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General => General Music Discussion => Topic started by: kirksnosehair on February 17, 2021, 01:38:28 PM
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I'm just curious where the forum comes down on this? I'm guessing I am in the minority here, because I strongly dislike harsh vocals. To me, they ruin otherwise great music in many cases. I can take them in very, very small doses once in a while but generally speaking the minute I hear growls I lose interest. And I've lost count of the number of bands I've discovered on Amazon.com music only to get a minute or two into their album and hear the growling start. Instant turnoff and delete from phone.
Now I could be way off base here, but I suspect there is an age correlation to this. It won't be a hard set rule but I think on average the people who like growling will trend younger and the people who dislike them will trend older.
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Love them but I don’t wish all bands would use them, I prefer clean vocals.
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I'm between the "love it" and "i think they're OK" options. I like them depending on band but I find it most of the bands that do it that I like, use a nice mix of harsh vocals with some clean sections. Like classic Opeth or Between the Buried and Me for example. There's bands that only do harsh vocals where it does get a bit grating in the long run.
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I'm probably somewhere in between "I can take them or leave them" and "I'm not a fan but I still listen to some bands who use them," with a splash of something else. I voted "not a fan" because that's probably a bit closer to my opinion, but it doesn't quite fit.
I'm not against them entirely, but I think they should be used judiciously. If an album is primarily harsh vocals, I'm unlikely to enjoy it; I think that's too much.
On the other hand, at their best, I think they can enhance certain moments, but usually do so when they are unexpected. I think the way they're used in The Human Equation and 01001101 from Ayreon, for example, is pretty strong. And the couple of small sections of growling on Kamelot's The Black Halo are perfectly placed.
In the middle, when bands use growls as something like 20-50% of the vocals, I can get accustomed to that and enjoy their albums, but I wish they would be a little more selective with when they use those elements.
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99% of the time they are a turnoff for me. Off the top of my head the only two artists I listen to with any regularity who use them are Opeth and Devin Townsend. Devin is one of those artists like Steven Wilson where I like about 1 out of 10 songs he puts out, but that one song I REALLY love, so I tolerate the growling. I don't like it. I tolerate it. Same with Opeth. My favorite Opeth album is Watershed, mainly because it's still pretty heavy but the vocals are way cleaner than almost everything that came before it.
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I'm between the "love it" and "i think they're OK" options. I like them depending on band but I find it most of the bands that do it that I like, use a nice mix of harsh vocals with some clean sections. Like classic Opeth or Between the Buried and Me for example. There's bands that only do harsh vocals where it does get a bit grating in the long run.
Yeah, same here. I really like BTBAM's harsh vocals, and there's some other artists I enjoy because of their harsh vocals, but I wouldn't say I love them and want all bands to make use of them.
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Love, love, love them.
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I love them. Got into death metal 20+ years ago and haven't looked back since.
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Love them but I don’t wish all bands would use them, I prefer clean vocals.
Agree. I don't need growls in DT, but it's a necessity for Meshuggah.
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I voted for the top option, but saying that, I would never want ALL bands to use them.
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I'm probably somewhere in between "I can take them or leave them" and "I'm not a fan but I still listen to some bands who use them," with a splash of something else. I voted "not a fan" because that's probably a bit closer to my opinion, but it doesn't quite fit.
I'm not against them entirely, but I think they should be used judiciously. If an album is primarily harsh vocals, I'm unlikely to enjoy it; I think that's too much.
On the other hand, at their best, I think they can enhance certain moments, but usually do so when they are unexpected. I think the way they're used in The Human Equation and 01001101 from Ayreon, for example, is pretty strong. And the couple of small sections of growling on Kamelot's The Black Halo are perfectly placed.
In the middle, when bands use growls as something like 20-50% of the vocals, I can get accustomed to that and enjoy their albums, but I wish they would be a little more selective with when they use those elements.
This summarizes my feelings on it quite nicely. Those albums you mentioned like The Black Halo and The Human Equation are, to me, perfect examples of how harsh vocals can add a nice dynamic to an album. When it's wall-to-wall growls though, I can't take it for more than one or two songs at the most. Especially when I cannot understand a word that's being said. That was one thing about Opeth that made the growling kind of tolerable to me was the fact that somehow he does it in a way that I can clearly understand everything. That said, my favorite Opeth songs are almost universally devoid of growling or have very little growling in them.
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I can take them or leave them.
I don't really listen to any bands that are %100 harsh vocals. It just becomes too much for me. However, I really like a lot of bands that use a mix. Sometimes that works REALLY well for me. JLB last two solo albums are a good example, as well as Epica. The "beauty and the beast" contrast can work really well.
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I'm somewhere in between as well. Like you mentioned, Opeth and Devin Townsend, yes - other bands, not so much. I think I enjoy them when they're used as an "effect" almost, for the betterment of the song. And typically in conjunction with clean vocals. I think Mikael and Opeth are the kings of this.
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I'm somewhere in between as well. Like you mentioned, Opeth and Devin Townsend, yes - other bands, not so much. I think I enjoy them when they're used as an "effect" almost, for the betterment of the song. And typically in conjunction with clean vocals. I think Mikael and Opeth are the kings of this.
Devin Townsend is a great example, he's a really good screamer and clean singer. If you listen to Deadhead for example, his screams on that song are so powerful, the song would not be as good without them and it balances with his clean vocals. It makes an impact and has a lot of emotion in it. To me, this is the best use case. That's not to say anything bad for those who love bands that always scream, this is just what I personally enjoy the most with harsh vocals.
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I prefer them mixed together with clean or used as little as possible. i cannot take full albums worth. no disrespect cause it takes talent. but more often then not.....it just winds up sounding silly to me.
it took me forever to crack a band like say opeth. because while the music was right up my street the vocals were my biggest road block. luckily there was always clean mixed in so i learned to accept the growls.
but whole albums worth i do get annoyed.
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Not a fan at all. It ruins a lot of great music.
I can cope with a rasp like Chuck on Death’s later albums.
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I really used to dismiss harsh vocals out of hand. I used the onion analogy. As in you could take the finest meal, but once you covered it with onions, it's fucking ruined.
I felt the same way about harsh vocals. But then I think I reached a point where I just got bored with music. Seemed like there was nothing coming out that was original. But it seemed that music that was interesting had harsh vocals on top of it.
99% of the time they are a turnoff for me. Off the top of my head the only two artists I listen to with any regularity who use them are Opeth and Devin Townsend. Devin is one of those artists like Steven Wilson where I like about 1 out of 10 songs he puts out, but that one song I REALLY love, so I tolerate the growling. I don't like it. I tolerate it. Same with Opeth. My favorite Opeth album is Watershed, mainly because it's still pretty heavy but the vocals are way cleaner than almost everything that came before it.
So as you say...I grew to tolerate the vocals. Just as I don't like every clean singer, I sure as hell don't care for every harsh vocalist. Probably 90% of the harsh vocal albums I sample, I can't do. But I can tolerate them if I find the music interesting enough and the vocals aren't so horrid. I definitely prefer a black metal vocal than a death metal vocal.
