I don’t know why metal-archives.com, metal’s global database, includes “Lyrical theme(s)” as a listing and search parameter. But it offers a great look at metal’s lyrical trends. I entered some common dualities and themes into the search engine, which returned the number of bands worldwide attributed to them. Below are the results.
| Lyrical Theme | # of Bands |
|---|---|
| love | 1066 |
| hate | 1532 |
| war | 3619 |
| peace | 20 |
| cats | 1 |
| dogs | 5 |
| strength | 46 |
| weakness | 13 |
| victory | 17 |
| loss | 162 |
| optimism | 3 |
| pessimism | 41 |
| rural | 7 |
| urban | 35 |
| past | 51 |
| future | 80 |
| spring | 0 |
| summer | 2 |
| autumn | 7 |
| winter | 234 |
| happiness | 6 |
| sadness | 441 |
| heaven | 10 |
| hell | 288 |
| life | 2421 |
| death | 6686 |
- Cosmo Lee
Really really interesting!!
I think however, that for example speaking about war in some way implies speaking about peace. You know, sometimes war movies are the most pacifist of all.
This is interesting also to show to that people that think metal songs talk just about macho men or satan.
No corpse fucking? Hardly metal.
Crazy cat lady wants to know which song was about cats!
*throws cats*
You forgot sex.
Wow, we're a depressive lot, aren't we?
Rafa – That's a good point.
Anon – Evidently 16 bands worldwide sing about corpses. (It's gotta be more than that.)
Skullgal – Seattle crossover band A.M.Q.A. is the one band that sings about cats.
Averse – 687 bands sing about "sex", though I didn't include that in the table because it has no opposite for meaningful comparison (no one sings about celibacy).
Anon – Evidently.
How many bands did songs about food?
No one sings about celibacy? Ok, but it is clear that black metal on the whole is an incredibly celibate genre in the sense of hardly touching sex. And where it does touch sex, it does so either cadaverously (e.g. Eros Necropsique or ascetically (e.g. Celestia).
Sonic hairshirt!
Averse Sefira itself is a case in point (despite there being some sublime mystical sex in the Zohar et al).
That's a really interesting use of the information on metal archives, thanks, Cosmo.
It makes me wish that MA would have more complicated search tools so we could see for example how many of the 'winter' bands are from cold climates, or how many 'love' bands come from America, so on.
bacon – 16 for food, 98 for beer, and 1 for wine.
Nicola – I'd say that extreme metal in general is either very celibate (with the obvious exception of pornogrind) or very erotic in a sort of fetishization of death. Le petit mort, etc.
Helm – I suppose brute force accounting could yield the data granularity you seek.
how were unseen terror left out of the cats column?
You forgot one.
3125 search results for "satan"