I wish to find bands who combine good songwriting/music with good/great lyrics. Since everybody's definition of "great" is different, these are the particular traits I'm generally looking for in lyrics:

1. Rhyming, clever if possible (not just stuff like "rain-pain", "breath-death")
2. Wealth of vocabulary.
3. Some kind of story or interesting themes (science, war, history, religion, fantasy, science fiction, etc. )

​

Iron Maiden lyrically is a great example of the above points, as the number of themes they touch upon in their songs seems far beyond anything any other band has done. Other good examples include Ancient Rites (great themes and rhyming), Before the Dawn (rhyming) to some extent Bal-Sagoth (incredibly epic stories with some clever rhymes but hit-or-miss songwriting, imo), Forefather, Scar Symmetry.

Short rant:

It seems like death metal as a genre doesn't focus as much on lyrics as some other metal genres. Understandably so, I guess, since a lot of times you can't even tell what the vocalist is saying, but I always look up songs' lyrics after taking an initial liking to them. Maybe it's just me, but I can't count how many times I really got into the sound of a particular song, only to be let down by the boring/stupid/poor lyrics. "Just don't read them or ignore them" - well, I choose not to do that, because I've heard and loved many songs which DO marry great music with great vocals and lyrics, and would like to find more of that, rather than settle on bands that only do one of those. And with the sheer number of artists out there today, and your guys' help, I believe it's possible