One band that I discovered a couple of years ago was Tribulation. They had a classic Fields Of The Nephilim/Thin Lizzy vibe with a heavy Lemmy style vocal. But it works!
I voted I can take them or leave them.
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I went with the take it or leave option.
I am very particular with harsh vocals. I can't really understand why it is okay with one artist and not another. Opeth was really my first band with true harsh vocals and that took several painful listens for it to click with me. The music was so good I just kept trying. I still think that Akerfeldt in his prime is the pinnacle.
I have actually started getting into a few more bands lately with them but I still don't have many in my collection. Jinjer is another. Tatiana is the pinnacle on the female side of things. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I actually really like Butcher Babies as well. I have no issue with Carla or Heidi's vocals.
Then there are bands like After Forever and Epica. I always found the male vocals intrusive. I blame Mark Jansen for that in both bands. I still like both, but wish they would have foregone the harsh vocals.
I tend to leave them way more than I take them. Just has to click and many times it just does not.
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There isn't an option for me.
I love them, but I don't wish all bands would use them because I love clean vocals too and obviously I don't want all bands to do the same thing.
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I don't mind growls at all. They're just another tone in our vast amounts of tones, the human voice is capable of doing. In the right moments they're utilized great and enhance that sound.
There's also the difference of Growls, Shrieks, and Squeals. The lower Grunts, The pig sounding squeals, and the high shrieking harpie sounds.
I can take em or leave em. But I know, if not utilized right, can sound off.
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I selected the bottom option, but I'm really somewhere between the last two options. I hate them, but I wouldn't go so far to say "I won't listen to bands who use them." DT used them a couple times. Those songs aren't my favorites, but I'm still a fan because those were isolated incidents. Probably most accurate to say that I won't listen to bands who routinely use them.
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There isn't an option for me.
It completely depends on the context. Some songs wouldn't work at all with harsh vocals. Some songs wouldn't work at all with clean vocals. Some are in the middle where both work well.
It's all about knowing what it is you want to convey through the vocals and picking the right approach for the job.
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I'm also between "Love them" and "they're ok". I love Opeth's harsh vocals, but the contrast with the clean are when they really shine.
A few people have mentioned BTBAM. I personally find their harsh vocals really flat and they do absolutely nothing for me. The same with Meshuggah, those style of harsh vocals do nothing for me and it's the vocals for both those bands that stop them from being bands I really love, as opposed to bands I like.
My gateway into harsh vocals were Pantera's later albums and Children of Bodom!
My examples of bands with great harsh vocals:
Opeth
Children of Bodom
Pantera
Gojira
Devin Townsend
Mastodon
The Ocean
Ihsahn
Death
Lamb of God
Chthonic
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I generally don't like growling vocals but a lot of the metal music I love most employs them, so I've learnt to hear past the 'unpleasantness' of it and try to experience it as another instrument (since I can almost never understand what the hell they're 'singing' anyway, I might as well approach it as pure sound). That said, there are one or two cases where the growl is really thrilling to me, most notably Mikael Akerfeldt at about the 10 minute mark in Baying of the Hounds.
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I used to be anti growls back in the day but Opeth changed me and now I can appreciate them.
There are times when I think they work really well and times when not.
But only a very small portion of what I listen to has growls ot harsh vocals.
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my answer is like somewhere between the first two tbh
i gotta be honest i barely notice harsh vocals anymore i'm numb to any shock value but they can add texture and intensity when placed right
clean vocals are generally preferable but a balance of both can outshine either by themselves
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Nothing worse than hearing a great musical intro only to then hear someone screaming unintelligible lyrics as if they’re going to kill me.
Not a fan.
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Hate them with a passion. Complete turn off for me. The only ones I've found tolerable thus far are *some* of Devin Townsend's, and even then I only know a few of his songs. But I gotta say they work in the song Deadhead - especially the live version I've seen on YT a number of times.
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Just like anything else, I like them plenty if done well.
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I think they're OK.
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I am very particular with harsh vocals. I can't really understand why it is okay with one artist and not another.
I have nothing against a priori. On the contrary, I think I like vocals like that, but that doesn't mean I like any vocalist who uses these techniques. I love Opeth and I don't listen to BTBAM exclusively because I don't like the vocals.
In certain genres, it is mandatory. I don't listen to Death Metal a lot, but sometimes I do. I don't know how people listen to Death Metal, but I listen when hatred took over my existence (great therapy btw :lol) and in those cases this type of vocal is necessary.
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To me, vocals are like any other instrument; sometimes a little distortion can compliment the whole package. Some elements in metal should be “harsh” sounding. It’s part of the overall aesthetic. That said, bands that can blend both clean and harsh especially when it makes sense lyrically, ie bands like Opeth, Agalloch, Insomnium, etc hit the sweet spot for me.
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also harsh vocals tier list:
1. mikael akerfeldt
2. screamo shrieks
3. standard black metal shrieks
4. post-metal growls
5. normal metalcore voice
6. la dispute-style speak-screaming
7. death metal cookie monster voice
8. tough guy metalcore voice
...
100. agalloch rasps
lemme know if i missed any notable ones
devin townsend doesn't even do harsh vocals idk why he always gets brought up he just has edge in his voice y'all are so used to willowy smooth prog and power vocals with almost no edge at all lol
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If the music is good as well and they fit well, then I thoroughly enjoy them. But I don't think every band should have them
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I do find myself gravitating towards screams/shrieks more than growls these days.
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I like harsh vocals but I'm picky about it. Here is what I usually look for.
1. The singer has to be able to enunciate. I can't stand it when it just sounds like unintelligible garbage (Chris Barnes)
2. The music surrounding it has to be good.
3. At least semi-decent production.
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Love, love, love them.
Hate, hate, hate them.
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Love, love, love them.
Hate, hate, hate them.
:lol what took you so long?
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Love them, but don't want all bands to use them, that would be just stupid.
And like every other singing style, there are good ones and bad ones.
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Yea I voted for the top option, but that's not my true feelings. I just like them more than thinking they're "ok".
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I'm between the fourth and the fifth option. I really, really DO NOT LIKE AT ALL harsh vocals. But I'm not an integralist about it to the point that I refuse on principle to listen to any band who uses them. I like Haggard, mainly for the symphonic stuff. I like Eluveitie, mainly for the folk side of the band. And I like also Ensiferum, especially the latest albums that are not as harsh as the first ones.
So, in the end, there are some bands where I can tolerate the harsh vocals (and never for the vocal themselves, but for the rest of the sound). All things being equal and with the RARE exception here and there (I love Twilight of the Thunder God :metal), I absolutely and completely dislike harsh vocals and won't go anywhere near them.
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I'm not the biggest growling/screaming guy, but I absolutely love it when it's used as one of many colors:
Leprous on the whole Congregation album
Haken - The Architect (also by Einar)
Opeth - Watershed, Ghost Reveries
In some cases, I listen to bands who only (or mostly) use harsh vocals, like Meshuggah or earlier Opeth.
