"Themes" can be related to the band's album covers and even their beliefs, but so far we've decided on each band's "themes" based on their lyrics alone (because it was called "lyrical themes"). So it seems far less accurate now, and even a little weird and confusing. For example: Paradise Lost's themes include "introspection" and "allegory". It was accurate when we called it "lyrical themes", but saying that the band's themes are "introspection" and "allegory" is a bit weird now, because the band's album covers aren't really about it. It's just the lyrics.

We take into account more than just the lyrics when deciding the themes - cover art and titles also count. Changing the field to "Themes" is something that HellBlazer actually had been meaning to do for some time as a result of frequent misunderstandings, but the final prompt was me mishandling a report requesting a change in lyrical themes of the band Fullmoon, where there was a clear NS/Aryanism theme in their cover art and album titles, but not much in the lyrics. I removed it from the field, which turned out to be a wrong decision.

There may still be some inaccurate or misleading themes scattered across the site as a result of previous misunderstandings, but we hope the new wording is more accurate for what the field should be used for moving forward.

So, to clarify, if there is an instrumental band that seems to have a lot of "space" and "astronomy" themes in their album art, could those be added as a theme? And would it replace "instrumental", or would it be in tandem with "instrumental"?

I guess "instrumental" doesn't make any sense now or not?

We're keeping instrumental since it helps with searchability. And arguably a case could be made that when a band chooses to only be instrumental, that could be considered a theme they chose to go with. It never really worked under lyrical themes either - since the lack of lyrics doesn't really constitute a lyrical theme - but we kept it again for searchability.

You're free to add themes to instrumental bands, yeah, so long as it's clearly a theme from the album art/song titles/album titles/etc.

One could argue that the term "Instrumental" was written in the lyrical themes to clarify the lack of any lyrical themes. I can't answer if that was ever the intention, but I think it's the most accurate description of how it came across to me personally and some others. Alternatively, one could say that it didn't make perfect sense either way, as our admin above has.

You might believe that it no longer fits in too well in its listed field, or you might go a step further and believe it never did before... either way, it's perfectly fine. However, the staff agree that even after the change of wording, the "themes" field remains more appropriate than any other for noting that the music is instrumental... and even if it's not, it shouldn't matter much as the information is there either way. Obviously, to start removing such information just because of a modification in the field wording would not only damage site searchability, but it would be disastrously unencyclopedic.

I think another example is Peter Crowley's Fantasy Dream. It is usually more of an instrumental project (with some tracks having vocals), but you can tell that the music is generally going for a more fantasy/adventure-themed approach.