once we're talking a question of degree, because now that you've admitted lyrics DO make a difference to you but you just attach less weight to them, it's about personal taste. I for example don't attach much weight to drumming (unless it's really good or really bad I rarely even notice it), but I can understand how a drummer like Abominatrix could attach more weight to it than I do. Completely ignoring aspects of an album is wrong, but everyone is entitled to their own "weighting system". We're not robots.

Lyrics sometimes make a positive difference to me, but never a negative one. As I have said at several places before, indeed if the lyrics were just floo flee flam flow, it would not bother me. I would point it out in a review but it wouldn't affect my enjoyment. Between that and writing verse that fails hard is not much of a difference as far as I am concerned. But I am not talking about personal taste, I am really putting forth a question of logic...I am not able to follow how if someone were listening to a song without having the lyrics in front of him and simply picking them by ear, bad lyrics would put him off enough to not want to listen to the song.

Well, phonetics can affect how the music sounds, yes, so to that extent I can agree with. What I am asking is what I have already referred to in the post above - why would it bother someone if the lyrics are not written well if, say, they phonetically suited the requirements of the song.

Honestly I can't see how you aren't getting this: bad lyrics are BAD. BAD things that are part of an album engender BAD OPINIONS of that album. Lyrics are a part of an album. You choose to ignore that they are. The burden of proof is on you to explain to us why the lyrics should have nothing to do with your overall opinion of an album.

But that is not the question that was put forth. The question was is it reasonable to dislike an album because of, among other factors, lyrics? My answer is no...I don't understand how masterfully written music should deserve dislike just because the lyrics are bad. Yes, it's a matter of degree but that is not necessarily down to personal taste...I used to think that it is reasonable that when listening to music, all the attention of a listener will be on the music.

I agree with you, but humanity =/= reason.


SPELLING IT 'BALOGNA' AND 'BALONEY' IS ELITIST, MAAAAAAN!!

Well, we're getting a little confused here - as I understood it, the OP was referring to "music" meaning a piece of music: an album, a song, whatever. This would include the lyrics. When we're talking "music" here, it also means just the notes, rhythms, harmonies, etc., and it doesn't include the lyrics as more than just phonetic sounds, as you mentioned earlier. This would mean the original question as I understood it was "is it reasonable to dislike a piece of music because of the lyrics or ideology set forth in those lyrics." Now, do I think it's reasonable to dislike the musical elements solely because of the meaning of the words? No, because they are separate (though related) elements within the whole. Just because the words being sung over top of a good riff are bad, does not mean the riff is suddenly bad too. However, is it reasonable to dislike the whole piece because of the meaning of the words? Absolutely. Also, the strictly musical elements and lyrics are quite often tied together - the quality of one will be reflected in the quality of the other. There are many instances of a band making a musical and lyrical shift, and the quality changing in both areas to reflect that.

EDIT: fixed some parts for clarity.

This is what I disagree with, because a good riff remains a good riff and could still provide enjoyment to the listener. Yes, bands do often tie in the lyrics and music closely but I can also point to instances where the lyrics are much worse than the music...like Scorpions. Also, we must differentiate between disliking the lyrics and disliking the music as a whole. If only one of the elements, here the lyrics, is off putting, why should it stop a listener persisting with the song when often sloppy singing or instrumental work are excused to some degree because, for example, the tune is great or the riffs are memorable? I do think if the lyrics by themselves could be held to be the reason to dislike the song, then disproportionate weight is being given to them because often shortcomings in other MUSICAL departments are excused within limits keeping in mind the overall picture.

Well I don't think anyone is saying that, necessarily. I like Scorpions too, bad lyrics and all. Lyrics are an element like any other, for the most part: quality in other areas can excuse inferiority in some. But lyrics are still an area to be considered when evaluating the whole. You have mentioned being receptive to good lyrics, and said that they do increase your overall appreciation of the music. Wouldn't the absence of good lyrics then decrease your overall appreciation of the music, compared to what it would've been with them? Absence of potential appreciation and decrease of overall appreciation is basically the same in this case. It's glass half empty/half full stuff.

