Many
Heavy Metal fans and musicians seem to agree that in their genre, lyrics don't matter very much - or rather, that how the lyrics
sound is a lot more important than what the lyrics
mean. Thus, a lot of
Heavy Metal music has generic, largely meaningless lyrics. Common themes (with some of their standard words) for Mad Lib Metal Lyrics include:
- Satanism: 'Satan', 'Antichrist', 'Hell', 'Sodom', 'Gomorra', and biblical references in general.
- Body Horror and Gorn: 'Body', 'organs', 'flesh', 'ripping', 'corpse', 'blood'.
- Heavy Meta: 'metal', 'rock', 'guitar', 'leather', and a lot of references to youthful rebellion.
- Psychopathy: 'insane', 'voices', 'mind', 'in [my/your/his] head'.
- Warfare (modern): 'napalm', 'machine gun', 'total war', 'nuclear', 'holocaust'.
- Warfare (ancient): 'hero', 'warrior', 'sword', 'shield', 'honour', 'kingdom', 'battle'. Overlaps with...
- Heavy Mithril: 'dragon', 'beast', 'quest', 'prophecy'.
Note that, except
Heavy Meta, all these themes have violence, death and
hamminess in common. Also, metal lyrics about any of these themes are not necessarily Mad Lib Metal Lyrics - this trope is about
generic and
meaningless metal lyrics.
The popularity of different themes varies across metal subgenres: the "traditional" metal of the
late seventies and
early eighties mostly uses
Heavy Meta.
Thrash Metal loves modern warfare
* no, not the shooting game
, as well as Satanism (but not as much as
Black Metal) and
Gorn (but not as much as
Death Metal). Ancient warfare and
Heavy Mithril mostly show up in
Power Metal and
Folk Metal.
This trope is about lyrics, but the same pattern often shows up in band, album and song names.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Many
Metal Heads will freely admit that their favourite bands' lyrics aren't very original or thought-provoking, but still enjoy the music a lot; as stated before, many just don't think lyrics are very important.
Of course, while the fans generally don't pay much attention to Mad Lib Metal Lyrics,
Moral Guardians often do - and then have a heart attack.
Compare
Word Salad Lyrics, which mean even less, but pretend to mean more.
This trope's examples are far too numerous to list; a few examples for explanatory purposes will do.
Examples:
Satanism
- Almost everything by Venom.
- A lot of Slayer songs, including "The Antichrist".
Gorn
Heavy Meta
- Metallica usually averts Mad Lib Metal Lyrics, but "Metal Militia" is a fine example of this trope.
- A lot of Saxon songs, most notably "Heavy Metal Thunder".
- "Black Metal" (the genre's Trope Namer) by Venom.
- NanowaR sometimes parodied this with weakly linked, but strongly screamed lines, using either Metal or Heavy Mithril themes — up to a List Song of metals and alloys.
- Metallica's No Life 'til Leather, presumably a snowclone of Motorhead's No Sleep 'til Hammersmith.
Psychopathy
- "Criminally Insane" and "Dead Skin Mask" by Slayer.
- "Schizoid" by Venom.
Modern warfare
- "Fire In The Sky" by Saxon.
- "Chemical Warfare" by Slayer.
Ancient warfare
- Most songs by DragonForce; it would be shorter to list the songs that aren't.
- "Blood Is The Price Of Glory" and "Victory Song" by Ensiferum.
Heavy Mithril
Non-Metal Examples
- Queen was well known for this as they used the vocals as another instrument.
- Same with Yes
