Heaven shall burn*

I was going through the Wacken interviews of the last couple months or years and came across one with Maik, the guitarist of Heaven Shall Burn (*yes, that's what the title is all about, don't read anything more into it please). The band has the same origins as me, they hail from a town no more than 50 km from my own hometown in the lovely state of Thuringia. They're metalcore representatives  - to me, metalcore is a genre of metal, think whatever you want about that - and pretty thoughtful guys altogether, a fact that shows in their lyrics as well as their statements. Vegans for the environment without judging anyone who isn't, opposed to hunting as a hobby for the upper class and capable of wording their thoughts very eloquently.

In this interview, Maik was asked about their first song in German that appeared on the new album, how come and why haven't there been German songs before. He gave a very interesting reply, in fact, it is pretty much the reason why I don't blog in German either: 'It is very difficult to write good German lyrics [or texts, in my case] that sound neither embarrassing nor solemn'.

Writing in your native language should be the easiest thing. But if that language is not English, a few factors speak against it. First of all, you can reach a larger (net) audience, using English. Most everybody who regularly roams around the world wide web has at least a basic understanding of it. Then, using your own language, you tend to use clichés, commonplaces and platitudes, the above mentioned 'embarrassing and solemn'. You are tempted to show off your command of the language by using 'big words'. In English, you are - ok, I am - forced to write simpler. If I want to express a thought, I have two, maybe three ways of doing so, not an endless number of options and synonyms. I will usually be short, preferably clear, understandable and not overly (I said usually, ok?!) long-winding.

Makes sense? I thought so.