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I'm not really a fan of harsh vocals, but I can still listen to some early Opeth where they appear. But that's about it. I much prefer clean vocals.
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I remember hearing Linkin Park and Slipknot when I was like 17 and HATING it! I got to a point later on though, where I realised there was just so much good music out there with harsh vocals.
As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals. It was plain sailing after that. I know personally for me, my ear is drawn to the guitars and drums when listening to metal, so it may be somewhat easier for me to tolerate vocals, than it is for others.
I just couldn't imagine missing out on so much good stuff because I couldn't get past the vocals. I would say, for those who find them hard to tolerate, perseverance can pay off! I'm pretty sure almost everyone who listens to harsh vocals went through that at some point!
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Love them to death, I just take them onboard as another instrument in the music.
Best metal growler is Tomi Joutsen from Amorphis, he is that good that you can actually understand what he is 'screaming' about.
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
I'm a wannabe singer. I always loved singing and that was always what I was focusing on on any song. Guitarists notice the great guitar work. Drummers focuse on that wicked and groovy pace of the rhytm. As someone interested in singing, vocals get all my attention.
Of course I do notice all the other instruments. I'm musically ignorant for all things guitar-related, but that doesn't hold me back from realizing Petrucci's greatness and admire his work, especially the more melodic ones like, for example, the solos before The Spirit Carries On live, man I could go on and on listening to him jamming away like that. But still, vocals are what make a song for me.
With harsh or growling vocals, I don't find the personal connection, the emotion and the delivery I find in clean singing. It takes away a personal connection with the singer. Yes, I know that the harshness IS an emotion. Yes, I know that they fit the nature of the song and I said above, there are selected examples of bands or songs where I don't mind at all harsh vocals. But more often than not, I cannot connect with the harsh vocals and therefore my biggest enjoyment of a song, the vocal delivery and all the nuances that come with it, comes less.
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Fair call mate.
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Another thing of note, in regards to harsh vocals. I think they are a great way to get out anger/frustration/stress and all other similar emotions.
I consider myself to be a chill guy, I don't really get angry or shout or anything like that. I put that down to channeling that, and getting it all out by singing/screaming along to my favourite songs (especially alone in my car). I find that it is a release that I NEED.
Some get that out by exercising or something. There are a multitude of other ways people get there emotions all out. But I wonder if a lot of the people who dig harsh vocals are like me, and get it all out that way?
I've met so many people over the years who buy into that stereotype that metal heads are angry, depressed people. It surprises some people that I listen to such angry music. Like, "You're not angry or aggressive at all!". No Karen, I'm not, and this is because of the music I listen to.
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For me they literally only fit 1 genre and that is full-on death metal. Out of place everywhere else including any -core diarrhea.
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As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals.
Given that there's so much other music out there that I have yet to explore, the *last* thing I want to do is force myself to listen to something that is repulsive to me. There's no need for me to waste my time or energy.
For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
To a large degree, distorted guitars still have melody that is enjoyable. Cookie monster vocals do not - they are pure noise to my ears. I view music that lacks melody in the same way, which is why I cannot stand Meshuggah.
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I generally don't like them, and I would never listen to a band because of them. However, I also listen to multiple bands that use them, and I like them just fine in their music.
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As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals.
Given that there's so much other music out there that I have yet to explore, the *last* thing I want to do is force myself to listen to something that is repulsive to me. There's no need for me to waste my time or energy.
For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
To a large degree, distorted guitars still have melody that is enjoyable. Cookie monster vocals do not - they are pure noise to my ears. I view music that lacks melody in the same way, which is why I cannot stand Meshuggah.
This is exactly how I feel. When it is used to express anger in a moment of a song I like it. When it's used throughout a whole song it's white noise to me.
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I'm with several people here, like Paul, Scotty and Barry. Not a fan. I'm not exclusive to that; I like a fair amount of Devin, but I like him less the more there are harsh/growly vocals. I don't really like when Mike does it. I get it as a tool, I get it as an artistic expression, but it's not my thing.
I don't see the comparison between guitars and vocals; for the vast majority of distorted guitars I like there's an underlying total warmth that is satisfying. To the extent the guitars are harsh too, trebly, I don't like them either. There's something gutteral about the vocals that is off-putting to me.
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
I find them monotonous as there’s very little attempt at melody - it’s the metal version of rap. It alsojust sounds juvenile to me.
I can see a use for it in some circumstances, in a limited way - to represent the devil or evil or something, but extended use is a no no for me.
Every time I’ve heard growls I always wanted a vocal melody instead.
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By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
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By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
Barney! When I was younger, my friend - I've written about him here before (he just found his dad) - taught at a private high school. He took a group of kids to Montreal for a ski trip, and I went as chaparone. Some of the kids - thinking they were being funny - brought a Napalm Death video (I don't remember if it was a boot or not; Live Corruption didn't come out until after I remember the trip being held) thinking they were going to bust our balls. Little did they know we were both in bands, both liked metal (though not death metal) and thought it was funny. By the end of the trip we were kind of busting their balls by making THEM play it after the novelty wore off. :)
I won't say that's not "music", because it is but it's in my collection for completeness and for the event, not because it's a stellar version of the song.
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Depends on the band, but for the most part, I can take 'em or leave 'em.
I will say this, there are a few examples where a well placed 'scream' (like Bruce's mega-shriek in 'Number of the Beast') can really elevate a song, but for a band to lean on growling for the majority of their catalog, I'm pretty 'meh'...it kinda all blends together.
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
not a hater of them but to answer. More often than not they detract from a song for me rather than add.
if i hear an opening to a song and i go wow i'm diggin' this. Then i hear. GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I go......ok we're doing this. i loose a bit of interest in the song.
again i can overlook if i love the band. but also if you hand me an album of al harsh vocals. it won't get played. i can't do it.
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Where do you all place Gojira?
For those who don't like growls or harsh vocals, do you include Gojira there?
To me I think the vocals are strangely melodic even though they kinda fits into growling.
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By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
Just listened to this, and wow, this is godawful. It's a good demonstration of what I don't like about the use of growls for more than color. As others have said, it's monotonous, it's amelodic, there's nothing artistic or even pleasant about it. Even though this is exactly the kind of music that might call for prominent growls. Hetfield's sung performance is just leagues better in terms of having anything interesting or enjoyable about it—even though at that time he was not a particularly melodious singer. And after listening to the 5YIALT performance, I listened to DT playing this song with JLB singing. Even though the song is not well-tailored for JLB's voice, he also sounds leagues better than the guy from Napalm Death. There's melody, there's personality, there's something to it besides monotonous harshness.
What I think would be a more effective use of growls on this song, if one were to use them, would be to have everything sung except the "Damage Incorporated" at the end of the chorus. Then there would be some sense of surprise and contrast, and it would punctuate a particularly aggressive part of the song.
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It's funny because I really love good clean vocals and melody but ever since I discovered bands with harsh vocals I always thought the combination of clean melodies and growls blended so nice together if done right.
