Please comment on these lyrics.

I recently found a disk with songs I had written during a dark period in my life. I've had some friends tell me that they sounded like death metal or were too morbid and depressing. I never intended for them to be any kind of metal songs, but I was feeling morbid and depressed when I wrote them. I've got several musical ideas for this one. I thought that since the lyrics make slight references to suicide and are about despair and temporary insanity that the music should be a bit upbeat. The music I've written so far is using major chord structures and vocals with minor guitar parts and vocal harmonies. I haven't decided on the tempo yet, but I like to write music that has subtle changes both in tempo and key. I have been influenced by almost all styles of music, but these days I tend to lean towards extreme hard rock with heavy blues guitar and strong emotional vocals. As I mentioned, I found a backlog of dark depressing songs and although I'm no longer in that frame of mind, I've still been thinking of putting them together as a project. Maybe I could give out CDs to some bible beaters I know. Any suggestions and ideas on what kind of music you think would work well with these lyrics would be appreciated. I posted another of my darker songs earlier, but the next time I'll put some lighter stuff up. I also have some serious blues guitar and vocal work that I'd like to hear some critical opinions (and hopefully praise) on. Anyhow, here's one of the dark ones.

ACROSS DARK EMPTY ROOM

Lovely night now takes its toll

Across dark empty room

Dream stealers come to rob the child

Who sleeps within its womb

And all the minutes turn to hours

Neatly pressed in years

Marked by seasons of dead flowers

Raised with salt dry tears

Needless thoughts that lie in hanging

Haggard webs slow spun in sorrow

Creeping fingers cold with gray

Spread out stone layers of tomorrow

As burnt eyes watch, the dreamer dreams

That nothing lasts forever

Bleeding spirit soul laid bare

That nothings slashed to sever

Go clean those blades....

Those shoddy instruments of pain

And wash your hands of all remorse

From dark eyes seeped of rain

Awaken and go into day

With all your burdens light

As always deeds you

Well, it could fit pretty much any 1970-80's metal group; Slayer, Metalica, Black Sabbath. If you "tend to lean toward extreme hard rock" I would say Disturbed.

Black Sabbath did a lot of death/suicide stuff, ie "Suicide Solution" and one of my favorite Sabbath lost classics, "Into The Void". This would be easy to put to tune and it's not out-of-style. The trick IMO is not to take it seriously and don't let anyone convince you it's serious.

I like the inadvertant reference to "The Pit and the Pendulum", "Swing like sharpened pendulum..."

I wrote a song "You- Live For Today". It's on my Soundclick site. Started out as a post-apocolyptic war thing and changed totally when I added music.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=481684

They're a little over the top, but not especially cliche. A lot of the rhymes sound like you went with the first rhyming word you could think of, and the each verse suffers for it. Put a little more thought into it, and this could be pretty good.

2nd verse needs help. Goes from minutes to hours (a little cliche, you can do better) and then to years. "Dead Flowers" and finally Salt-dry tears... just too sporadic in the imagery.

"Haggard webs..." maybe make it "Weary webs" or "Woeful webs" or "Silk-sorrowed webs" or something like that. As wispy as webs get, they'll never be haggard. As sad as they are, webs are still smooth and fine. Think of Charlotte's Web. And "haggard" just seems awkward.

Like "instruments of pain" and "wash the hands of remorse" and overall the song is indeed dark as an teenager's heart after their first break up. Not a big fan of the "mope death metal" lyrics, but I know they have a place.

Maybe you can start a new genre, emo-death metal.