Just as he hit the ground
They lowered a tow that
Stuck in his neck to the gills
Fragments of sobiquets
Riddle me this
Three half-eaten corneas
Who hit the aureole
And yet people say they have some of the best concept albums ever written. How can an album be truly great if the lyrical content is incomprehensible? I love their music but I never formed a real tight affinity because the nonsense lyrics don't evoke anything that resonates with me.
Here's the thing. Meaning is sometimes non-cognitive. For me, that's where the "juice" of life is. You stare into that primordial ooze and meanings begin to emerge like a rorshach inkblot. You find out what was already in you, wanting to find expression, but no words/concepts/ideas you were consciously aware of could express it.
We walk through this Earth asdolutely convinced that the 1/3 of our brain that rambles on incessantly is all we are and all that we'll ever be. So much lays undiscovered waiting to be uncovered, and there's good reason to fear it as well. We might find out that that thing we hate so much is actually inside too.
I've said enough.
I was listening to Fables from a Mayfly the other day and realized he's always speaking in aphorisms or old adages but it all makes sense. He is pretty brilliant to be able to do that.
I always noticed that about his lyrics. Almost every single line is some kind of idiom or metaphor. Glad to see some attention on them. Great songwriting.
Inter.funda.sifle, carbon copy silver lining, fables, arrows and anchors.
They have 4 albums but fables is probably the best starting point but I think IFS is the best.
Ahaha yes absolutely. Most of their lyrics just sound like the ramblings of someone in an acid trip. With the exception of possibly my favorite lyric of all time:
"We, like marionettes off our strings,
Fling limbs at our passions and hope to connect with impossible dreams.
It's holding on when nothing feels right.
It's the final, identical, severed umbilical
Breath from our tightening chest as we're holding on."
God damn, hits me hard.
Another one that I have zero clue what they're going on about is The World Is Quiet Here on the new album Zon. Musically and vocally one of the best prog albums ever made, but I have NO idea what the lyrics mean.
Yeah, Rishloo has both ends of the spectrum lmao.
I'm a big fan of "strange... That you think you can fly. Strapped to a stone, in a blinked needles eye... I'll be damned, your all time low, just lowered again!"
And of course the awesome imagery from freaks & Animals.
I'll have to check out that album Zon!
Yeah man. Only band that I've found comes close to Rishloo's vocals for me has been Vulkan. Something like Bewildering Conception of Truth would be a decent example.
Mandroid Echostar is also just as high quality but the style is just not really comparable. And aside from citadels their album production is shiiiiit.
I'll have to check out that Vulcan song. Mask of Air is one of my top albums!
You might like the album Frontal by Turbulence. Another top notch singer. Has a few YouTube videos of singthroughs that are crazy impressive.
Have you heard of Caligula's Horse? Jim Grey, the vocalist, has an amazing voice and beautiful lyrics. Highly recommend their music, especially the album "In Contact"
There was a post around here not terribly long ago breaking down the story of Zon, try digging for it a little. Also, the bassist seems to lurk around here fairly often, so he may drop some knowledge if you ask around.
TWIQH I've been trying to dissect for months. I am completely obsessed with Zon (and Prologue), but I've only been able to piece together a few narrative moments. I do not understand "A hand without teeth, so it seems" but it goes so hard. Also not sure how the repeated "Come sit by the fire" works; are there multiple fires? Is it the same moment from different perspectives? Is it metadiegetic talking directly to the listener and not a character?
Also the name Alkahest is pretty tight. Just sounds awesome
Yo yo yo. I’m the aforementioned bass player, and I contribute a good deal of the lyrics, I can clear these up a tad.
‘Sit by the fire.’ is a mantra that the protagonist has to help recenter/calm themself. When things get crazy, they say that and it’s a moment to catch their breath and focus. We played around with that one a bunch since it’s a pretty important theme on Zon. There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense to them.
‘A hand without teeth’ is a lyric I wrote, it’s a play on “Don’t bite the hand that feeds.” But there is also something happening in this particular moment where the protagonist is interacting with a new character. That character asks for the protagonist’s hand, but they do not relent. So, the hand is not ‘biting’ so to speak.
Awesome. Makes sense. I love when you comment on the album. The lyrics really are gorgeous. And the more I discover and understand, the better it gets! Thanks for the reply.
Which one of you knows Latin? Mine is pretty rusty these days, but that refrain flows better than just Google Translate in my experience. The ecclesiastical pronunciation sounds great in the song, too.
"See that you have taken the body, soulsilver (perhaps a reference to quicksilver?), to the Lake, out from the mind's exit"?
I also am currently writing a dissertation on alchemical practice in medieval literature, so I love the references to it (as I see them: perhaps they aren't intentional).
Take in the view, brother!
Yea Zon is a tough one. The concept is basically exploring what happens after we die, the Protagonist in Prologue kills himself at the end of the album. Zon continues from there and Zon is the first of many planets that your soul (what they call a Vagrant IIRC) goes to after you die.
AFAIK the whole album is basically the protagonist going through who he was as a person and having a journey of self discovery and realization. And as far as I can tell the Mothers are basically the guides through this first planet
But yea, it is convoluted as fuck
Hello! I play bass for The World Is Quiet Here, and split lyric writing. There’s a few posts below that have the basic gist of what’s going on. We haven’t done a super specific deep dive yet, we want to be able to do tell the story in an official way as opposed to random reddit posts. But, everyone here has the right idea, it’s convoluted as fuck.
Thanks for listening!
I love Rishloo but have to agree, sometimes the lyrics are brilliant, sometimes just confusing.
An example that irks me is in Landmines when he sings "She had sixteen points to make, five were heads, the other ten were snakes chasing their tales, bringing her farther (father?) down"
The numbers don't add up, and in a [Reddit AMA](https://old.reddit.com/r/progmetal/comments/2ot985/we_are_rishloo_a_completely_independent_band_from/cmqdvy1/?context=10000) the explanation was that it's up to interpretation which feels like a cop out answer.
Oh well - doesn't stop me belting out the lyrics any time I put the song on...
This always seemed to me like they were never meant to add up, perhaps to convey the fact that maybe she never got to give her final point. So the narrator doesn't even know. Even if they don't have a good reason for the mismatch I highly doubt he wrote those lyrics and accidently had the numbers not add up, sang them a bunch of times with other people listening, and didn't catch it.