I listen to all kinds of genres with harsh vocals and some with only harsh vocals but I do have a soft spot when growls are utilized as a conveyor of emotions from the lyrics rather than the only singing style in the music if you know what I mean. Like in Day Twelve: Trauma (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSKtHnt8lKI&ab_channel=ArjenAnthonyLucassen).
In general though i've never had a problem with growls to begin with, I just found them to be a really cool enhancer of certain kinds of metal music.
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I think if done correctly, harsh vocals could enhance a song.
I'm in between. I prefer clean vocals, but don't mind harsh vocals.
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I voted for the first option because I'd like to see The Flower Kings, Billie Eilish, Marillion, Alanis Morrisette, IQ, Marketa Irglova, Anneke van Giersbergen solo and all the other bands to use harsh vocals. No guest singers too. Show me what you've got.
Seriously though, I think sometimes you could give or take them—in terms that the song could still work well without them—and sometimes they absolutely make the album. How can you do the themes The Reticent did in their last two albums so eloquently without harsh vocals? How can you do that Agalloch song that got me into growls (Our Fortress is Burning - II) without showing the complete anguish encompassed into the harsh vocals the band used there?
Hate harsh vocals all you want—I hated them until 2016 I think—but, in my opinion, they definitely have their use in the art of music.
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By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
Someone wrote on YT: "Barney is my favorite Dream Theater singer" :lol
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I voted for the first option because I'd like to see The Flower Kings, Billie Eilish, Marillion, Alanis Morrisette, IQ, Marketa Irglova, Anneke van Giersbergen solo and all the other bands to use harsh vocals. No guest singers too. Show me what you've got.
Seriously though, I think sometimes you could give or take them—in terms that the song could still work well without them—and sometimes they absolutely make the album. How can you do the themes The Reticent did in their last two albums so eloquently without harsh vocals? How can you do that Agalloch song that got me into growls (Our Fortress is Burning - II) without showing the complete anguish encompassed into the harsh vocals the band used there?
Hate harsh vocals all you want—I hated them until 2016 I think—but, in my opinion, they definitely have their use in the art of music.
Not arguing with you, just sharing a thought. I've heard the new Anneke album, and while it's not my favorite album of all time, it's very, very good, and one of the things about it is that it's unabashedly BEAUTIFUL. There's an elegance, a grace to almost all the songs, and for me, one of the two best songs on the album - the closer, "Love You Like I Love You" - is just... beautiful. There's no other word for it. The arrangement, the lyrics, the melody, the singing, it's like a photograph, and it's meant, I believe, to express the beauty (and power) of love. I don't see what hard vocals would do there other than to break the spell, to ruin the photorama.
As a general proposition, in life, anger is the easiest emotion. I have a bus-full of people in my life who only know how to express emotion through anger, whether it's embarrassment, fear, hurt, disappointment, or, well, anger. I don't say that growls/harsh are "easy", but there are more singers that can do that in one form or another than can hold a pure, crystal, clean note, like, for example, Freddy Mercury does in "Somebody To Love".
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By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
Barney! When I was younger, my friend - I've written about him here before (he just found his dad) - taught at a private high school. He took a group of kids to Montreal for a ski trip, and I went as chaparone. Some of the kids - thinking they were being funny - brought a Napalm Death video (I don't remember if it was a boot or not; Live Corruption didn't come out until after I remember the trip being held) thinking they were going to bust our balls. Little did they know we were both in bands, both liked metal (though not death metal) and thought it was funny. By the end of the trip we were kind of busting their balls by making THEM play it after the novelty wore off. :)
I won't say that's not "music", because it is but it's in my collection for completeness and for the event, not because it's a stellar version of the song.
Are you calling me a Barney or is that the guy's name? :biggrin: Let's just say that it's a good think that that's only one song on 5YIAL. Musically, they ripped it up, but I just can't with the "vocals."
For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
Obviously, it's a subjective thing, and, to me, they sound like shit. What's the difference between distorted guitars and some dude (or chick) grunting like an animal? I don't know that I could articulate it, but the difference is, to me, manifest. It's sort of like saying, "why do you like Geoff Tate's vocals but think Axl Rose sounds like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs?
Where do you all place Gojira?
Somewhere between Genesis and Grim Reaper.
By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
Someone wrote on YT: "Barney is my favorite Dream Theater singer" :lol
If I recall correctly, the comments on that video are gold.
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Thanks for the responses to my question guys. I was thinking a lack of melody might have been a big factor.
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Where do you all place Gojira?
Somewhere between Genesis and Grim Reaper.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. :tup
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By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
Petrucci fucking destroys on this. His rhythm is incredible.
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As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals.
Given that there's so much other music out there that I have yet to explore, the *last* thing I want to do is force myself to listen to something that is repulsive to me. There's no need for me to waste my time or energy.
Well I wasn't forcing myself to listen to something that was repulsive on the whole. I always loved the music but went from hating the vocals, and being pissed that these great songs were ruined, to kinda tolerating them to a point I could enjoy the music. Then finally to a place where I appreciated and loved them. I get your point of view. I guess I was just never as repulsed as you are?
I was once at a fork in the road where I could've given up on harsh vocals and vowed never to listen to them, or to persevere and see if I could get past this thing that was holding me back from this fucking incredible music. I chose to persevere, so for me it was never a waste of time of energy. Totally the opposite as it paid off. I can't imagine a world without harsh vocals in it now, and I wouldn't have it any other way :heart
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As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals.
Given that there's so much other music out there that I have yet to explore, the *last* thing I want to do is force myself to listen to something that is repulsive to me. There's no need for me to waste my time or energy.
Well I wasn't forcing myself to listen to something that was repulsive on the whole. I always loved the music but went from hating the vocals, and being pissed that these great songs were ruined, to kinda tolerating them to a point I could enjoy the music. Then finally to a place where I appreciated and loved them. I get your point of view. I guess I was just never as repulsed as you are?
I was once at a fork in the road where I could've given up on harsh vocals and vowed never to listen to them, or to persevere and see if I could get past this thing that was holding me back from this fucking incredible music. I chose to persevere, so for me it was never a waste of time of energy. Totally the opposite as it paid off. I can't imagine a world without harsh vocals in it now, and I wouldn't have it any other way :heart
I count myself fortunate that I didn't have to persevere, as you put it, with Pantera. The first time I heard Mouth For War back in the '90's, I was sold.
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As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals.
Given that there's so much other music out there that I have yet to explore, the *last* thing I want to do is force myself to listen to something that is repulsive to me. There's no need for me to waste my time or energy.
Well I wasn't forcing myself to listen to something that was repulsive on the whole. I always loved the music but went from hating the vocals, and being pissed that these great songs were ruined, to kinda tolerating them to a point I could enjoy the music. Then finally to a place where I appreciated and loved them. I get your point of view. I guess I was just never as repulsed as you are?
I was once at a fork in the road where I could've given up on harsh vocals and vowed never to listen to them, or to persevere and see if I could get past this thing that was holding me back from this fucking incredible music. I chose to persevere, so for me it was never a waste of time of energy. Totally the opposite as it paid off. I can't imagine a world without harsh vocals in it now, and I wouldn't have it any other way :heart
I count myself fortunate that I didn't have to persevere, as you put it, with Pantera. The first time I heard Mouth For War back in the '90's, I was sold.
