I was, to clarify however, speaking of future metal tracks.
Oh I understood that just fine. The problem is that I LOATHE cookie monster vocals, and having someone like Akerfeldt in there is gonna mean there's more of them than there already (unfortunately) is. (And yes, I realize that technically speaking, there are no cookie monster vocals on a DT album yet, but TDEN and ANtR have some vocals that are too close for comfort already).
I hear ya to some extent. I used to have James Hetfield being the extreme end of my liking for harsh vox. Eventually I got into Death(the band) when I borrowed a copy of
Symbolic from a friend in '99 and loved(no, fuck that! ADORED) the great riffs and mind-boggling drumming of Gene Hoglan but was still iffy at best about death vox. I just couldn't stop listening to that album though since the moods conveyed and amazing arrangements with their progressive nature were so much more impressive than even
...And Justice For All (sacrilege right?
) was to me.
For a long time I still could only let other Dvox bands in on a very limited basis such as Cynic and Mastodon(kinda light for the Dvox consideration I know) but I eventually realized that for the kind of metal I liked best I'd have to put up with this vocal style. I think some of my main reservations were kinda silly looking back on it:
1) Too headache-provoking...I realized that even bands like Korn and Rage Against the Machine used to feel as though they were boring a hole into my eardrums when I was coming off of grunge being my only main immersion into rock music and that it'd be foolish to get complacent and close my mind on the matter. I wondered how many awesome beers would I not have tried if I never acquired the taste for alcohol, how many sports I wouldn't have tried cuz I miserably sucked at them originally, how many delicious dishes I'd have snubbed if I let their spiciness discourage me?
2) Embarrassed due to others' reactions...I got over this one pretty quickly but in the beginning I remembered how I would snobbishly think to myself how lame someone's taste in music must be if they listen to bands that only roar all the time and thus felt a bit insecure because I figured some ppl may think the same of me.
3) It's not really singing...This one took a while for me to completely get over since I could never fully support it in a way I felt would hold up in a proper debate even once I personally was okay with it not being traditional singing. Context was the key to this one. I wouldn't wear a grass skirt to a job interview(on purpose anyway) but at a luau I'm the bee's knees. Likewise Dvox don't mix well with most musical styles but they make perfect sense in certain types of rock and metal and possibly even other styles. There are some parts in songs where Rob Halford or Russell Allen at their testosterone-drenched best simply wouldn't be able to provide the necessary intensity to deliver the punch needed to help a song reach its fruition the way Mikael Åkerfeldt, Stu Block, or Chuck Schuldiner can.
I think getting into Opeth was what helped me finally make total peace with Dvox since I knew there was no way I could not listen to music this good. Also, unless the vocals are miserably undesirable I can get past a lot since I am more into music than vocals. I've never fully liked JLB but DT was my fave from 2000-04.
Bottom line: As long as you look at Dvox w/ a narrow mind they're all gonna sound like cookie monster to you which is a tragically short-sighted standpoint. Once you give them a chance, you might start to see subtle nuances that distinguish one guy from the next and though you'll never like them all(trust me as a longtime fan of the style, we
all will still hate some just as fans of regular vox don't just like every singer they hear) you just might be pleasantly surprised by some types like Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt(a very good clean singer in his own right too) and also Scar Symmetry(clean vox used as well.)