For most bands, I would say English is good for them. I appreciate hearing songs in English too so there is no ugly internet translation searching.

Shining is one band for example, definitely better in Swedish, but English works too. And Farsot as well with the songs in German.

Well I prefer English just because I do understand it.
but somehow I got used to those Scandinavian languages, and they sound suitable to me most of the time now..
but as for my native language, I think I will really crack up if I saw someone growling in Arabic..haha
I can't imagine that

...hmm well most of the vocals are in english and i like it that way...i must accept that when i first listened to metal bands in spanish, it was pretty weird, then i got used to it...

I think the best language for growls is German... I don't understand anything to it, but it just sounds great, thugh clean German lyrics are awful. I guess that's because German sounds so much like my native language, French, but in a bizarre and awkward way... German sounds like a parody of French, to me, but not when growled: then it just sounds so fucking killer!

Written by Janne on 11.12.2008 at 23:06

Written by Elio on 11.12.2008 at 22:34

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 11.12.2008 at 22:28

Written by Janne on 11.12.2008 at 22:25

I just can't understand why Finntroll sing in swedish. I also love Sweden and swedish folk and culture and language but they are FINNS! I know that it's the second official language in Finland but they are not even from the western part of the country...
I would love them more if they sang in finnish.

What I heard was that a couple of the Fintroll guys are of the Swedish speaking variety

Yeah, but the main reason was that Swedish is more "Trollish" (not joking)

I know they said that, but for me it would not enough reason. and if I'm right the band is from Helsinki.

Is Finnish so cool and Swedish so horrible??? Personnally, I think both languages are very suitable for growl, they sound so caveman-like, lol. But anyway, it's much worse when Finnish folk bands sing in English then in Swedish, no? I mean, instead of being mad about Finntroll, you should be angry at Ensiferum, for instance.

Personally, I like vocals in any language. Screaming especially. Although, Scandinavian languages do screaming the best. German too. Their languages are so guttural already, they sound like they should be screamed instead of spoken. My favorite foreign screaming definitely goes to Finntroll.

Try Equilibrium, nice guttural growls in German grrrruhahaha!

Written by MétalNoir on 16.12.2008 at 02:00

Written by Janne on 11.12.2008 at 23:06

Written by Elio on 11.12.2008 at 22:34

Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 11.12.2008 at 22:28

Written by Janne on 11.12.2008 at 22:25

I just can't understand why Finntroll sing in swedish. I also love Sweden and swedish folk and culture and language but they are FINNS! I know that it's the second official language in Finland but they are not even from the western part of the country...
I would love them more if they sang in finnish.

What I heard was that a couple of the Fintroll guys are of the Swedish speaking variety

Yeah, but the main reason was that Swedish is more "Trollish" (not joking)

I know they said that, but for me it would not enough reason. and if I'm right the band is from Helsinki.

Is Finnish so cool and Swedish so horrible??? Personnally, I think both languages are very suitable for growl, they sound so caveman-like, lol. But anyway, it's much worse when Finnish folk bands sing in English then in Swedish, no? I mean, instead of being mad about Finntroll, you should be angry at Ensiferum, for instance.

I'm not mad about Fintroll, you guys made this so big! I just noticed it but by now I regreted doing that...

Lol all right you're forgiven

I honestly don't care what language songs are in as long as it sounds good and fits the music and all that. I don't usualy listen to lyrics anyway so it doesn't matter if I don't understand them

I prefer English, anyway most bands use English

Mostly English or Scandinavian....in fact anything but German because its a piss ugly language. Thats the only drawback I find with Equilibrium, everytime I listen to it Im like "shit man, if only this was Norwegian it would sound amazing!". But no...they sound like they're choking on a piece of carrot or a typewriter eating tinfoil being thrown around a room. Awful..

Doesnt matter as long as it sounds good. Certainly i think some languages can't be mixed with metal, Spanish, Portuguese and German, when the bands sing in those, it sounds awful.