That song is so incredible. You can't help but to feel powerful as soon as you hear the 'REVEEENNNGGGEEE!!'.
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I generally don't like them but I love both Arch Enemy and Mors Principium Est. I would actually love to hear their albums done with clean vocals too, I think that would be fun to release the same album as a double CD, one with growling vocals, the other with clean vocals.
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Opeth is the only music I listen to with any growls in it, aside from when other bands might do it as an exception to what they usually do (see: BC&SL)
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
The difference is melody. Harsh vocals generally express zero melody, they are rarely intelligible, and they are far too often used as a crutch for bands with shitty vocalists. To me, the last couple of albums Opeth made with harsh vocals were a really good example of how to use them effectively, especially on "Heritage" which is the penultimate Opeth album, in my opinion.
Any band that uses 100% harsh vocals is a no-go for me. I just find it immensely boring because it removes one of the elements of vocals that I find most compelling and necessary for my enjoyment of a song and that is good vocal melodies. There is no such thing as a growled melody, it's just not really doable. It's kind of like asking for a "dry" cup of water.
Take bands like Trivium, especially on their last few albums, I think they are another example of a band who effectively uses the harsh vocals to express rage, anger, frustration, etc and it's very, very effective and tolerable for someone like me who doesn't care for the style at all, but is willing to tolerate it in small doses.
But yeah, my primary beef with it is I find a LOT of bands use harsh vocals because no one in the band can sing. And some of them are just ridiculous sounding. I just can't take it seriously. It might just be because I'm a grouchy old man, though :lol
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the last couple of albums Opeth made with harsh vocals were a really good example of how to use them effectively, especially on "Heritage"
I think you mean Watershed :biggrin:
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if you can listen to them and hear other parts of the music that you love, than they don't ruin the music. Granted, I can attest to finding some bands whose vocalists I don't care for, ruin music I might enjoy. So I can relate to the issue with them, it's just in a lot of cases, the growling or shrieks don't distract me, and eventually seem to complement the music.
Some exceptions tho. Some of the hardcore punk or posthardcore bands, the vocals suck, and are at times too high in the mix to not distract, I think of bands like Deftones or Thrice even as examples of that.
But with a lot of Death and tech/death, the vocalists often can complement the music. I suppose it can depend on how samey they may sound, on a song or album. There are examples when every vocal line sounds very much the same, and ends up hurting the music. I guess it can depend on how much they are used, and if they mix them with clean vocals.
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
The difference is melody. Harsh vocals generally express zero melody
True. But listen to the music behind this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWgryf5CXtU
I don't like death metal. But Arch Enemy and, especially, Mors Principium Est are incredible.
The final solo:
"The final emotional solo from the upcoming Mors Principium Est album, "Seven". I really channelled John Petrucci on this one and decided to listen to every Dreamtheater album back to back in one sitting. 9 weeks later, I emerged from my room and recorded this."
https://fb.watch/3KGKLD1ZE7/
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For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
The difference is melody. Harsh vocals generally express zero melody, they are rarely intelligible, and they are far too often used as a crutch for bands with shitty vocalists. To me, the last couple of albums Opeth made with harsh vocals were a really good example of how to use them effectively, especially on "Heritage" which is the penultimate Opeth album, in my opinion.
Any band that uses 100% harsh vocals is a no-go for me. I just find it immensely boring because it removes one of the elements of vocals that I find most compelling and necessary for my enjoyment of a song and that is good vocal melodies. There is no such thing as a growled melody, it's just not really doable. It's kind of like asking for a "dry" cup of water.
Take bands like Trivium, especially on their last few albums, I think they are another example of a band who effectively uses the harsh vocals to express rage, anger, frustration, etc and it's very, very effective and tolerable for someone like me who doesn't care for the style at all, but is willing to tolerate it in small doses.
But yeah, my primary beef with it is I find a LOT of bands use harsh vocals because no one in the band can sing. And some of them are just ridiculous sounding. I just can't take it seriously. It might just be because I'm a grouchy old man, though :lol
Great answer Barry, much appreciated.
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it’s the metal version of rap.
:lol
By the way, possibly the very worst thing DT ever did was that version of Damage, Inc. on 5YIAL. If I recall correctly, even JM started laughing when the guy started to "sing."
When I first saw that, before the vocals, I thought "uh... that isn't James right?" I mean, his hair was similar, and with it in his face, it could have been hard to tell for a second or two, then the "singing" started, I was pretty damn confused. I didn't recognize it as a DT song, and didn't listen to Metallica. I didn't recognize the singer, who by now was obviously not James. Then they went in to another song I didn't know, with a different singer, who this time sounded like a dying cat. What in the blue hell kinda concert was this?
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A lot of people have mentioned Devin Townsend, but he has to have some of the most unpleasant harsh vocals I've ever heard.
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A lot of people have mentioned Devin Townsend, but he has to have some of the most unpleasant harsh vocals I've ever heard.
Detox is the song that got me into Strapping Young Lad several years ago. I'm not much for the wall-of-sound style of his solo records (but love Ocean Machine!), but SYL has some awesome songs.
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A lot of people have mentioned Devin Townsend, but he has to have some of the most unpleasant harsh vocals I've ever heard.
What's crazy for me is that I generally hate screaming vocals, yet Addicted, which features Devin in full screaming mode, is not only my favorite Devin song, but one of my favorite songs by anyone. No clue how that happened, except that Devin is a magician. :biggrin: :lol
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Yeah, Devin Townsend is unlistenable to me.
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A lot of people have mentioned Devin Townsend, but he has to have some of the most unpleasant harsh vocals I've ever heard.
I'm a casual fan, but I can understand that.
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Haken’s The Architect is one of the only songs I own that has them and I just groan when that part starts. Thankfully there is an instrumental version of the song that I can listen to instead.
It’s a style of music that I can’t really connect with on any level. Just not for me.
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Forgot Ihsahn when I made my post. Listening to some of him right now (the After album - my fave of his). I never thought I could like vocals like his, but it doesn't bother me at all, and didn't from the get-go. I immediately fell in love with his stuff. His music is just amazing. I also picked up the last Emperor album. I don't know, like I said, I can't explain why I gravitate to someone with odd harsh vocals and think others are terrible. As I get older, I seem to be tolerating them more and more. Would've thought I'd be into country by now or something but my tastes are getting heavier and heavier.
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Even though I don't like calling this a genre, but it is known as one, Djent is a genre that I only have a problem with being picky with both Growls and the Clean Vocals.
For me, The best clean vocalist I like is Daniel Tompkins in Tesseract, but I don't really like his growls all too much. Growls would be Spencer Sotelo from Periphery, I don't really like his clean vocals. But the music, even that I am a bit picky with. I guess the best Djent music I've heard would be Tetrafusion, they also have a good mix of clean and growls as well. That good Djent combo for me would be a mix of all three, but with Arch Echo's music.
