Ideally, I’d like to get the assessment of a non English speaker for this one. I’m pretty sure that the impression of vocal warmth is not a product of the lyrics being cheerier than the traditionally metal comparison samples; but my theories about the origin of my affective impressions are, obviously, not terribly impressive evidence even by n=1 standards.
Getting the impression of someone who definitely isn’t being influenced by the lyrics, since they don’t understand them, would be interesting.
I would note that you definitely can go full ‘metal’ on lyrically innocuous material(though the comedic potential of doing so often induces people to take some of the edge off); and that you can also definitely get vocally innocuous takes on super dark lyrics(the odds seem to be about 50/50 when a female vocalist is doing something ‘folk/traditional’); but cannot confirm that my impression in this case is unrelated to the lyrics rather than the vocals.
