"I define an arbitrary measure of 'Metalness'"

July 3, 2016 7:31 AM

Heavy Metal and Natural Language Processing - Part 1 Consider the lyrics of metal music as a dataset. What can we learn?

Behold a word cloud of an awful lot of metal lyrics, swear words plotted against readability, and a denogram of metal bands' comparative lyrical groupings. Brood upon lists of most and least metal words. Wonder at the term frequency -Inverse document frequency of "Orgasmatron." And don't miss the lurking haikus. (via)

"We seem much more clearly now that one band is about the 'pain inside', another 'ain't gonna know' and the last is all 'oh baby yeah'."

posted by doctornemo (24 comments total)

I would love to see this expanded to include other genres. I also was surprised to learn that "veins" is a pretty metal word.
posted by TedW at 7:53 AM on July 3, 2016

On a related note, I love the song titles on this album (NSFW, I guess).
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:01 AM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: one is about the "pain inside", another "ain't gonna know" and the last is all "oh baby yeah."
posted by jonp72 at 8:03 AM on July 3, 2016

MetaFilter has some interesting data points to add to this body of work...
posted by Naberius at 8:04 AM on July 3, 2016

This is delightful! I would also add these two analyses from Every Genre at Once: Genres in their own words and Words in their own genres. (There's also the classic analysis of death metal english from Invisible Oranges.)
posted by Frobenius Twist at 8:16 AM on July 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Naberious: Track 8: "Shroud of Encryption"? come on that's not metal, you might as well say "+1 Shroud of Encryption"
posted by indubitable at 8:17 AM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would like to make the least metal sentence out of his list of least metal words:

"The committee secretary indicated that university employees are particularly academic."

I can say with confidence that this sentence has never been screamed.
posted by clawsoon at 8:43 AM on July 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

This just tells me that graduate school and academics are already such a hell so they don't seek it out as entertainment.
posted by srboisvert at 9:08 AM on July 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

indubitable, considering the crossover between metal and D&D/Tolkien/etc, I think "+1 Shroud of Encryption" would be even more metal.
posted by valrus at 9:30 AM on July 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

I can say with confidence that this sentence has never been screamed.

except for right now, by me...it's not without a certain angsty desperation...

also 'swear words vs readability' looks a lot like england...fwiw
posted by sexyrobot at 9:32 AM on July 3, 2016

The standard unit of measurement for metal is the hörn.
posted by fallingbadgers at 9:55 AM on July 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

By that logic, Guided By Voices has the least metal lyrics:

But the judges and the saints
And the textbook committee
Decided you should be left out
Not even mentioned
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:11 AM on July 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Needs more BABYMETAL.
posted by yeolcoatl at 12:20 PM on July 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

I also was surprised to learn that "veins" is a pretty metal word.

"Veins" rhymes with Splattered Brains, Human Remains, Satan Reigns, Blood Stains, and...Labor Pains.
posted by cazoo at 12:38 PM on July 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Related: Neurosis' Scott Kelly (here he is melting faces during a crushing rendition of Locust Star) provides the musical score for Hamlet at this year's Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in which he also appears as one of the gravediggers.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:58 PM on July 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Needs more BABYMETAL.

BABYMETAL word cloud of translated lyrics.
posted by Pendragon at 2:01 PM on July 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

thanks, pendragon! It's surprising. There's a lot more death/four than i expected.
posted by yeolcoatl at 2:52 PM on July 3, 2016

It would be interesting to compare and contrast the word choices of bands with growling/'cookie monster' vocals (like death metal) with those of banshee wailing bands (like black metal). It seems like word choice is so tied to vocal timbre and vowel shapes. Separating out the subgenres might lead to more insights rather than treating metal as one.
posted by umbú at 3:36 PM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

@doctornemo, this is a great list of NLP analyses. Thank you for this.

@indubitable, everynoise.com managed to waste the better part of my afternoon. So, thank you for that, too. (it is Sunday after all)
posted by xtian at 4:12 PM on July 3, 2016

I only briefly glossed over this - but... does he break it down by subgenre? Like - I'd like to see goregrind vs thrash/crossover vs stoner.
posted by symbioid at 7:26 PM on July 3, 2016

"Veins" rhymes with Splattered Brains, Human Remains, Satan Reigns, Blood Stains, and...Labor Pains.

Bloodstain is pretty reggae, too.
posted by TedW at 9:04 PM on July 3, 2016

@metalband_exe "Brutally generating metal band names and logos every four hours."

Including a few patriot-themed metal band names for today:

Flame or America
Freedom of the Acid
Funeral of Fireworks
posted by straight at 11:44 AM on July 4, 2016

thanks, pendragon! It's surprising. There's a lot more death/four than i expected.

Well, that's mostly because they have a song about the number four, and of course BABYMETAL DEATH.

I recommend the unofficial BABYMETAL translations site for all your BABYMETAL lyrics needs :-)
posted by Pendragon at 3:08 PM on July 4, 2016

I spent some time using this data and a Word2Vec dataset to make various words less and more metal. For example, "whistle":

 --- less metal --- 
said	acknowledged	stressed
said	referee	horn	acknowledged
referee	horn	whistles	whistled	said
horn	referee	whistles	whistled	whistling
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	whistling	trumpet	ref
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	whistling	ref	trumpet
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	whistling	ref	horns
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	whistling	ref	horns
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	whistling	ref	horns
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	whistling	ref	horns
whistle
horn	whistles	referee	whistled	ref	whistling	horns
horn	whistles	referee	whistling	whistled	ref	horns
horn	whistles	whistling	referee	whistled	horns	ref
horn	whistles	whistling	scream	horns	moans	whistled
horn	whistles	scream	whistling	screams	moans	whinny
horn	scream	whistles	screams	moans	wails
scream	horn	screams	moans	wails	whistles
scream	screams	moans	wails	horn	hell
scream	screams	hell	wails	moans
scream	hell	screams	wails	moans
 --- more metal ---

More amusing examples and source code on my twitter (linked from my profile).
posted by moonmilk at 5:40 PM on July 4, 2016