That's just in the Djent Genre, but then I haven't really dug into it much at all. :biggrin:
Overall, my favorite Grunters/Growlers would be
Mikael Akerfeldt
George Oosthoek
Michael Stanne
Christian Älvestam
Shriekers:
Chuck Schuldiner
Warrel Dane
Bobby Blitz
All this shows is just how much I listen to Growls, and it's not much. I don't seek it out, but These are the ones I listen to mainly. I am sure there are others that I would consider better if I listened to them.
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I used to hate growls. I still think they're silly and unnecessary, but I can take them in small doses. For some reason, Into Eternity is the only band (on 2 of their albums) where I actually enjoy the growls and shrieks. Harsh vocals, like when Corey Taylor is shouting and actually conveying emotions, I like, unlike most growlers who sound like cookie monster or a cave troll, or Mike Portnoy trying to sound tough.
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But yeah, my primary beef with it is I find a LOT of bands use harsh vocals because no one in the band can sing.
Yeah sure, those bands meet in the rehearsal room, they actually want to cover Queen songs, then they realise no one can really sing so they switch to growly death metal. ;)
And there are a lot of harsh vocalists out there that can also sing clean really good.
And just because: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rg_63Shqg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rg_63Shqg) :metal :metal :metal
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And just because: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rg_63Shqg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5rg_63Shqg) :metal :metal :metal
Was quite listenable until the growls ;D
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I expected that ;D
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I'm just curious where the forum comes down on this? I'm guessing I am in the minority here, because I strongly dislike harsh vocals. To me, they ruin otherwise great music in many cases. I can take them in very, very small doses once in a while but generally speaking the minute I hear growls I lose interest. And I've lost count of the number of bands I've discovered on Amazon.com music only to get a minute or two into their album and hear the growling start. Instant turnoff and delete from phone.
Now I could be way off base here, but I suspect there is an age correlation to this. It won't be a hard set rule but I think on average the people who like growling will trend younger and the people who dislike them will trend older.
I could've written this word-for-word. I voted the 4th (and most popular) option.
My position on harsh vocals hasn't changed in 10+ years. If done tastefully, in moderation, and fits the mood/vibe of the song and lyrics, I'm can be ok with them. My gold-standard example in this is Rage of Despair by Flaming Row.
If an album / song is 100% growls/harsh/scream-o, it's a hard pass. I can't think of a song that is 100% harsh that I would stick through. To some degree, it depends on *how* harsh. Like Devin... I can dig some (a lot?) of his stuff. Dan Swano... same. But once it crosses from harsh to growls, thanks but no thanks.
For those that hate growls, why exactly do you not like them? What is it about them you find such a turn off? You like distorted guitars, so what is the difference between that and some vocals?
To a large degree, distorted guitars still have melody that is enjoyable. Cookie monster vocals do not - they are pure noise to my ears. I view music that lacks melody in the same way,
I'm along the same lines (as well as Bill's and Paul's comments - 'metal version of rap' :lol :tup). I don't think the comparison to guitar tones is entirely apples-to-apples. I think there are dozens (if not more) of kinds of sounds we can hear from guitars. We're used to artists modifying, tweaking, experimenting with their sound with that instrument. With vocals, there's only a few different ways of singing - disregarding different genres/pitch/tone/etc... Once the voice stops being an instrument to deliver words, I'm out. I just don't hear any musicality to growls the way I do clean vocals. Plus, the anger/aggression issue that was referenced.
As I said before, Pantera and Children of Bodom were the bands where I really forced myself to persevere with the vocals.
Given that there's so much other music out there that I have yet to explore, the *last* thing I want to do is force myself to listen to something that is repulsive to me. There's no need for me to waste my time or energy.
Hammer, meet nail.
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Re: Harsh or Growling Vocals - Yes or No?
In moderation and in context. I can't listen to bands who have 100% harsh vocals.
And bands like Cannibal Corpse where it's just RORORORORORORORO - no. Fuck off.
Mastodon yes - because they use them in context and for effect. See also Trivium.
Prefer James Hetfield though - who sings 100% clean - but can use grit and growl in his cleans when needed.
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We're used to artists modifying, tweaking, experimenting with their sound with that instrument.
And this is not restricted to guitars, artists do this with every instrument available. So why not with the voice also?
Now I'm not saying that you should therefore like it. I don't like every guitar tone, every keyboard sample, every triggered snare drum etc. and I don't like every harsh vocal, just as I don't like every clean vocal. It's all a matter of taste and that's okay and that's all that matters.
And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
And, and maybe this is just me, but harsh vocals can convey much more emotions than just anger or rage. Even the opposite spectrum of calm and beauty (maybe more in a melancholic way) is possible.
And if done right there can be a lot of power and (positive) energy in there.
Again, not trying to convince anyone and not saying you're wrong, because you aren't. But just saying there's more to it than unmusical noise.
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Prefer James Hetfield though - who sings 100% clean - but can use grit and growl in his cleans when needed.
Halo on Fire live:
Deprive, deprive
To feel so alive
Obey, obey >:(
Just don't turn away.....
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One of my favourite *moments* of Harsh Vocals.
( it jumps to the exact moment ) :)
https://youtu.be/FpWYpaMTOi0?t=199
Halo on Fire live:
Deprive, deprive
To feel so alive
Obey, obey >:(
Just don't turn away.....
:metal Hetfield
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We're used to artists modifying, tweaking, experimenting with their sound with that instrument.
And this is not restricted to guitars, artists do this with every instrument available. So why not with the voice also?
Now I'm not saying that you should therefore like it. I don't like every guitar tone, every keyboard sample, every triggered snare drum etc. and I don't like every harsh vocal, just as I don't like every clean vocal. It's all a matter of taste and that's okay and that's all that matters.
Agreed completely (on the underlined). I guess for my tastes, I've been hearing instrumental musicians tweak their sound since the 60s, so there's been a lot of exposure to different sounds and styles of guitar (and keys, and bass). I've no doubt that people hearing Black Sabbath in the 70s who were accustomed to Buddy Holly were just as put off.
And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
If it wasn't clear, I'm not criticizing them for not being melodic, just answering why I don't often like them. Steak is not meant to be well done; I'm not going to be critical to the person that likes it that way. It's just not for me.
Again, not trying to convince anyone and not saying you're wrong, because you aren't. But just saying there's more to it than unmusical noise.
I'm not trying to convince anyone either, or indicate why I'm right and others are wrong - just explaining why they don't often float my boat. You hear more to it than unmusical noise, that's awesome. For the most part, I don't.
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The best harsh vocals are the ones where they can still pitch. Like Troy Sanders or Randall Blythe etc.
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If it wasn't clear, I'm not criticizing them for not being melodic, just answering why I don't often like them. Steak is not meant to be well done; I'm not going to be critical to the person that likes it that way. It's just not for me.
Thank you for not judging my steak preference lol
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A lot of people have mentioned Devin Townsend, but he has to have some of the most unpleasant harsh vocals I've ever heard.