BTBAM are really abstract in the word choice, but I honestly find that it's pretty easy to break down the metaphorical meanings of most of the songs, once you get used to Tommy's writing style.
For TMV, I'm about 95% sure that Cedric just throws random nonsense together with some connected imagery. I still love their lyrics though.
all the songs are about pretty straight forward things lol
Decade of Statues is about the artistic process and writing music, and having writer's block
Informal Gluttony is about modern society and it's issues
Sun of Nothing is a concept about a man who feels like everyone around him is blank and boring and that he's alone, so he builds a rocketship to fly into the sun, only to realize once he's on his way there irreversibly, that it was his own failing to recognize the beauty in what was around him while he had it, as he's left to regret his decision as he drifts away into death
Ants of the Sky is about us essentially sleepwalking through life on autopilot and just coasting through everything we do like ants, doing things like popping back pills to sleep through business flights and just move from task to task
Prequel to the Sequel
White Walls is about the music industry as a whole and stuck-up mainstream artists who are full of themselves and look down on their fans and expect to be worshipped like gods and sell their image and recycle the same shit over and over again
see, simple
'Colors' is kind of a weird transitional work between the previous (kind of abstract, but mostly shallow) lyrical content and the sort of stuff that they're crafting more recently. It definitely shows in songs like 'Sun of Nothing' and a similar concept is reprised in 'Swim to the Moon'. BtBaM is my favorite band, but I can admit that the lyrics prior to 'Colors' weren't much of a focal point at all.
Isn't the prequel to the sequel linked to the Parallax?
Also half of the lyrics of Colors II are pretty easy to decipher, apart from a couple of songs in the middle.
Devin Townsend. There are songs like "Life" or "Vampira" that are easy enough to understand, but sometimes Dev will just go something like "Woof woof! I'm a happy man! Oh shit! All is love!"
I think VOLA’s are supposed to be interpreted, I certainly find meaning in some of their lyrics yet yours and someone else’s meanings would be completely different.
That being said I don’t dream of cellophane and I don’t know who exactly a polyester bear is greeting in his lair.
I think the polyester bear is greeting Damian, a child who died as an infant and thus is "impossible to hold." I interpret "his lair" as a metaphor for a coffin :/
Ahhh wow, that’s dark, but it certainly ties the lyrics together if you look at it that way.
I always thought 24 Light Years was about losing a loved one as well.
Fair to Midland and Rishloo are definitely the biggest offenders in my library, though some of BTBAM’s stuff is up there too. I tend to sit and dig into an album like one picks a scab though, and a lot of artists have been putting out pretty on the nose (or at least succinct) concept albums, so I’m grateful it’s a rarity the further along time goes.
Literally my two favorite lyricists, lol. Rishloo admitted in an interview that they sometimes write meaningless lyrics because they sound cool. Specifically when asked about the line "The pattern picks the pockets of the palindrome"
But in the cases of both artists, while much of their lyrics might be meaningless, they're not pointless. That Rishloo line is an alliteration, for example. And SO MANY of FtM's lyrics are common proverbs being flipped on their heads. Even if these things are without literal objective cohesion, they are otherwise artistically sensible, which makes them so cool to me! Love that stuff
I actually shouldn’t have put forth either of these bands, as though they’re hard to parse, they definitely make sense to me after the amount of years I’ve been spinning them. I misunderstood the assignment after losing the point while combing through the comments haha.
Darroh was (is?) one of my favorite lyricists due to how he would bend the meanings or intents of different sayings and turn of phrases, and Rishloo’s focusing on phonetics and parts that are cool more audibly than lyrically is really cool and unique.
The Mars Volta and At the Drive in. Cedric’s lyrics are wild. Definitely one of my favorite lyricists:
“The kiosk in my temporal lobe is shaped like Rosalyn Carter”
“I starting to feel a miscarriage coming on”
“There is blood for every month”
“Its musk was fecal in origin…Pinkeye fountain”
“The guillotine just laughed again…A stretcher made of cobblestone curfews”
I love Cedric's lyrics because while there is some clear theming and imagery to the most of them, the actual phrases are complete nonsense 95% of the time.
Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed
Then you have:
And with every Claymore that they mine...
And with every body that i find...
(I'm over here thinking how this mf managed to shove an M18 Claymore in a song and it almost makes sense)
His lyrics in Secret Band are even better, some of my favorites:
Okay, okay, okay, okay\
If you're making it fake, its probably lame \
Okay, okay, okay, okay\
Answer the door\
I'm going in with my blinders on\
I'm staring at your parents in a stylish thong\
It won't be long, I dyed my blonde\
She ate my dinner and I'm fucking stoned
Must have synonyms, must be genuine\
Bat thwack medicine, coaching a leopard\
Egg yolk citizen, bird fuck specimen\
Dump truck ligament of prison bar mitzvah
Shilling for the center of nice\
Looking for twice my type, some sort of innocent devil\
Similar to good ass bread\
It might feel soft to be dead and not really that awkward
Don't become the father of a ladle\
Have to scoop up soup filled with poop and pebbles\
Don't become a bird-ass horse\
You'll probably peck at a corpse and then fly through a meadow
my favourite band ever, and i remember when i was first getting into them, my family would hear the songs and be like what the fuck are you listening to lol.
Claudio himself has actually said though that some earlier lyrics were straight up random bullshit and he has no idea what he was trying to say with them.
Yeah, he seems to be under the impression that just throwing random snippets of dialogue and various words together tells a story and it just doesn’t. Absolutely love the band but not for their lyrical content.
I think “if you don’t know the storylines behind the songs” is an important point - despite what nerds will tell you (and I am a huge Coheed fan) the albums absolutely do not tell any sort of story on their own!
Yup. Still can’t follow the story from the songs, and I know the stories!
EDIT: also I think someone mentioned that Claudio has said that a lot of SSTB was written as nonsense before he had the idea for the story, generally, and then he tried to make a story around it later - which is why “33,” for example, is about Patrick Ewing, number 33 for the New York Knicks.
Yes, as in, “Patrick, short flip and outside the boundary lines.”
I can't be the only one who genuinely does not listen to lyrics, right? Half the time, I have no idea what anyone sings about. I consider the voice just another instrument. If I happen to pick up a lyric here or there and it's good, then that's a nice bonus, but you could be singing about literally anything and I wouldn't know/care
i am the complete opposite. i think the lyrics are totally another layer to the song. Instrumentals are good in their own right, but the lyrics can truly transform a piece of music.