Well, when you like a good song WITH bad lyrics, it becomes difficult to speculate on how much more you would have liked it if it had good lyrics because you'd have had to overlook it to some extent to like the song regardless of lyrics. The degree to which it would affect the assessment of a song is a matter of debate...I have said that it doesn't for me because, well, that is generally how it works for me but I can understand pegging down a song a little bit for the lyrics. What I cannot understand is DISLIKE, that seems disproportionate. If you claim to dislike a song for bad lyrics, either you didn't pay attention to the music or it didn't impress you either. I cannot see how somebody who was favourably affected by the music would say he dislikes the song because the lyrics are bad...even as I write it, the logic seems contradictory.

It's a question of degree. I for one simply cannot enjoy a power metal song with sappy Christian "I love Jesus" lyrics, because they are pretty much the nadir of lyrics in metal as far as I'm concerned. I would take terrible Engrish combined with Helloween-style Pink Bubbles Go Ape nonsense over them. No USPM band that uses super Christian lyrics is terribly good, either, but I might've kept some around as maybe 4th tier stuff to listen to once in a while (talking 70%-80% range here). Now, early Steel Prophet were pretty subtle about the Christianity and most songs don't even mention it at all; considering they were actually very good in their demo days, I still enjoy them.

I mean think about it this way: imagine an album with good riffs, vocal melodies, solos, etc. has really bad drumming. Say, St. Anger trashcan drumming. That would certainly affect your appreciation of the whole, woudln't it? The drums might even be so grating that you couldn't enjoy the other aspects. That's what it's like for me and really overt Christian lyrics.

Again, St Anger was bad overall, at least imo, so the drumming was one of the factors. I love Blackened even with Lars's trashcan sound. As I have tried to put across, the overall picture is more important for me and in that I attach most weight to the compositional talent. When that is not impressive, I start to check other boxes where lyrics would be right at the bottom. But a song is already not potentially impressive beyond a point when the compositional talent on evidence is not remarkable.

Yes, St. Anger is bad for other reasons - but imagine that drum sound in place of the normal sound in one of your favorite songs. Wouldn't that bug the shit out of you?

Of course I look at the compositional elements first - I think most people do. But the quality of the performances is very important as well. Have you ever heard a cover of a song that features a very talented and distinctive singer in the original? For example I heard a cover of a Shok Paris song and was shocked at how different it was with a singer who had a typical style; Vic Hix's performance on the original drastically affected my overall appreciation for the song. Going back to lyrics, those of Brocas Helm's debut album were incredibly good, imo some of the best metal has to offer; the followup features lyrics that aren't bad, but much more typical of metal, and I was very disappointed when I realized how large the disparity was, even though the musical aspects are still quite good.

It would be an offputting element but I cannot imagine hating my favourite songs for that. I will phrase it this way: I hate this song, it's a brilliant composition, the guitarwork is fabulous and the vocals are godly but the drummer is shit. It comes across more as nitpicking to me than being reasonable. There are so many other reasons to like that hypothetical song, why not focus on those?



To the first part, yes.. but again, usually a positive difference. I think it is possible to give props to the compositional talent and forgive sloppiness in other departments because at least the band fared well in the most important department. I mean, what's the use if the members are super talented at playing their instruments but can't write for shit?

A cover is not a good comparison for me because we generally tend to get attached to the original and, especially when as you said the original was rendered with strong vocals, it becomes difficult to enjoy the cover if the vocals are pale. There have also been cases, though much rarer, where I heard the totally awesome cover first and then the pale original. Here, because I wasn't aware of the original initially, the cover became the original and made enjoyed the, well, original original difficult for me. But within the context of an original song, I give props to good performances but when they back good compositional work. In a nutshell, if a composition is great, the performance of it becomes a less important aspect to me though obviously it helps if it is performed well.