Uncut Rubber

I've noticed that Black Sabbath and Judas Priest lyrics tend to be quite lame. The music is usually great, but the lyrics are just bollocks. Let's have a look, for example, at a fragment from Black Sabbath's "War Pigs":

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgement day comes, yeah!

Seriously, how lame can you get? No intelligent person above the age of nine would consider this good lyrics. Sabbath lyrics like these are just a simply phrased message, without any artistic value. Similar tendencies can be seen in other Sabbath songs such as "Paranoid", "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and "Black Sabbath".
As for Judas Priest, they have written some good lyrics, such as the lyrics to "Breaking The Law" and "A Shot At Glory", but some of their lyrics are just a meaningless stream of phrases intended to sound cool. The pinnacle of this tendency is found in "Judas Rising":

Eternal betrayer
Ice cold and evil
Taking no prisoners
Dark prince of the world

See? All this says is basically "he's evil... he's evil... he's evil... he's evil...". The rest of the verses are similar to this one. Also, there is "Rapid Fire":

Pounding the world like a battering ram
Forging the furnace for the final grand slam

The same goes for this song.

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I hope that you will understand I do not mean to cause offence, and that no wolfbirds will be sent upon me as a result of this post.
Yours sincerely, Uncut Rubber

 

Stringbender

Well, I have to agree that there are MANY songs that have completely lame lyrics. For some reason it does not really seem to bother me much- so long as the song is still interesting to me. The again, as a guitarist- I'm biased into instantly listening to the guitar work above all else, so I don't always REALLY listen to the lyrics. Unfortunately there are so mnay great songs out there- yet if you really look at the words they are childish gibberish. I got a fantastic realization of this when I bought a copy of Kissology volume I and was able to watch a great concert of Kiss in '76 WITH CAPTIONING- the show was awesome, the songs I had always thought were great when I was a kid just starting to listen to kiss- but when I actually read the lyrics for the first time I realized just how lame, goofy and totally sex-driven the vast majority of songs were. So- do I like these songs less? No- just my realization that maybe theseare not quite as "high ranking" as I had once put them.
I LOVE anything done by Ronnie James Dio- his voice is one of the greatest powerhouses of metal. However, I am TOTALLY and completely bored with Dio's lyricism.. in EVERY incarnation of a band he has been in- Rainbow/ Sabbath/ Solo/ Heaven and Hell- the lyrics are EXACTLY the same each and every time. Listen to any song he has done.. the words that KEEP coming up are Growl..growl..growl.. "rainbow".. growl..growl..growl.. "Evil".. growl.. "light"..growl.."darkness"..growl..."devil"... I wanna say "Ronnie..I love your vocals- they are easily some of the best in the world of rock, but if I gotta hear ONE more mention of a rainbow in your songs.. PLEASE!!!" LOL.

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Only with the eyes closed can one begin to truly see.

Aqualung

You may be on to something here. I have this almost complete inability to actually list to/understand the lyrics, though, so I hadn't noticed yet.

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Here we go. Mushu cereal for breakfast with duck sauce.

Mongo97

Heh, music isn't always about art.

Hero Of The Day

I love Sabbaths lyrics, most were written during total acid trips anyway. Anyways, it worked for them, you know, being the most influential metal band of all time? To each his own..

Want to hear the shittiest lyrics ever? Go buy United Abominations by Megadeth, worst 13 bucks i ever spent. I love Megadeth, but they messed up with this album.

Uncut Rubber

I'm the exact opposite. I always listen to lyrics carefully, and remember them. If I can't distinguish the lyrics, I look them up.

__________________
I hope that you will understand I do not mean to cause offence, and that no wolfbirds will be sent upon me as a result of this post.
Yours sincerely, Uncut Rubber

Uncut Rubber

Err... music is a form of art. It's just the lyrics that aren't always artistic.

__________________
I hope that you will understand I do not mean to cause offence, and that no wolfbirds will be sent upon me as a result of this post.
Yours sincerely, Uncut Rubber

Aqualung

How strange!

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Here we go. Mushu cereal for breakfast with duck sauce.

Neverlife

dude those lyrics you posted from War Pigs, have meaning, what are you talking about? And all lyrics (dont quote me on it) MOST lyrics, have points being one way or another.

Rush for example, your not going to get anything normal out of songs like The Trees, 2112, and By-Tor and the Snowdogs. Its not supposed to be, and it rules for that reason.

Same with Coheed and Cambria, their lyrics are an epic story. I mean how cool is that?

So to truly understand you must be the writer, but to get a basic idea, you must think outside the box.

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Aqualung

I understood it more at being, not that they don't mean anything, but that the meaning is expressed so tritely.

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Here we go. Mushu cereal for breakfast with duck sauce.

hitman1116

well if you are going to say that Sabbath's meaning comes off so tritely so does Lennon's work but sometimes thats what people need to hear to actually get the meaning and do stuff.