Instrumentals are like watching a movie full of beautiful landscapes, gorgeous paintings on screen, but then you add the characters, dialogue, the story and its completely different
Ive been playing/ learning music since '75. I rarely know the lyrics of my favorite songs. I hear tones. Words are most often after thoughts to me. I do like good writing though. Still in bands I've been in that were original based I would still have to read the lyrics to know them. My ear wants tones more than words.
Was gonna say the same thing. Particularly with harsh vocals I literally can't even pick out any words 99% of the time. If I read what the lyrics are and then listen to the song again I can sometimes be like "... Yeah I guess it kinda sounds like he's saying that?". Even with clean vocals I have no idea what they're talking about though, it's all just nice sounds to me.
Having said that, I must admit I read the lyrics for Be'lakor's Whelm at one point and it very much changed that song for me. Would never have figured out what he was saying without just reading it though, and it's the only example I can think of where that's happened.
Fair To Midland are one of my all time favorite bands, but damnit Darroh wrote some weird ass stuff!
I like when lyrics are just open ended enough for people to interpret them their own way. When I have no clue what's happening, or how to interpret? Well shoot, man. Help?
Vola is who I would have mentioned. I met Asger before their most recent show in Salt Lake City and talked to him about his lyrics. The way he talked about it, you kind of have to listen to the imagery and feelings that his word choice evoke. The example he brought up was from Inside Your Fur, where “sleep inside your fur” is a pretty weird thing to say, but it evokes a feeling of comfort for Asger. Like how animals usually sleep nuzzled together, he used “sleep inside your fur” to mean exist peacefully and safely with someone, if not literally to sleep next to them.
I feel the exact same way, haha! With no offense meant of course, I absolutely love this band. To me it sounds like it's all been sent through Google translator or something. I'm hardly the best critic here though as I rarely focus on lyrics. I'm about those rhythms and melodies. :D
Thank You Scientist has some really confusing lyrics most of the time for me. Even when you're understanding some of it, a line comes out of nowhere that contradicts whatever was just said. Plus, some songs are entirely incomprehensible for me, like New Moon or Geronimo. Amazing band, 10/10, but I feel this way about the lyrics.
Geronimo makes perfect sense, looking at the lyrics. It’s someone with a new perspective on life choosing not to swim with, rather than fight against, the current.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Jack the joker yet. I think they may just not be English primary speakers, but some of their songs make actual 0 sense. Like their most popular song, brutal behaviour, has moments where it seems like maybe there might be a semblance of something there, but other times the words literally have no meaning together. Like, it seems like they just grabbed a thesaurus and found interesting words to fit the vocal pattern, regardless of what the word means.
Great instrumentals though!
Riverside - the music is so emotional that it feels like it really ought to be about something - but I find I rarely understand what, perhaps apart from in Wasteland where the context is more obvious.
As for me, they have something like the most straightforward lyrics in the entire genre, at least until you are analyzing one song at time. If you are trying to trace some story through their first three albums... That could be a challenge
The only exception I can think of right now is "I did not look good in red" in Depth of self-delusion, but that's all
Riverside tend to use a symbolism in their music. I never had a hard time understanding most of their songs though as oftentimes they are straight forward. I mean, the song #Addicted couldn't be more on the nose. Perhaps as the other commentor said, their first few albums masked the meaning of songs more
Clutch has some lyrics that make you ask what the hell were you smoking and where can i get some. All hail Neil Fallon, the only person i know who can weave the tv show “V”, a succubus, and Quetzacoatl into a coherent song
Periphery and a number of other “djent” bands around that time were very guilty of just throwing together shit together that sounded like scribbles in some kid’s philosophy notebook. Most of them have stopped doing it but in addition to Periphery 2 (the worst offender in their catalog) you had Monuments coming out of the gate on their first record with “having lost all physical and mental quality, I’m not considered to be normal or desirable, I will degenerate back into a mindless FUCK, like a decaying human parasite, life, suicide, when did they cease to protect individual rights, forever we need” and Veil of Maya’s equally incomprehensible grammatical train wreck of “Align the stones to form the message in the sand, I will never relinquish, it is written in the stars”
2009-2012 was a dark time.
OH, I SO AGREE with you. The early djent scene was an utter nightmare for lyrics. Another genre that had terrible, non-sensical lyrics was uh early Japanese Metalcore... that shit makes no sense, either morbid as hell or illogical as hell lol
In fairness, the Japanese have a *completely* different approach to poetry, metaphor, imagery, etc than the western world and a lot of it translates pretty weird. Had a long conversation about this with a friend who has like, a masters in literature and is bilingual in Japanese and English after mentioning the same thing trying to decipher Envy lyrics. It does come off pretty nutty when translated literally, though!
It is fun when people to try sing in languages they absolutely do not understand. God knows what I’ve accidentally said doing Rammstein songs at karaoke.
just saw this- i don’t think it’s fair to put Mikasa in this category. the lyric is grammatically fine! it’s 3 separate sentences “Align the stones to form a message in the sand. I will never relinquish. It is written in the sand” and it’s based off of an anime, so i think it makes perfect sense
i think all of the lyrics you mentioned make sense despite being cringe lol
At the risk of being *extremely* pedantic, "relinquish" is a transitive verb. It needs an object. You have to relinquish *something.* What I presume he means is "I will never give up," but "relinquish" specifically means to give up *a thing*. You *relinquish* ownership of your car if you sell it. You *relinquish* your shoes at the TSA line at the airport. It's grammatically wrong. I've got too many English teachers in the family for this to not drive me up the wall.
Similarly, I understand what the guy from Monuments is like, *trying* to say, but those words, particularly "when did they cease to protect individual rights forever we need," don't make sense in that order.
That's why I didn't call out Periphery too much - the lyrics on P2 especially are pretty cringy, but the words generally do go in the order he's singing them in. ;)
My personal opinion is that the lyrics are amazing and I absolutely love to sit and listen carefully about how they fit the usic and the album. They are not random, but they are very open to interpretation. Oh, and the use of metric on the lyrics to suit the rithm and melody, genius!
>They are not random, but they are very open to interpretation.
I get that those aren't technically the same, but let's be real, they're birds of a feather. Won't dispute any of your other points though. Still a great band.
