They are are relatively recent phenomena. I have come to really enjoy them when they are done with care. I find them to be an engaging and effective way to introduce people to artists, epsecially when listening in person. It can feel like a modern version of gazing at a lyric booklet together.

In this case when it's paired with artwork from the album artist or otherwise imagery which is evocative for the atmosphere they can be better than many traditional music videos, perhaps because of their relative simplicity.
What do you think about them? I think many might find them vapid.
Have you come across any that you particularly like?

I meant to post this in Metal Discussion, but alas feel free to post about any genre.

I'm not sure what makes you say they're relatively recent? At least in gothic metal, folk metal, melodeath, etc. (basically, anything that has ever been branded "dark metal") and various adjacent non-metal genres, they've been around since at least the mid-noughts and probably longer. Maybe the same in other genres, not sure. In internet history, that's basically ancient.

As for my opinion, I don't generally look for them specifically, but I don't mind them either if well-done. (When, however, the text is utterly out-of-sync, blatantly wrong, or it's one of those "let's amass every piece of Victoria Frances/Luis Royo-inspired art I can find, then add the lyrics in bright red pseudo-cursive font on top" videos, yeah, no, I'll pass tyvm)

I honestly can't stand them - it doesn't help that a lot of metal lyrics are pretty dim, but even clever lyrics seem a bit strangled projected onto some random artwork while the song is playing.

Atmosphere-wise, I don't think they add anything, if anything I think they detract; if you're listening to the record and reading the lyrics, your mind will be sorting out the imagery for you. If you're watching even a 'miming in a warehouse' video, you're at last watching the band, filling in the rest yourself. Watching the lyrics projected in some horrible large-scale font ? It works for Disney sing-along, absolutely, but I'm not sure it adds anything to any kind of 'regular' music.

I don't like them, personally, they add nothing to the auditory experience. I do agree though they can function as an effective way to introduce people to new bands.

I have to admit though I kind of have a prejudice against it, I generally associate these kind of videos to metalcore and deathcore bands and I find it so lame when you have a guy screaming his lungs out on a video with flashy explosions and cool Photoshop effects singing about edgy "we live in a society" kind of themes, I cannot take it seriously.

I like them now when there really are no booklets to flip through. I sure appreciate them a lot more than actual music videos (miming in front of the camera never did much for me). That said I don't really look them up. I mostly watch them when a band releases a new single from an upcoming album.

They are even lazier than the videos where it’s just the band playing in a warehouse. I can’t stand them. I could just listen on Bandcamp, and click where it says “lyrics.” If you’re not going to make a video you’re proud of(same with music), don’t publish it.

I find they really detract from the experience of the music I'm afraid! I end up distracted by the lyrics instead of 'experiencing' the song and getting sucked into its atmosphere where all its natural imagery comes out. Instead, the lyrics become a barrier to that, and worst case, the lyrics are dull and can make the musicality of the song less enjoyable as a result. Often if I'm listening to a track, I'm first sucked up by the music, I have to listen intently to hear the lyrics in a lot of metal (vocal styles obscuring annunciation). But I really don't like stuff that takes from the song as a whole. It's pretty common in pop music, and rightly or wrongly, especially in that genre, it feels a little "you're not smart enough to take in the lyrics so we'll spell it out for you". Yeah, sort of feels a bit like stuff needing to be spelled out for you IMHO.

I don't mind them, but I don't find them a necessity. It's fine if it's divided in small paragraphs or verses, but kinda useless if it's line by line. Overall, I'm kinda indifferent honestly. There's also the fact that I don't put much attention into lyrics as much as I do to instrumentation and vocal delivery.

I've liked a lot more of them over the years as they've evolved to have cool graphics and visuals and whatnot - the Avantasia "Raven Child" one was really cool I remember. I don't really find it distracting at all and prefer it to bad CGI videos or videos of the guys just playing in some derelict looking warehouse. But either way I never really go back to em once the album comes out and I can get a better experience just playing that in full.

Are lyric videos even a thing much in metal? They feel like a metalcore thing way more, especially since that genre cares about lyrics a lot more than metal does which makes them an ancillary element at best.

They are very much a thing in metal. Most videos nowadays are lyrics videos.

I work as a professional editor and have more than a decade of experience in the role. I can appreciate some of the transitions between images, and also the way that the text can animate on/off and shift around, but it just doesn't feel right most of the time. These videos almost always seem to rely on a singular template of using stills and adding this pulsating effect to make them more "dynamic" and it doesn't match up with the beat of the music as well as it might appear to the untrained eye. If there were more creative ideas being tried out with these types of videos and they didn't all come across as cookie-cutter, I'd be more inclined to like them because they could potential become an actual art form, but as it stands, they all seem to be cut from the same mold and that mold is far beyond overplayed at this point.

That's very true, thinking about it - something very Windows 95 about the words popping & pulsing as you say, almost matching the music but not quite. I'm not going to be able to watch one of those again at this rate, even when I have to