I’m generally not paying attention to lyrics if I have music as background noise. Bits and pieces catch me occasionally, so I’ll eventually end up knowing what a song is about after listening a few times.
This can lead to moments where I suddenly realise what a lyric says and have a WTF moment. Like realising this song does indeed include the phrase “irrigate my spine”.
Or realising that this is actually fully in English, despite the band being Japanese and some of their other songs being in Japanese.
And as a further addendum… we listen to quite a few bands that have growling as part of their singing (Opeth, Amorphis, Arch Enemy, Jinjer to name the principal ones) and they aren’t even native speakers themselves except for Arch Enemy (except their previous singer was German) and the growling is what I really have a hard time understanding sometimes.
Well, we all need to irrigate our spines sometimes, and maybe the rest of our bodies as well…
But seeing the video I am not surprised and I am not sure I want to know the context of the phrase
Does remind me of Jinjer a little bit. Though reaction videos have since got old.
I just generally assume all their songs boil down to “you should be a vegetarian”.
I’m assuming it’s metaphorical as the rest of the song doesn’t mention anything similar (or have much about turbines, despite the title). Full lyrics for context: https://genius.com/Lake-malice-black-turbine-lyrics
Very early on in my festival-going life, I noticed that bands that start with a C are best avoided.
(Carnal Forge, Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, Carnage, Carpathian Forest, Combichrist)
Where do Sigur Rós fall with their made up “Hopelandic” language?
Generally if the lyrics are in English I like to understand them unless they’re the small number of “Hardcore”/“screamy” songs I listen to where the lyrics are textural then I’m not so bothered.
I’ve been listening to Kalandra recently and while some of their songs are in English, some are Icelandic/Norwegian/Swedish so there’s no chance of me understanding them.
But it’s not something I can listen to all the time. I don’t even know what subgenres most of the stuff I like belongs to. My partner would know–he is usually a walking encyclopedia for his hobbies–he might be able to describe my taste better than I could. I am mostly a dilettante with metal. I know what I like but little more than that.
We watched this really cool documentary on Metal at some point… I think it was this one: Metal Evolution (TV Series 2011–2014) - IMDb and it was on Prime at the time. That helped me a little bit to get some context.
Extreme metal is kind of hit or miss for me because I find a lot of it repetitive. I need some sort of change and contrast to keep a song interesting. Doesn’t necessarily have to be melody, as I can happily listen to Obituary or Escuela Grind where there are rhythmic and timing shifts to keep my interest.
I haven’t watched that one, but I’ve watched a couple of Sam Dunn’s other documentaries, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and Global Metal (I used to have the first on DVD, but leant it to a friend and never got it back).
Whatever floats people’s boats and all that.
But I do struggle to comprehend how anyone could imagine bands with names like that would ever be anything other than either ridiculous or horrid. Or both!
I think it’s possible we have had ever-so-slightly different festival-going lives, and very different tastes in music. I very much like lots of bands starting with C: Camera Obscura, the Cardigans, the Coral, the Carter Family, the Cocteau Twins, the Cramps, Carter USM…
Ah well, some metal does delight in some gruesome aesthetics… and it’s probably an acquired taste or just there for some shock value. The more extreme subgenres are, or so I assume, a bit like peaty/smoky whiskies. You start all nice and mellow in the Speyside and … a few years later you sing the praise of Islay whiskies. These bands are then a bit like an Octomore (at least in my personal view).
My tastes go more like this:
Songwhip would be even better if I could make a service agnostic playlist
Well.
I actually did have a listen to these (the beginnings at least) and thank you for posting them. Always interesting, the things other people like.
But this is very much a case of ‘thanks but no thanks’ - my boat was very much unfloated by this. Not my cup of tea at all!
It depends on the music, but with a lot of rock and metal I only make out a few words here and there.
As far as distraction goes I seem to like to do one verbal thing and one non-verbal thing together. So if I’m driving I like audiobooks or music with lyrics, but if I’m coding or writing I don’t want to be able to make out words at all.
Some people (including me) like Music for Programming; some people don’t get on with it at all.
Then you get deliberately meaningless languagelike vocal sounds, like Chameleon.
I occasionally enjoy opera, but I learned a long time ago that it’s almost impossible to do so if I understand the words. If I don’t understand then I can treat it as pretty singing. If I understand then it all immediately becomes some of the worst ‘songs’ I’ve ever heard, on account of them not actually being songs in any normal sense. I think lyricism barely registers as a goal; so an opera I understand usually feels like a play in which the performers have inexplicably decided to sing a script which was intended to be spoken.
I am completely out of touch with modern metal, but as a teenager I was into Ministry, for the anti-religion dark industrial vibe, and Pantera for leaping around and headbanging. Still enjoy listening to both even now.
My core musical tastes are still very much rooted in the 90s, and 00s, it seems, with bands like Portishead, Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Jurassic 5, Alabama 3, and Chinese Man being a random representative selection.
I have about 20,000 mp3s in a shuffled playlist, and I prefer listening to them while working over any radio stations I have found.
I am aware that this means I am doing exactly what I sneered at my parents for doing with their lack of interest in new music.
I always think I’m not getting old and that I listen to plenty of new music, until I encounter almost anything popular and I remember the new stuff I listen to is mostly incredibly obscure.
Same. The other day, I got a talk (from my partner) how Theater of Tragedy are among the OG Goth Metal bands…
Where I get new music is at festivals. Which reminds me I need to go ticket shopping. Also I have a few friends who are still checking out new stuff every once in a while and or the internet tells me fun stuff via the #metal hashtag on Mastodon for example.
But for the most part I listen to the same old bands that I already know.
I’m absolutely there with you. I want to understand a song to understand the emotion that inspired it; without understanding I’m much less interested and like you I’ll often try to find out the story behind it. I’m often surprised that this isn’t a thing for everyone, that some people would actively rather not know or are just uninterested. It’s perfectly valid of course, just very different to how I enjoy music.