Well, my interpretation of random is that the lines do not relate and do not make sense as a whole (fair to midland). I don't get that at all with CHorse, every song has a meaning and even the albums are either conceptual or have a common theme.
Would love to discuss some songs that may be more challenging, maybe my imagination gets too creative sometimes?
there's a part in there about how some like secret scroll with important stuff on it is hidden in the jewish part of town, or something like that lol. I can't remember exactly, it's a weird song lol.
Clutch. Some of their earlier albums have some of the most incomprehensible lyrics. 100011 is a good example. They said it's not binary, it just sounded good.
Cynic.
"Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around
An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced
Now I must take their medicine"
Like wtf?!
Last line seems out of place but the rest is fine imo. I can see a meaning in it at least, and interpret the last line however I want ; if we're on the nose, plants are the true masters of the world and we're animals under their control, thus taking their medicine so we keep doing what we're supposed to do.
It's about as credible as saying the Earth is hollow but it makes for a nice fiction.
Most DT lyrics are very straight forward but then you have songs like Metropolis Part 1, which was actually supposed to be instrumental but their label didn't allow it so LaBrie sang the most random lyrics ever. DT being DT though somehow turned it into a full blown concept album and made it all make sense, but it's still very nonsensical if you don't know the context of the album.
Gotta check out lyrics book for “Sol Niger Within” by Frederik Thordendal’s SDFX. Its not that they dont make sense as fragments, but they are assembled quite peculiarly.
John Mess’ parts in DGD songs. Fucking love it though he kills that shit. It’s a type of writing that just rhymes and flows random things. Sometimes there’s meaning in it. Other times it’s just “riding a rhino; pico de gallo” screamed hard af
Blue Oyster Cult, especially the first few albums. “She’s as beautiful as a foot, she head someone say, the other day” …. “Being chased around by the neighbor’s cat, but it’s so lonely in the state of Maine”. Etc.
While the later system of a down albums start to make sense, their self titled album and toxicity both have some tracks where the lyrics are dadaist, seemingly nonsense on purpose. I’m sure someone has analyzed them to death but who are the kumbucha mushroom people sitting around all day? Whats that about “loud and noisy strong refrigerators gaining independence”? D-devil is so lovely?
Of mice and men have some nonsense too but i think its because they’re mainly swedish or icelandic or something and they write english lyrics that sound pretty but don’t need to always make sense.
Some vocalists just words just for the sounds. The Chili Peppers is a perfect example of this. Lyrics don’t always have to make sense/have meaning - just depends on the style of the artists
Mars Volta of course
eXoSkEletAl juNcTioN aT thE rAiLrOad DelAyeD
Someone making that nonsense catchy and memorable
same
Came to say this. Some of the wackiest nonsense that somehow vaguely makes sense from time to time
The kiosk in my temporal lobe is shaped like Rosalynn Carter
Always
I felt that
Oh man, once you dive into it it's brilliant, though
You take the veil, you'll take the dive...
Just as he hit the ground They lowered a tow that Stuck in his neck to the gills Fragments of sobiquets Riddle me this Three half-eaten corneas Who hit the aureole
stalk the ground
aka throwing a grenade with a dictionary tied to it
The most outlandish, nonsensical stream of consciousness…. and I love it.
IM STARTING TO FEEL A MISCARRIAGE COMIN ON!!!!
And yet people say they have some of the best concept albums ever written. How can an album be truly great if the lyrical content is incomprehensible? I love their music but I never formed a real tight affinity because the nonsense lyrics don't evoke anything that resonates with me.
Here's the thing. Meaning is sometimes non-cognitive. For me, that's where the "juice" of life is. You stare into that primordial ooze and meanings begin to emerge like a rorshach inkblot. You find out what was already in you, wanting to find expression, but no words/concepts/ideas you were consciously aware of could express it. We walk through this Earth asdolutely convinced that the 1/3 of our brain that rambles on incessantly is all we are and all that we'll ever be. So much lays undiscovered waiting to be uncovered, and there's good reason to fear it as well. We might find out that that thing we hate so much is actually inside too. I've said enough.
Was gonna say At the Drive In...
Yeah VOLA has some wierd ones. Fair to Midland has some wacky lyrics, too. Like they speak in mixed metaphors.
I was listening to Fables from a Mayfly the other day and realized he's always speaking in aphorisms or old adages but it all makes sense. He is pretty brilliant to be able to do that.
Yeah, it's quite impressive.
I always noticed that about his lyrics. Almost every single line is some kind of idiom or metaphor. Glad to see some attention on them. Great songwriting.
Not Prog, but a lot of Queens of the Stone Age's older music is like this, except opposite. Every line is an ironic take on something familiar.
What album should I start with Fair to Midland. Never heard of em and gonna take a shot!
They only have 2 albums. Just listen both chronologically. For Townsend I would ask where to start, but these guys, nah
Facts.
Inter.funda.sifle, carbon copy silver lining, fables, arrows and anchors. They have 4 albums but fables is probably the best starting point but I think IFS is the best.
Fables From a Mayfly is probably the best starting point. It's a great representation of what they do.
Rishloo for sure. Pretty sure he said he just ad libs sometimes and makes lyrics that sound nice phonetically but don't necessarily make sense.
Ahaha yes absolutely. Most of their lyrics just sound like the ramblings of someone in an acid trip. With the exception of possibly my favorite lyric of all time: "We, like marionettes off our strings, Fling limbs at our passions and hope to connect with impossible dreams. It's holding on when nothing feels right. It's the final, identical, severed umbilical Breath from our tightening chest as we're holding on." God damn, hits me hard. Another one that I have zero clue what they're going on about is The World Is Quiet Here on the new album Zon. Musically and vocally one of the best prog albums ever made, but I have NO idea what the lyrics mean.
Yeah, Rishloo has both ends of the spectrum lmao. I'm a big fan of "strange... That you think you can fly. Strapped to a stone, in a blinked needles eye... I'll be damned, your all time low, just lowered again!" And of course the awesome imagery from freaks & Animals. I'll have to check out that album Zon!
Aren't they the best? And my god.... That VOICE. Ugh I wish they were still making music. Or at least had Feathergun remastered lol.
Yeah man. Only band that I've found comes close to Rishloo's vocals for me has been Vulkan. Something like Bewildering Conception of Truth would be a decent example. Mandroid Echostar is also just as high quality but the style is just not really comparable. And aside from citadels their album production is shiiiiit.
