dragonbourne
DragonForce. Massively-selling speed metal with extremely talented musicians who are technically proficient, bringing the retro-gaming era into music form with cool sound effects and insanely fast guitar solos.
Airbourne. Classic, Australian pub rock, with headbanging beats and classic power chordal progressions, keeping to the same format that brought AC/DC so much success.
Why can neither of these bands write good lyrics?!
Now, I’m not the world’s best lyricist myself, but these two produce such tripe in such quantity and of such rancid quality that I wonder how more people haven’t picked up on this. Let’s go for DragonForce first.
DragonForce
Now, Through The Fire And Flames is a great example of a great war fantasy song, with slaying demons and great shiny swords clashing, hordes
The rich man's Darkness
of armies racing into the fray. Just look at lyrics like: In flames of death’s eternal reign / we ride towards the fight – pretty metal, eh? Yeah, you’d be right in thinking that there’s nothing wrong with lyrics like this contextually, but let’s delve deeper into Dragonforce’s back catalogue.
In Heroes of our Time, lead singer ZP Theart bellows out “So far beyond the blackened sky tonight” which is far too strikingly close to the climactic lyric “on the wings of a dream, so far beyond reality” from TtFaF. This is excusable, but look at the whole album!
Body Breakdown: Far beyond the lost horizon standing on the shore
Trail of Broken Hearts: Here we are far beyond the distant sky
Lost Souls in Endless Time: Far beyond the gates of glory
Why can’t anything be close to something in these stories!?
Right, I’ll end the rant there before I get too in depth and use up all my energy on the abysmal untalented songwriter from Airbourne.
Airbourne
One of the few times their shirts are kept on
Where the hell do I start? Airbourne’s lyrics are some of the worst I have ever heard. You know back in first school, where you write a line like “My mummy’s working the dryer” or something silly like that, and then you realise your vocabulary is not extended enough to think of a word that rhymes with “dryer” so you write something like “Daddy’s fixing a tyre”?…
Diamond In The Rough: Women come and go / They never do remain
They never do remain? They NEVER DO REMAIN!?
And it doesn’t stop there. Oh no. How stilted does this one sound?
Let’s Ride: We rode all through the night / Like we never had before
And my personal favourite:
Runnin’Â Wild: I’m running on rage, I’m out of control / My anger for you is like hot burning coal
Hot. Burning. Coal. You heard it here first, folks.
Their terrible rhyming is not the only thing that bothers me. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast was their debut single from their second album, and frankly, these lyrics are great! I don’t know what went wrong with the rest of them. Thieves in the night rob you blind with surgical precision / You can’t evade the eye in the sky, he’s got facial recognition.
… Maybe I spoke too soon. Their subject matter isn’t that wholesome, either.
Diamond In The Rough: I stuck my finger in the honey / Threw my dollar in the well / And when I made my wish / You know it was as clear as a bell
I think I threw up a little.
The problem is… I still LIKE these bands even with their clichéd, repetitive, godawful lyrics, because I am too busy marveling at Herman Li’s facemelting solos or Airbourne’s general “f*cking rock” demeanor, so, should I judge them on their lyrical talents when they write such harmonically excellent tunes?
Yes, I bloody well should.
b