English, even though most of the time it ends up in horrible grammar mistakes, lol.

Though language isn't big on me, I don't ever read lyrics anyways.

I don't really care about the vocals. As long as the music sounds good I'll listen to it.

Doesn't matter to me whatsoever what language the vocals are in. I've fallen into a habit of paying less attention to the actual lyrical content than the overall sound of the music, so as long as it sounds good, it won't matter either way. As for whether English works the best for Metal, it just depends on the band. Not quite sure who would be growling, screaming, etc. etc. in their native tongue other than Hardingrock, in which Ihsahn rolling his R's whilst screaming brings in a lot of win. Lyrics are nice when they're nice, but I more than often don't look them up either way.

I think it doesn't matter but if you are gonna sing in English or Spanish and your grammar is awful, its horrible.

It's important to have good accent, but doesn't matters which language.

I personally like when bands sing in their native language.

For example, I never thought Polish would sound any sort of decent in growls until I heard Radogost.

I actually prefer any language except Swedish. Lyrics in Swedish are generally horrible if you can understand what they're saying. I can see how they might sound cool to someone who doesn't understand them, but there are very few Swedish lyrics that don't sound cheesy as hell to me, as I can actually understand what they're saying.

The few bands that have been able to pull of Swedish lyrics usually do so through the way they make the vocals sound rather than by the lyrics themselves. The lyrics of Armaggedda or Woods Of Infinity may not look very good on their own, but the vocalists find a way to make them sound convincing and powerful.

On the other hand, Lifelover are the kings of bad Swedish lyrics, and also doesn't have a vocalist that even makes them sound remotely convincing.

I can listen to bands singing in just about any other language, but I'm generally sceptical when it comes to Swedish lyrics, just because so many of them suck so bad.

Also, parts of Finntroll can't even speak a word Swedish. Their old singer, Wilska, couldn't speak a word Swedish and made the lyrics for Nattfödd using a lexicon. As a result, they are way off and a lot of them are just plain gibberish.

"Bland skuggor rider en odjur, som en svarta träd"
is a line from Trollhammaren, which means something like:
"Among shadows rides an beast, like an black trees"
I even believe his lacking knowledge of Swedish was the reason Wilska was fired.

Katla and Vreth can both speak Swedish though.

I like vocals in Armenian, Arabic, Hebrew, therefore in their native language.

I dont mind language as long as the song is great...can be French (Manowar´s Courage version), can be Spanish (Mago de oz), can be German (Equilibrium), can be simply any language...

Depends on the lyrics I guess...Korpiklaani for example should not write English lyrics. It all comes down to the fact that some lyrics I'd rather not understand. So I guess the closest answer would be "Doesn't matter as long as it sounds good"

Written by ForeverDarkWoods on 11.01.2009 at 17:16

I even believe his lacking knowledge of Swedish was the reason Wilska was fired.

Yeah, the morale - do not write lyrics in language you don't understand or you're not feeling strong. However, it's cool if a band have lyrics in their native language, but on the other hand - it would be great if someone could actually translate them, so I can understand what are they talking (singing) about. I mean, an official translation from each band of something (yeah, I know that it's hard to translate everything in English).
For an example, Munruthel is a really good band from Ukraine, but they have a problem - there is no translation to their song lyrics. Even on Metal Archives the only thing they have are many lines of something like: "Ñòåïè óêðûëèñü òóìàíîì ñåäûì [..]", and I really don't believe Ukrainians have such letters like these.

Anyway, music is more important to me, so I guess I'm cool with misunderstandable lyrics and great music.

Written by Ragana on 07.02.2009 at 23:39

Written by ForeverDarkWoods on 11.01.2009 at 17:16

I even believe his lacking knowledge of Swedish was the reason Wilska was fired.