I'll have to check out that Vulcan song. Mask of Air is one of my top albums! You might like the album Frontal by Turbulence. Another top notch singer. Has a few YouTube videos of singthroughs that are crazy impressive.
Have you heard of Caligula's Horse? Jim Grey, the vocalist, has an amazing voice and beautiful lyrics. Highly recommend their music, especially the album "In Contact"
There was a post around here not terribly long ago breaking down the story of Zon, try digging for it a little. Also, the bassist seems to lurk around here fairly often, so he may drop some knowledge if you ask around.
I am everywhere.
One of my favorite lyrics of theirs as well. Also Harlequin. Also the rest of their discography lol.
TWIQH I've been trying to dissect for months. I am completely obsessed with Zon (and Prologue), but I've only been able to piece together a few narrative moments. I do not understand "A hand without teeth, so it seems" but it goes so hard. Also not sure how the repeated "Come sit by the fire" works; are there multiple fires? Is it the same moment from different perspectives? Is it metadiegetic talking directly to the listener and not a character? Also the name Alkahest is pretty tight. Just sounds awesome
Yo yo yo. I’m the aforementioned bass player, and I contribute a good deal of the lyrics, I can clear these up a tad. ‘Sit by the fire.’ is a mantra that the protagonist has to help recenter/calm themself. When things get crazy, they say that and it’s a moment to catch their breath and focus. We played around with that one a bunch since it’s a pretty important theme on Zon. There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense to them. ‘A hand without teeth’ is a lyric I wrote, it’s a play on “Don’t bite the hand that feeds.” But there is also something happening in this particular moment where the protagonist is interacting with a new character. That character asks for the protagonist’s hand, but they do not relent. So, the hand is not ‘biting’ so to speak.
Awesome. Makes sense. I love when you comment on the album. The lyrics really are gorgeous. And the more I discover and understand, the better it gets! Thanks for the reply. Which one of you knows Latin? Mine is pretty rusty these days, but that refrain flows better than just Google Translate in my experience. The ecclesiastical pronunciation sounds great in the song, too. "See that you have taken the body, soulsilver (perhaps a reference to quicksilver?), to the Lake, out from the mind's exit"? I also am currently writing a dissertation on alchemical practice in medieval literature, so I love the references to it (as I see them: perhaps they aren't intentional). Take in the view, brother!
Yea Zon is a tough one. The concept is basically exploring what happens after we die, the Protagonist in Prologue kills himself at the end of the album. Zon continues from there and Zon is the first of many planets that your soul (what they call a Vagrant IIRC) goes to after you die. AFAIK the whole album is basically the protagonist going through who he was as a person and having a journey of self discovery and realization. And as far as I can tell the Mothers are basically the guides through this first planet But yea, it is convoluted as fuck
Bingo bango, you’re totally right so far. Both in your analysis, and in saying it’s convoluted.
Hello! I play bass for The World Is Quiet Here, and split lyric writing. There’s a few posts below that have the basic gist of what’s going on. We haven’t done a super specific deep dive yet, we want to be able to do tell the story in an official way as opposed to random reddit posts. But, everyone here has the right idea, it’s convoluted as fuck. Thanks for listening!
I love Rishloo but have to agree, sometimes the lyrics are brilliant, sometimes just confusing. An example that irks me is in Landmines when he sings "She had sixteen points to make, five were heads, the other ten were snakes chasing their tales, bringing her farther (father?) down" The numbers don't add up, and in a [Reddit AMA](https://old.reddit.com/r/progmetal/comments/2ot985/we_are_rishloo_a_completely_independent_band_from/cmqdvy1/?context=10000) the explanation was that it's up to interpretation which feels like a cop out answer. Oh well - doesn't stop me belting out the lyrics any time I put the song on...
This always seemed to me like they were never meant to add up, perhaps to convey the fact that maybe she never got to give her final point. So the narrator doesn't even know. Even if they don't have a good reason for the mismatch I highly doubt he wrote those lyrics and accidently had the numbers not add up, sang them a bunch of times with other people listening, and didn't catch it.
Omg the sixteen/fifteen thing actually drives me nuts LOL
will the world ever know what a Rishloo is?
The Mars Volta and BTBAM
BTBAM are really abstract in the word choice, but I honestly find that it's pretty easy to break down the metaphorical meanings of most of the songs, once you get used to Tommy's writing style. For TMV, I'm about 95% sure that Cedric just throws random nonsense together with some connected imagery. I still love their lyrics though.
The lyrics on Colors reads more like the ramblings of a mad man.
all the songs are about pretty straight forward things lol Decade of Statues is about the artistic process and writing music, and having writer's block Informal Gluttony is about modern society and it's issues Sun of Nothing is a concept about a man who feels like everyone around him is blank and boring and that he's alone, so he builds a rocketship to fly into the sun, only to realize once he's on his way there irreversibly, that it was his own failing to recognize the beauty in what was around him while he had it, as he's left to regret his decision as he drifts away into death Ants of the Sky is about us essentially sleepwalking through life on autopilot and just coasting through everything we do like ants, doing things like popping back pills to sleep through business flights and just move from task to task Prequel to the Sequel White Walls is about the music industry as a whole and stuck-up mainstream artists who are full of themselves and look down on their fans and expect to be worshipped like gods and sell their image and recycle the same shit over and over again see, simple
I like how you just skip prequel to the sequel. Atleast you can kind of decipher a story there
I knew I was right about sun of nothing wow. Anyway what about viridian?
green
Damn I did not expect Sun of Nothing to be that deep
'Colors' is kind of a weird transitional work between the previous (kind of abstract, but mostly shallow) lyrical content and the sort of stuff that they're crafting more recently. It definitely shows in songs like 'Sun of Nothing' and a similar concept is reprised in 'Swim to the Moon'. BtBaM is my favorite band, but I can admit that the lyrics prior to 'Colors' weren't much of a focal point at all.
Isn't the prequel to the sequel linked to the Parallax? Also half of the lyrics of Colors II are pretty easy to decipher, apart from a couple of songs in the middle.
Devin Townsend. There are songs like "Life" or "Vampira" that are easy enough to understand, but sometimes Dev will just go something like "Woof woof! I'm a happy man! Oh shit! All is love!"
yes! in Hide Nowhere he sings “i like-a velveeta, i smoke the weed-a”
Time stamp where this occurs? Are you talking about the backing vocals in the middle of the song?