I'm not the resident Devin expert, I'm a dabbler. But I like the mix, like on Steve Vai's album, and on Transcendence. I don't really consider that "growls" or "harsh". I have yet to hear a SYL song that I like; that IS unlistenable to me.
It's hard to put into words; there's "screaming" and there's "screaming". They're not the same thing.
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Voted "I can take them or leave them".
I love Opeth, Agalloch, latter-era Death, Insomnium, Moonsorrow and latter-era Enslaved, so I don't mind their vocals.
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Now I could be way off base here, but I suspect there is an age correlation to this. It won't be a hard set rule but I think on average the people who like growling will trend younger and the people who dislike them will trend older.
That's absolutely true.
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I put take or leave. Much of my favourite music of all time has harsh vocals and some of my favourite vocal moments of all time are with harsh elements. Most of what i listen to now is clean vocals, mind.
I dislike generic death, black or whatever-core harsh vocals but there are exceptional vocalists in all those genres.
The woman from Jinjer is amazingly versatile but her harsh voice is the epitome of generic. It could be anyone. Same with the Cannibal Corpse mode.
Absolutely adore Devin, Ihsahn, Tom Araya, LG Petrov, Jens Kidder, Akerfeldt, Phil Anselmo, etc. Devin especially is a vocal GOD.
All of those guys have their own thing. There are just so many "satisfactory" level harsh vocalists that sound the same.
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And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
I hate hearing drums in music, just not melodic enough.
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First things first. I have to enjoy the music first. It's why I don't like the death metal bands and Thrash Metal bands like Slayer and Cannibal Corpse, there is music I enjoy from them though. Then the vocals come in. With me, I can listen to just the vocal melody and just the tone, hell I don't even understand the words they're saying sometimes, but I love the melody and end up singing the wrong words, and I'll just scat along instead.
With the low Grunt gutteral vocals, I do this a lot. A lot of growlers do not have good enunciation and for me, a good growler can enunciate well.
It's also not easy to do right. You have to use your gut, it doesn't come from the throat. It's how females can also do Grunts and growls, they know where and how to produce that sound. It's not easy doing that every night without ruining your voice.
And the good grunters can sing. It's why I consider Christian one of the best vocalists. His grunt tone and his clean vocals are damn amazing, and was the draw for me with Scar Symmetry and I wish he'd do another album with someone sometime.
I used to hate growls. I still think they're silly and unnecessary, but I can take them in small doses. For some reason, Into Eternity is the only band (on 2 of their albums) where I actually enjoy the growls and shrieks. Harsh vocals, like when Corey Taylor is shouting and actually conveying emotions, I like, unlike most growlers who sound like cookie monster or a cave troll, or Mike Portnoy trying to sound tough.
Into Eternity had some badass vocals switching from the low Grunt to High Screech vocals. It was badass, hearing him go from the low growl to the high growl and sing in between.
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But yeah, my primary beef with it is I find a LOT of bands use harsh vocals because no one in the band can sing.
Yeah sure, those bands meet in the rehearsal room, they actually want to cover Queen songs, then they realise no one can really sing so they switch to growly death metal. ;)
The funny day we went to play "Somebody to Love" and ended up playing "Hammer Smashed Face"
:lol
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The guy who used to roar for The Haunted did it with some fucking passion. The screaming from 3:29 onwards gives me goosebumps. https://youtu.be/DfoGoLTY2Gs
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Now I could be way off base here, but I suspect there is an age correlation to this. It won't be a hard set rule but I think on average the people who like growling will trend younger and the people who dislike them will trend older.
That's absolutely true.
You know what's funny about this...
It's the same as when guitar players started using distortion and became more heavy and metal.
The older ones didn't enjoy it while the younger ones did. :lol
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And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
I hate hearing drums in music, just not melodic enough.
Not kidding, some time ago I had a conversation with a friend about growls that went like this:
Him: "I don't like growls, cause they are not melodic, my music has to have melody"
Me: "Okay, what is your favorite instrument?"
Him "Drums, I could listen to only drums the whole day". :)
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I guess for my tastes, I've been hearing instrumental musicians tweak their sound since the 60s, so there's been a lot of exposure to different sounds and styles of guitar (and keys, and bass). I've no doubt that people hearing Black Sabbath in the 70s who were accustomed to Buddy Holly were just as put off.
There's a story about german television in the 60s which back then was even more irritably old-fashioned than it is today:
They got Santana for some kind of family game show and Santana wants to play live. At soundcheck the tv sound engineer stops Santana, because "There's something wrong with your guitar, everything is distorted." :facepalm:
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A lot of people have mentioned Devin Townsend, but he has to have some of the most unpleasant harsh vocals I've ever heard.
The only thing I know about that guy is that, in the mid-90s, he completely ruined one of the best Rush songs (and it isn't even growly shit) (of course, 75% of that album sucked for lots of different reasons): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw1KTC9M6LQ
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The guy who used to roar for The Haunted did it with some fucking passion. The screaming from 3:29 onwards gives me goosebumps. https://youtu.be/DfoGoLTY2Gs
:metal The Haunted! Reminds me of when Jens cleaned his pipes: https://youtu.be/mH4T3Zq1eQQ?t=433
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For me, the first band that got me into that kind of vocals was All That Remains. Philip Labonte has both, good singing voice and growls, and he is one of the very few that I seen, that is able to sound good live while doing harsh vocals. I was introduced to them because of the guitars (RIP Oli), but the vocals worked so well with the music :metal
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I guess for my tastes, I've been hearing instrumental musicians tweak their sound since the 60s, so there's been a lot of exposure to different sounds and styles of guitar (and keys, and bass). I've no doubt that people hearing Black Sabbath in the 70s who were accustomed to Buddy Holly were just as put off.
There's a story about german television in the 60s which back then was even more irritably old-fashioned than it is today:
They got Santana for some kind of family game show and Santana wants to play live. At soundcheck the tv sound engineer stops Santana, because "There's something wrong with your guitar, everything is distorted." :facepalm:
How else were they to know it was Santanas tone choice. They had never heard of using distortion as an effect. Distortion was known as a bad audio issue, which is that the audio peaks and distorts. It's why distortion sounds best when played loud.
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Well, being a huge consumer of extreme metal in general, I obviously like harsh vocals / screams. But is has to fit the music. I will have none of that in bands like Priest/Maiden/DT but I think it fits the music in for example death metal. Tomb of the Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse is a fine example of extremely brutal vocals that fit the music very well.
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The first really harsh vocals I liked were probably something like Fear Factory / Slipknot / Dimmu Borgir, but growling took me a while to get.
First time I started to enjoy growling vocals was when I was discovering Opeth through their album Deliverance. I thought they were quite off-putting at first, but the album kept me hooked because of the sporadic acoustic/clean sections. After a while, I started to realize that the growled vocals were there to give the music that dark/wintery/foresty feel (at least, that's what I'm feeling when listening to a lot of their music). To me, when Opeth does them at least, it sounds like the deep voice of the earth down below / the forest / whatever. I'm almost never hearing it as 'someone's voice'.