Yeah, the morale - do not write lyrics in language you don't understand or you're not feeling strong. However, it's cool if a band have lyrics in their native language, but on the other hand - it would be great if someone could actually translate them, so I can understand what are they talking (singing) about. I mean, an official translation from each band of something (yeah, I know that it's hard to translate everything in English).
For an example, Munruthel is a really good band from Ukraine, but they have a problem - there is no translation to their song lyrics. Even on Metal Archives the only thing they have are many lines of something like: "Ñòåïè óêðûëèñü òóìàíîì ñåäûì [..]", and I really don't believe Ukrainians have such letters like these.

Anyway, music is more important to me, so I guess I'm cool with misunderstandable lyrics and great music.

I think those Munruthel letters are the result of lacking an installed language package for cyrillic so your web browser tries to interpret them as latin letters, making them real fucked up. They aren't supposed to be like that. They're supposed to be cyrillic letters, ie these:


I'd also like to say that a lot of lyrics lose their emotional meaning if you translate them, thus causing any power they might have had to fade away. I've translated Woods Of Infinity lyrics upon request, and even though those lyrics are genius in Swedish, they just sound stupid in English. Find a Latvian band with good lyrics and try to write an English translation of their lyrics and then look how stupid they (probably) seem to understand what I mean.

Hm, not really... how does it comes that my browser actually can show Cyrillic? (And how do you think, how can I live in Latvia without knowing what's Cyrillic? ) I mean, I searched for some bands which could have albums/songs in some of Slavic languages ('cause they have the same letters), and found one band from Russia (Zymotic Symphony) with an album named "Страшный Суд" - so you can see, the page shows Cyrillic.
I think some users just don't write in those lyrics properly. Can't tell how the hell they got those funny letters instead of Cyrillic, but it looks freaky. And that's what I'm talking about - I can't trust sites like these, not to mention I can't read lyrics like these, nor understand them; it would be nice if there was a translation.

Yeah, I know. That's the other minus of translating all in English.

Hmmm.... I just discovered that my browser also can show cyrillic (which I didn't think it could). In that case, the problem is probably on MA's side (the server can't interpret cyrillic properly, or the cyrillic's been added to the page wrong).

And as for how you can live in Latvia and not know what cyrillic is, I actually contemplated that for a little while, but what you said in your post came across as something like "wtf is this lol strange letters", so I decided I got nothing to lose and post it anyways. Sorry if it seemed like an insult to your intelligence or something.

Aye, that's what I'm saying although there are few bands which have lyrics in proper Cyrillic and that's confusing.

I meant, wtf are these strange (òåïðûëèñüìàíñä) letters. Can you consider them as letters of one language? Surely not.
I knew that Ukrainians have Cyrillic letters, and also I knew that my browser can show Cyrillic, and that it's impossible for one language to consist of all this kind of letters, so that's why I mentioned Munruthel at all.
Anyway, it's ok... my knowledge in Slavic grammar/languages actually ends after knowing half of Russian alphabet/few words, lol.

As said, the problem is probably on MA. They aren't letters from one language, but they exist somewhere in the database on how to interpret letters that is present in our computers. The interpretations just go wrong somehow (MA is sending the wrong kind of data since it probably is entered wrong or something), and we get the symptoms of a computer fuckup.

That's how good MA really is I guess. It's a brilliant site but the HTML code and general setup is beyond crap (+ it suffers from a lot of downtime).

I do prefer bands to sing in English, but that is for selfish reasons rather than any specific need. I like to listen to lyrics and enjoy poetry. As much as I would love to be able to understand every other language a band sings in, I can't.
In saying that, there are most certainly bands that sound better in their native language, usually because some singers how such strong accents while singing that it can be distracting. Midnattsol is one example, i like Midnattsol, and i like there lyrics and music; however, my favorite songs of their are in their native language because it just seem much more natural to their singer and she seems much more comfortable.
In the end, i prefer English for selfish reasons, but if i could understand Suomi than i would say ever band should sing in suomi because it is such a beautiful sounding language.