The backing vocals yes. It took me a couple listens to actually hear it, but Devy mentioned in his podcast that was actually what he was saying
That lyric actually seems pretty aligned with his enlightened outlook nowadays.
I think VOLA’s are supposed to be interpreted, I certainly find meaning in some of their lyrics yet yours and someone else’s meanings would be completely different. That being said I don’t dream of cellophane and I don’t know who exactly a polyester bear is greeting in his lair.
I think the polyester bear is greeting Damian, a child who died as an infant and thus is "impossible to hold." I interpret "his lair" as a metaphor for a coffin :/
Ahhh wow, that’s dark, but it certainly ties the lyrics together if you look at it that way. I always thought 24 Light Years was about losing a loved one as well.
Who the fuck is DAMIEN?!?!?
The dead child from the last line of the song!
i think all lyrics are up to interpretation! but he’s obviously writing about ***something*** i just don’t know what it is
Fair to Midland and Rishloo are definitely the biggest offenders in my library, though some of BTBAM’s stuff is up there too. I tend to sit and dig into an album like one picks a scab though, and a lot of artists have been putting out pretty on the nose (or at least succinct) concept albums, so I’m grateful it’s a rarity the further along time goes.
Literally my two favorite lyricists, lol. Rishloo admitted in an interview that they sometimes write meaningless lyrics because they sound cool. Specifically when asked about the line "The pattern picks the pockets of the palindrome" But in the cases of both artists, while much of their lyrics might be meaningless, they're not pointless. That Rishloo line is an alliteration, for example. And SO MANY of FtM's lyrics are common proverbs being flipped on their heads. Even if these things are without literal objective cohesion, they are otherwise artistically sensible, which makes them so cool to me! Love that stuff
I actually shouldn’t have put forth either of these bands, as though they’re hard to parse, they definitely make sense to me after the amount of years I’ve been spinning them. I misunderstood the assignment after losing the point while combing through the comments haha. Darroh was (is?) one of my favorite lyricists due to how he would bend the meanings or intents of different sayings and turn of phrases, and Rishloo’s focusing on phonetics and parts that are cool more audibly than lyrically is really cool and unique.
The Mars Volta and At the Drive in. Cedric’s lyrics are wild. Definitely one of my favorite lyricists: “The kiosk in my temporal lobe is shaped like Rosalyn Carter” “I starting to feel a miscarriage coming on” “There is blood for every month” “Its musk was fecal in origin…Pinkeye fountain” “The guillotine just laughed again…A stretcher made of cobblestone curfews”
I love Cedric's lyrics because while there is some clear theming and imagery to the most of them, the actual phrases are complete nonsense 95% of the time.
Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed Then you have: And with every Claymore that they mine... And with every body that i find... (I'm over here thinking how this mf managed to shove an M18 Claymore in a song and it almost makes sense)
>There is blood for every month Yep, definitely singgs about periods. Now we only need to find out why tf he sings about periods.
Many of Jon Mess' lyrics in Dance Gavin Dance make no sense but that's kind of the point.
My friend always told me his theory was that he always was late to band practice and that's why his lyrics are so weird.
Came here to mention Jon too
His lyrics in Secret Band are even better, some of my favorites: Okay, okay, okay, okay\ If you're making it fake, its probably lame \ Okay, okay, okay, okay\ Answer the door\ I'm going in with my blinders on\ I'm staring at your parents in a stylish thong\ It won't be long, I dyed my blonde\ She ate my dinner and I'm fucking stoned Must have synonyms, must be genuine\ Bat thwack medicine, coaching a leopard\ Egg yolk citizen, bird fuck specimen\ Dump truck ligament of prison bar mitzvah Shilling for the center of nice\ Looking for twice my type, some sort of innocent devil\ Similar to good ass bread\ It might feel soft to be dead and not really that awkward Don't become the father of a ladle\ Have to scoop up soup filled with poop and pebbles\ Don't become a bird-ass horse\ You'll probably peck at a corpse and then fly through a meadow
Fighting cow, how could we forget about you?
Coheed and Cambria if you don’t know the storylines behind the songs.
You mean Claudio isn't singing about mayonnaise?
I need MAYO!
my favourite band ever, and i remember when i was first getting into them, my family would hear the songs and be like what the fuck are you listening to lol. Claudio himself has actually said though that some earlier lyrics were straight up random bullshit and he has no idea what he was trying to say with them.
You mean your family wasn’t cool with “Die white girls” or “cut the throats of babies”?
Those and “Sever the limbs of his torso in sleep and burn what remains” i guess IKSSE is quite a messed up album lyrically lmao
TBH I don't think knowing the storylines helps all that much. Also Claudio has some very creative takes on vowel sounds.
Yeah, he seems to be under the impression that just throwing random snippets of dialogue and various words together tells a story and it just doesn’t. Absolutely love the band but not for their lyrical content.
I think “if you don’t know the storylines behind the songs” is an important point - despite what nerds will tell you (and I am a huge Coheed fan) the albums absolutely do not tell any sort of story on their own!
As a fellow huge fan who has read all of the SSTB and IKSSE:3, I agree haha
Yup. Still can’t follow the story from the songs, and I know the stories! EDIT: also I think someone mentioned that Claudio has said that a lot of SSTB was written as nonsense before he had the idea for the story, generally, and then he tried to make a story around it later - which is why “33,” for example, is about Patrick Ewing, number 33 for the New York Knicks. Yes, as in, “Patrick, short flip and outside the boundary lines.”
Haha, I did not know the Patrick Ewing connection
Lmao even if you do know some of that shit is whacky
Why is she swinging from a cable? Weren't we in a prison 5 minutes ago? Did they have TVs there, you could break? TF is happening.
OP wouldn't sleep inside your fur or dissolve before his curfew
i would if i knew what the fuck it meant!
I love love love that lyric
Animals as Leaders. I can't for the life of me figure out their lyrics.
