I don't know why you felt the need to dig up an article to defend yourself. Nobody was telling you that you were "wrong" for feeling that lyrics are extremely important. I think most of us were just saying that great lyrics can elevate a band, sure, but crummy ones rarely hurt.
Besides, I think that article is attacking a completely different idea than what I was talking about. I am not bothered if a vocalist smashes words together or slurs things or in some other way doesn't make it terribly clear what they're saying. Enunciation is different from lyrics. Cryptopsy's earlier albums have some rather chilling and very well done lyrics, and the vocalist who wrote them (Lord Worm) delivers them in a completely indecipherable manner.
Forlorn Drifter wrote:
I'll bring it to this. If the bands themselves believe the lyrics to be unimportant, they should do one of two things: Not put in lyrics, or kind of vocalize over the music without words. Directly taking the voice as an instrument. It also saves the work of writing lyrics... Power metal bands do this somewhat often, with the "OooooOOOOOooooHHHHHhhh" and such. Doom does this too, often in a despairing wail sort of way.
Who says the lyrics aren't important to the bands? I just said that they aren't too terribly important to me (or well, I should say that I don't mind if the lyrics are awful or indecipherable).
Besides, Obituary did this on their first few albums. John Tardy would just feel that vocals should go somewhere and not have anything written down, so he'd just puke out random syllables.