First post and song lyrics!

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Antivoidmon

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Hi, this is my first post but i have been reading the forums for a while.

At the moment i'm writing lyrics and guitar parts for my band, This Dream of a Life, what we've put together so far is a mesh of progressive metal and what i hope to build into nice soundscapes to contrast it.

Whilst i'm fairly confident in my ability to write the guitar parts my lyrics are something i really enjoy to write but i'm unsure how they actually come out.

The song in question is called "Slave in Disguise" and the music is heavily Phyrigian for that "egyptian" sound and i've tried to write the lyrics to it in an almost dark poem style. Anyway there's no overall structure but it does seem to work (in my head anyway) so im intrigued to what people think.

We crawl through our everyday lives,
failing at all that we strive
No matter what you try to be,
you will never ever be free.
We were all taught that happiness cannot be bought
Tell that to the hedonic treadmill hypothesis

Do you remember that time
they said that you were;
Lucky
A Fortunate One
Living in our society
This dream that's democracy,
not a 14 year old soldier,
not a slave?
You have the oppurtunity to grow old and wise
Time to wake up and smell the fucking coffee
You are just a slave in disguise...

***


Treading through the sand,
is a young man,
Born to lift these boulders..
hunched over with a life time of labour on his shoulders
The young man knows the rules
There's no way to escape
the urge to survive is too strong
The only way out of this is to die
He can't dream, he has no ambition
He's been enslaved for far too long

***

What have you done with your life?
The dreams you had have passed you by
You've lived the model life, always on the fly.
All life is power unto oneself.
Your only purpose is to be number one,
they say everybody has the same chances,
It feels like those days have gone
It never Existed. You are not free.
You were born the lamb,
and have grown into a sheep.
As you look at this, and you begin to see
the merging of two paths - all that you will be.
The slave becomes the slave in disguise.
and no one alive will ever break free.

Anyway i look forward to your opinions, feel free to critique i won't be offended ;)
 
I don't think they had coffee in ancient Egyptian times :)

For the most part they seem perfectly fine to me. It is really hard to read lyrics and get the tempo and everything that is going on in your head as you write.

Lyrics on paper usually look silly and funny. I have written things that almost looked like poetry written by a 5th grader but once added to a song the gel and make sense.
 
Thanks for your comments.

I'll try to be a bit clearer with my intentions but the first part (before the first * * *) is set no a character in our society, the second part is depicting an ancient egyptian slave and the 3rd (and final) part is the coming together of the two so the coffee thing does kind of fit (even if it is cheesey haha) :D.

Basically i'm trying to imply that in our society we are all just slaves but we don't really know it, like a conspiracy that no one is behind.
 
That sounds interesting! Kind of like a juxtaposition between present and past.

So is most of the song going to be progressive metal as you described it as opposed to the middle section that will have more of an ancient Egyptian sound?
 
We're recording our first track (which is called Big Brother 2.0) first before this one, but the stuff we have laid out at practices starts with just drums, almost a tribal beat but with an egyptian sound to it (lots of toms etc) then our keyboardist comes in with clean melody using phyrigian mode.

This eventually breaks down to tech metal and i plan on taking it to an interlude with some nice VSTs etc and a build up at the end for the "epic" part. The intro is about 1 and half min, and so far i have about 2 min of heavy stuff for it, but no real order.

It's just this is the only song i'm going to be doing the lyrics for as it's my general idea.

Forgot to say you're correct in your post with the tech metal elements then breaks down to melodic centre piece.
 
Well I hope you post it here for everyone to hear. Sounds like it will be an interesting song! Big Brother 2.0 meets 300 B.C. :D
 
Hey,

I usually don't post about lyrics because I struggle myself very much with writing words and find the whole process to be very painful. However....I did have one thought/suggestion when reading through your lyrics and it's a very simple one: don't change the point of view (POV) throughout the song, unless it's for a purposefully intended effect. I'm not sure if this is a hard and fast "rule", or if it's just something that's striking me, but for example, when you start you are using the "we POV", and then you change in the 3rd line to the "You POV". I think that seems awkward, but I'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to change if you wanted to.

Other than that, it sounds good to me. I think for the genre you describe the lyrics are a good fit.

Best Regards,

Dave DeWhitt
http://www.soundclick.com/davedewhitt
 
Don't worry i will post it! :D

Cheers Dave, i see what you mean but the "you" in the 3rd and fourth line are meant as a general thing, an adequate replacement would be "one". I'm also trying to make it feel like there is a "reader" reading it out to you even though you're obviously reading it in your head i'd like to hope it wasn't your normal voice that was saying it, if that makes sense and that we are all in the same boat including the "reader".

So

No matter what one tries to be
They will never ever be free

Now i'm unsure myself which one i prefer!! haha.
 
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Yes, I think I see what you mean. Using "one" is so awkward though :eek:

I am probably getting into deep water here, but here is the direction I'd go in if it were me:

We crawl through our everyday lives,
failing at all that we strive
No matter what we try to be,
We will never ever be free.
We were all taught that happiness cannot be bought
Tell that to the hedonic treadmill hypothesis

Do you remember that time
they said that we were;
Lucky
The Fortunate Ones
Living in our society
This dream that's democracy,
not 14 year old soldiers,
not slaves?
We had the opportunity to grow old and wise
Time to wake up and smell the fucking coffee
We are just slaves in disguise...

And so on...

I hope I'm not being presumptuous with the above, but I'm finding this very interesting because I struggle with the same thing and almost always end up reworking my lyrics to make sure the POV is consistent and clear. I had some feedback early on about a few of my songs that were written in 2nd person, and the person listening said that when I was always saying "you this" and "you that" in the lyrics, it ended up sounding preachy, whether it was meant to or not. Ouch! After thinking about it, I had to completely agree, though. So now, I tend to write in 1st person all the time, and I find that I am much happier with my lyrics these days, and people have told me that they take their own meaning from my lyrics, which is really cool (and something that I think is less likely when writing in 2nd person). YMMV, and all that, but I'd love to hear the opinions of some more seasoned and skilled wordsmiths to see if there is a general consensus about POV or not....?

Anyway, best of luck with the tunes and the recording!

Dave DeWhitt
http://www.soundclick.com/davedewhitt
 
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