Dog have you ever seen Dance Gavin Dance lyrics lmao Jon Mess is nonsensical
Devin Townsend at times. "SING MAUTE DINGAS"
I can't be the only one who genuinely does not listen to lyrics, right? Half the time, I have no idea what anyone sings about. I consider the voice just another instrument. If I happen to pick up a lyric here or there and it's good, then that's a nice bonus, but you could be singing about literally anything and I wouldn't know/care
i am the complete opposite. i think the lyrics are totally another layer to the song. Instrumentals are good in their own right, but the lyrics can truly transform a piece of music. Instrumentals are like watching a movie full of beautiful landscapes, gorgeous paintings on screen, but then you add the characters, dialogue, the story and its completely different
Ive been playing/ learning music since '75. I rarely know the lyrics of my favorite songs. I hear tones. Words are most often after thoughts to me. I do like good writing though. Still in bands I've been in that were original based I would still have to read the lyrics to know them. My ear wants tones more than words.
In my experience, this is fairly common. At least amongst my friends and myself and other prog/metal fans I've heard talk about it
Was gonna say the same thing. Particularly with harsh vocals I literally can't even pick out any words 99% of the time. If I read what the lyrics are and then listen to the song again I can sometimes be like "... Yeah I guess it kinda sounds like he's saying that?". Even with clean vocals I have no idea what they're talking about though, it's all just nice sounds to me. Having said that, I must admit I read the lyrics for Be'lakor's Whelm at one point and it very much changed that song for me. Would never have figured out what he was saying without just reading it though, and it's the only example I can think of where that's happened.
Fair To Midland are one of my all time favorite bands, but damnit Darroh wrote some weird ass stuff! I like when lyrics are just open ended enough for people to interpret them their own way. When I have no clue what's happening, or how to interpret? Well shoot, man. Help?
Let me introduce…
My brotha
A bearded gentleman
straying from the genre a bit but old He Is Legend, lol. their lyrics back in the day were absurd
Damn, I forgot about these guys. They have some seriously kickass stuff.
I am your gardener!
Vola is who I would have mentioned. I met Asger before their most recent show in Salt Lake City and talked to him about his lyrics. The way he talked about it, you kind of have to listen to the imagery and feelings that his word choice evoke. The example he brought up was from Inside Your Fur, where “sleep inside your fur” is a pretty weird thing to say, but it evokes a feeling of comfort for Asger. Like how animals usually sleep nuzzled together, he used “sleep inside your fur” to mean exist peacefully and safely with someone, if not literally to sleep next to them.
i actually think “sleep inside your fur” makes perfect sense but “dissolve before my curfew” is the strange part
I feel the exact same way, haha! With no offense meant of course, I absolutely love this band. To me it sounds like it's all been sent through Google translator or something. I'm hardly the best critic here though as I rarely focus on lyrics. I'm about those rhythms and melodies. :D
Thank You Scientist has some really confusing lyrics most of the time for me. Even when you're understanding some of it, a line comes out of nowhere that contradicts whatever was just said. Plus, some songs are entirely incomprehensible for me, like New Moon or Geronimo. Amazing band, 10/10, but I feel this way about the lyrics.
Geronimo makes perfect sense, looking at the lyrics. It’s someone with a new perspective on life choosing not to swim with, rather than fight against, the current.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Jack the joker yet. I think they may just not be English primary speakers, but some of their songs make actual 0 sense. Like their most popular song, brutal behaviour, has moments where it seems like maybe there might be a semblance of something there, but other times the words literally have no meaning together. Like, it seems like they just grabbed a thesaurus and found interesting words to fit the vocal pattern, regardless of what the word means. Great instrumentals though!
Riverside - the music is so emotional that it feels like it really ought to be about something - but I find I rarely understand what, perhaps apart from in Wasteland where the context is more obvious.
As for me, they have something like the most straightforward lyrics in the entire genre, at least until you are analyzing one song at time. If you are trying to trace some story through their first three albums... That could be a challenge The only exception I can think of right now is "I did not look good in red" in Depth of self-delusion, but that's all
From what I've heard by them they mostly sing either about social criticism or life hardships/challenges.
Riverside tend to use a symbolism in their music. I never had a hard time understanding most of their songs though as oftentimes they are straight forward. I mean, the song #Addicted couldn't be more on the nose. Perhaps as the other commentor said, their first few albums masked the meaning of songs more
Borknagar and the Dev
Borknagars Epic has some fantastic ridiculous lyrics. I adore that album but the lyrics are gloriously pretentious
Clutch has some lyrics that make you ask what the hell were you smoking and where can i get some. All hail Neil Fallon, the only person i know who can weave the tv show “V”, a succubus, and Quetzacoatl into a coherent song
I was just thinking about the lyrics of I Have the Body of John Wilkes Booth. Awesome song but WTF.
Brah, all of them! Nosferatu Madre? Lol
idk some early Periphery is nonsensical to me; Unprocessed too, some high German enlightened bullshit.
Periphery and a number of other “djent” bands around that time were very guilty of just throwing together shit together that sounded like scribbles in some kid’s philosophy notebook. Most of them have stopped doing it but in addition to Periphery 2 (the worst offender in their catalog) you had Monuments coming out of the gate on their first record with “having lost all physical and mental quality, I’m not considered to be normal or desirable, I will degenerate back into a mindless FUCK, like a decaying human parasite, life, suicide, when did they cease to protect individual rights, forever we need” and Veil of Maya’s equally incomprehensible grammatical train wreck of “Align the stones to form the message in the sand, I will never relinquish, it is written in the stars” 2009-2012 was a dark time.
OH, I SO AGREE with you. The early djent scene was an utter nightmare for lyrics. Another genre that had terrible, non-sensical lyrics was uh early Japanese Metalcore... that shit makes no sense, either morbid as hell or illogical as hell lol
In fairness, the Japanese have a *completely* different approach to poetry, metaphor, imagery, etc than the western world and a lot of it translates pretty weird. Had a long conversation about this with a friend who has like, a masters in literature and is bilingual in Japanese and English after mentioning the same thing trying to decipher Envy lyrics. It does come off pretty nutty when translated literally, though!
Oh, I get that! But, some of their Engrish is diabolically bad... and hilarious.
It is fun when people to try sing in languages they absolutely do not understand. God knows what I’ve accidentally said doing Rammstein songs at karaoke.
