Lyrics

I would like to know, how your opinion is towards lyrics of an album. I always argue with a good friend of mine because he sais he never listens to the words and doesn't care about lyrics of a song. For me, lyrics are quite important, I always want to know, what the song is about. I think if lyrics didn't matter, everybody and every band could save a lot of effort and time and just sing some cryptic shit instead of writing lyrics.

How about you? Do you try to understand the lyrics even if sung in a foreign language you dont speak or understand??

[Aldhissla]

To me, lyrics DO matter - mostly, that is. Whenever I listen to Bands like Dimmu Borgir/Old Man's Child for example, I do not really care that much, because it's basically all dealing with the guy downstairs afaics. And then there's bands that I can't understand because they sing in weird languages, of course ; in that case it depends: sometimes I can be bothered to look for translations, sometimes I can't. You never know what you end up with, tho like in this case, where the guy sings about that he wants to be as beautiful as a rat in the rain, because that's beauty that you can't see in photographs...at least that's what I was told by the japanese guys who introduced me to this (great) music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCp-9oqWGng

*lol*, what a message..... I cant listen to the video as I'm home and we only have ISDN Internet access which takes you about a week to watch 1 video.... Will watch it in the office tomorrow....

But to me its a lot of fun atm trying to find out what all the swedish Finntroll lyrics mean. I spend a great deal of time on it. You cant really learn a foreign language by reading lyrics of course but I think its nice to know a few words anyway (though you probably dont speak a lot about trolls, hordes and some kind of weird mushrooms when in Sweden )

[Ärväthyyll]

Oh shoot ... Has anyone bothered to save the English translations to Finntroll lyrics on the old forum? :/

Dark Lyrics has translations: http://www.darklyrics.com/f/finntroll.html ... But these are different than the ones we had (I think?) and I'm not sure how good they are ...

Of COURSE the lyrics matter. At least to me. In Finntroll songs I especially prefer songs Maktens Spira and Under Två Runor. And when speaking about lyrics, the band Turmion Kätilöt comes to my mind (again!). The best example for those is Kuolemanpäivä and Hades (althought some people might think, that they just like to combine cool-looking words together )
And I don't think, that Dimmu's songs are all about the lava-rivers Papa. And they got really cool writings at least at Puritanical and Death Cult.

Well, lyrics is quite important and I'm glad that i know everything about Finntrolls lyrics just because it's swedish

But with other bands as.. Eluveitie for example, it's a whole other problem. Love lyrics from bands as cradle of filth, dimmu borgir, thyrfing, finntroll etc, but also bodom.

Lyrics at the very least provide something to memorize and sing/grunt/growl along to, even if the words themselves mean little. Lyrics add diversity to the music - a band can reinforce their image with lyrics.
Musically, a song would have to vary much more without lyrics for it to be exciting. I look towards bands like The Black Mages who have no lyrics but manage to keep their songs highly entertaining through constant variation.
As for the words themselves, few lyrics really reach out to me more than the music itself - apart from bands such as Sabaton. The strong themes of heroism, war and sacrifice create strong visions which greatly enhance the song.

I actually learned swedish to be able to understand the lyrics in Finntroll, Thyrfing etc. But then again, i love learning new languages, so it was more of a favorite pastime that a bother.

Thats what I mean. It is a lot of fun for me to try to learn swedish lýrics, even if it does not mean, I will be able to speak it but to understand a little and to learn new languages is very much fun. I very much like the sound of Finnish, Swedish, and also Greek, so I try to learn as much as I can (without taking real language classes, I dont have enough time for that).

On the other hand of course theres bands whos lyrics dont say much. But many bands have very interesting topics and ways to express themselves. I like that. One band coming to my mind that really impressed me because of the words was the early Marillion with Fish on the mic. He had a kind of very special and lyrical way to express everydays topics. Loved the albums Script for a jesters tear, Misplaced Childhood and Fugazi.

I actually learned swedish to be able to understand the lyrics in Finntroll

Understanding Finntroll has given me some motivation to learn Swedish better, as you might know, we have to study it in Finland. (10-student /,,/)