When I was going up to Readercon, one of the guys in the van with us (Chris Barzak) was telling us about how he lived in Japan for a few years. So I asked him had he ever heard of this Japanese metal band called Shadow over there (despite him not being into metal), and he said yes he had. And he seemed to indicate that they sang in Japanese, and so I thought well maybe he’s thinking of a different band, because the band I was thinking of sings in English. But then I stopped and thought, wait a minute… are they singing in English? So, later, I played a few tracks and tried to pay attention to the lyrics. And, well, as it turns out, I can’t understand a fucking thing that the singer says. Is it because she’s speaking Japanese?

The CD liner is of no help; there’s no lyrics inside. I guess I’d assumed they were singing in English because the song titles were there on the CD, in English. And I should point out that I think the band is great.  They’re amazingly accomplished musicians, and they play some seriously complex guitar melodies.  Not to mention the fact that the singer is a woman, but sings in such a great death metal growl that you’d never know her gender (or language of choice, apparently) by the sound of her voice. 

But I guess this all goes to show how important the lyrics of a song are to me. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate really good lyrics as much as the next guy, but clearly understandable vocals are not of the highest priority to me. I mean, I couldn’t even tell what fucking language they were speaking, and I didn’t even notice for months!