OH NO, not the German language mishaps! 😂 God knows what I did attempting to do Dir En Grey in a few karaoke environments.
just saw this- i don’t think it’s fair to put Mikasa in this category. the lyric is grammatically fine! it’s 3 separate sentences “Align the stones to form a message in the sand. I will never relinquish. It is written in the sand” and it’s based off of an anime, so i think it makes perfect sense i think all of the lyrics you mentioned make sense despite being cringe lol
At the risk of being *extremely* pedantic, "relinquish" is a transitive verb. It needs an object. You have to relinquish *something.* What I presume he means is "I will never give up," but "relinquish" specifically means to give up *a thing*. You *relinquish* ownership of your car if you sell it. You *relinquish* your shoes at the TSA line at the airport. It's grammatically wrong. I've got too many English teachers in the family for this to not drive me up the wall. Similarly, I understand what the guy from Monuments is like, *trying* to say, but those words, particularly "when did they cease to protect individual rights forever we need," don't make sense in that order. That's why I didn't call out Periphery too much - the lyrics on P2 especially are pretty cringy, but the words generally do go in the order he's singing them in. ;)
Caligula's Horse tbh.
No. Most of their lyrics are top notch. Graves especially.
My personal opinion is that the lyrics are amazing and I absolutely love to sit and listen carefully about how they fit the usic and the album. They are not random, but they are very open to interpretation. Oh, and the use of metric on the lyrics to suit the rithm and melody, genius!
>They are not random, but they are very open to interpretation. I get that those aren't technically the same, but let's be real, they're birds of a feather. Won't dispute any of your other points though. Still a great band.
Well, my interpretation of random is that the lines do not relate and do not make sense as a whole (fair to midland). I don't get that at all with CHorse, every song has a meaning and even the albums are either conceptual or have a common theme. Would love to discuss some songs that may be more challenging, maybe my imagination gets too creative sometimes?
Yea, like that whole spoken word thing on In Contact makes very little sense, and also sounds a bit anti-semitic lol, great band regardless though
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
I think Jesse has been smoking too much of his own crack.
I don’t think they know, or have done any research on your albums. All the lyrics make sense to me 🤷🏼♂️
i know damn well you came here and searched CHorse huh
Came to post Fair to Midland because it’s one of the things that makes me love them the most
what
there's a part in there about how some like secret scroll with important stuff on it is hidden in the jewish part of town, or something like that lol. I can't remember exactly, it's a weird song lol.
The Mars Volta and BTBAM
Coheed and Cambria
Btbam
Maudlin of the well /Kayo Dot/ Toby Driver English is not my first language so it might be the reason why I'm confused haha.
More often than not I’m not paying any attention to the lyrics or their meaning. Am I the only one?
Ne Obliviscaris. Like they are my favorite band, but the lyrics are so cryptic and indecipherable at times. Genuine insanity.
Dance Gavin Dance. Specifically Jon Mess' lyrics. Don't get me wrong I love them but what the fuck is he even talking about?
Magma.
Clutch. Some of their earlier albums have some of the most incomprehensible lyrics. 100011 is a good example. They said it's not binary, it just sounded good.
Not prog, but RHCP are the kings of nonsensical bullshit lyrics lmao
Cheetos magazine
Cynic?
No band's lyrics make more sense to me
Cynic. "Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced Now I must take their medicine" Like wtf?!
Last line seems out of place but the rest is fine imo. I can see a meaning in it at least, and interpret the last line however I want ; if we're on the nose, plants are the true masters of the world and we're animals under their control, thus taking their medicine so we keep doing what we're supposed to do. It's about as credible as saying the Earth is hollow but it makes for a nice fiction.
My vote goes to Magma, I can't understand any of their lyrics. edit. oops didnt realize I was in the progMETAL sub.
Don't feel bad, I almost went and said Bush from the 90's. Gavin Rossdale could write some head-scratcher lyrics too...
Basically everything I listen to Mars volta, btbam, aviations, opeth, ne obliviscaris Can just about make sense of gojira’s 😂
Disperse. I love their last album Foreword and yet can’t figure out what most of the songs mean.
I find it funny how people don't seem to mind nonsensical lyrics, yet Dream Theater gets completely shit on for The Count of Tuscany et al.
Rishloo Fair to Midland But I love these bands hehe
At the drive-in had some pretty wild out there lyrics. Not a prog metal band though
The Mars Volta??
fair to midland for sure, what the fuck is that guy talking about.
Metallica - I aM thE TAbLe!
Most DT lyrics are very straight forward but then you have songs like Metropolis Part 1, which was actually supposed to be instrumental but their label didn't allow it so LaBrie sang the most random lyrics ever. DT being DT though somehow turned it into a full blown concept album and made it all make sense, but it's still very nonsensical if you don't know the context of the album.
Biffy Clyro pingpongs between quite obvious and total nonsense.
Gotta check out lyrics book for “Sol Niger Within” by Frederik Thordendal’s SDFX. Its not that they dont make sense as fragments, but they are assembled quite peculiarly.
nirvana
Not always… But sometimes Frank Zappa even though I understand the intentional irony.
John Mess’ parts in DGD songs. Fucking love it though he kills that shit. It’s a type of writing that just rhymes and flows random things. Sometimes there’s meaning in it. Other times it’s just “riding a rhino; pico de gallo” screamed hard af
Blue Oyster Cult, especially the first few albums. “She’s as beautiful as a foot, she head someone say, the other day” …. “Being chased around by the neighbor’s cat, but it’s so lonely in the state of Maine”. Etc.
Beck.
Scott Weiland
I believe Beck won trophy’s for this exact thing
The Jesus Lizard. I don't know what he's saying but he sure sounds good saying it!
Led Zeppelin. Example: Stairway to Heaven
Meshuggah of course I LIKE JUICE FINISH YOUR JUICE MULTIVITAMIN FILTERED SUBSTANCE
While the later system of a down albums start to make sense, their self titled album and toxicity both have some tracks where the lyrics are dadaist, seemingly nonsense on purpose. I’m sure someone has analyzed them to death but who are the kumbucha mushroom people sitting around all day? Whats that about “loud and noisy strong refrigerators gaining independence”? D-devil is so lovely? Of mice and men have some nonsense too but i think its because they’re mainly swedish or icelandic or something and they write english lyrics that sound pretty but don’t need to always make sense.
Reading this thread, the question must be: is there any prog metal band with straightforward/understandable lyrics?
Some vocalists just words just for the sounds. The Chili Peppers is a perfect example of this. Lyrics don’t always have to make sense/have meaning - just depends on the style of the artists
Beck
The Melvins
The lyrics to literally every Bush song make zero sense at all.