Funnily enough, Opeth's growled vocals are the only growls I truly love. I can like others, tolerate how they sound, but I think Mikael Akerfeldt is really one of the best.
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Bands who have harsh vocals which I enjoy -
Trivium. Matt's voice is so much better now than on Ascendancy. His Ascendancy screams were too shrill for me. In Waves in particular is a huge improvement.
Mastodon - Troy's pitched growls are amazing and Bill can really growl too . Brent I can take or leave but his cleans are good ( studio anyway )...
Slipknot - I love Corey's harsh voice and his is probably the best overall. It's aggressive as fuck but he can still pitch and you can understand what the lyrics are.
Plus Corey is an amazing clean singer too.
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I will say, I generally don’t listen to music that is heavy enough to contain these type of extreme vocals, so it’s not just the vocals that are a turn off but that type of metal in general really does nothing for me. But I’m even less likely to stick with something heavy if the vocals are all Cookie Monster.
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And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
I hate hearing drums in music, just not melodic enough.
Sure, but I can say that melody is important to me and I'm not interested in music that doesn't have a lot of melody or has less melody in certain aspects. Like, I would not want to listen to an album that was all drums, or an album where the drums were the lead instrument and all the other instruments just rhythmically followed the drums with little to no melody. But not liking those albums wouldn't mean I don't like drums. I like drums when they are a complement to other instruments. I don't like them when they play an outsized role to the detriment of other elements, like melody.
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And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
I hate hearing drums in music, just not melodic enough.
Not kidding, some time ago I had a conversation with a friend about growls that went like this:
Him: "I don't like growls, cause they are not melodic, my music has to have melody"
Me: "Okay, what is your favorite instrument?"
Him "Drums, I could listen to only drums the whole day". :)
Ironically, drums aren't meant to be melodic... they're rhythmic, no? :biggrin:
But yeah... the "only drums the whole day" comment is chalk full of irony itself.
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The guy who used to roar for The Haunted did it with some fucking passion. The screaming from 3:29 onwards gives me goosebumps. https://youtu.be/DfoGoLTY2Gs
:metal The Haunted! Reminds me of when Jens cleaned his pipes: https://youtu.be/mH4T3Zq1eQQ?t=433
That's fantastic. :lol
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Now I could be way off base here, but I suspect there is an age correlation to this. It won't be a hard set rule but I think on average the people who like growling will trend younger and the people who dislike them will trend older.
That's absolutely true.
You know what's funny about this...
It's the same as when guitar players started using distortion and became more heavy and metal.
The older ones didn't enjoy it while the younger ones did. :lol
When I was a teenager I hated thrash vocals. I have mellowed my view on them as I got older.
I accept that you are probably correct though.
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the last couple of albums Opeth made with harsh vocals were a really good example of how to use them effectively, especially on "Heritage"
I think you mean Watershed :biggrin:
Yep, I did mean Watershed :facepalm:
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The guy who used to roar for The Haunted did it with some fucking passion. The screaming from 3:29 onwards gives me goosebumps. https://youtu.be/DfoGoLTY2Gs
Man, I played The Haunted to death back in '07/08! Great, great band. I was listening to a playlist of my all time favourite songs earlier actually and The Flood came on. Still probably my favourite song by The Haunted, followed closely by Hollow Ground :metal
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Yeah, Devin Townsend is unlistenable to me.
Yeah, about 95% of his stuff is the same for me, but he does have some pretty good material sprinkled in there with regular vocals. I really enjoyed Transcendence a lot.
For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
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Yeah, Devin Townsend is unlistenable to me.
Yeah, about 95% of his stuff is the same for me, but he does have some pretty good material sprinkled in there with regular vocals. I really enjoyed Transcendence a lot.
For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
i agree........as i said earlier design or not. Growling at me will diminish an otherwise kick ass song.
now i CAN learn to tolerate it. but tolerating it is all it will ever be.
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Not sure if it’s been said already in the thread but the poll and poll options are strongly biased towards ‘no’. There’s no middle ground between “I literally want harsh vocals in all my music” and “I think they’re merely OK whenever they are used”
It would be interesting to have a fair/unbiased version of the same topic though.
In context they could be either a dealmaker or breaker for me, but the same quite obviously goes for clean vocals, for guitar work, for drums, for bass... etc.
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And critizising growls for not being melodic is beside the point, they are not meant to be melodic.
I hate hearing drums in music, just not melodic enough.
Sure, but I can say that melody is important to me and I'm not interested in music that doesn't have a lot of melody or has less melody in certain aspects. Like, I would not want to listen to an album that was all drums, or an album where the drums were the lead instrument and all the other instruments just rhythmically followed the drums with little to no melody. But not liking those albums wouldn't mean I don't like drums. I like drums when they are a complement to other instruments. I don't like them when they play an outsized role to the detriment of other elements, like melody.
For sure, but that's about the balance of different elements in the music as a whole, rather than the vocals themselves. Lots of bands that mostly/entirely use harsh vocals have extremely melodic music going on.
Besides which, lots of bands that use clean vocals have no interesting sense of melody.
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If it's something like the most recent JLB albums, where growling vocals are used sparingly and as a contrast to the clean vocals, then I'm OK with them. Otherwise, I have no interest in harsh vocals.
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I actually find Opeth without the mix of Growls and Clean vocals, doesn't sound like Opeth.
Although I like Damnation, I find since Heritage, they just don't have what made them unique.
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Generally speaking, I dislike harsh vocals a lot and don’t listen to all these metalcore bands. As with all things though, there are exceptions to the rule and that exception for me was Opeth. I initially suffered through the growling stuff to get to the melodic parts but I grew to appreciate all aspects of them and I think Akerfeldt’s harsh vocals were incredible. They actually sounded genuinely menacing and evil as compared to the screeching/screaming of metalcore or the really sludgy death metal stuff.
I do love Devin as well but he doesn’t do too many harsh vocals these days. I don’t listen to his super heavy SYL stuff.
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I actually find Opeth without the mix of Growls and Clean vocals, doesn't sound like Opeth.
Although I like Damnation, I find since Heritage, they just don't have what made them unique.
It has nothing to do with the vocals. It's due to Mikael Akerfeldts writing and composition, it has changed from the Death Metal style to a more 70's Prog kind of style. Watershed is a good example of that Opeth sound with the good clean vocals and Death Growls. And the last Opeth album to have that old writing style.
And I don't think that music would sound good with growls. Maybe Pale Communion songs would work. But the music is calmer now, and not as aggressive, but it's still Metal. Akerfeldt is also older now and that can play into an artist wanting to change up their style. It's progressing as a musician and life.
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It has nothing to do with the vocals. It's due to Mikael Akerfeldts writing and composition, it has changed from the Death Metal style to a more 70's Prog kind of style. Watershed is a good example of that Opeth sound with the good clean vocals and Death Growls. And the last Opeth album to have that old writing style.
And I don't think that music would sound good with growls. Maybe Pale Communion songs would work. But the music is calmer now, and not as aggressive, but it's still Metal. Akerfeldt is also older now and that can play into an artist wanting to change up their style. It's progressing as a musician and life.
Agreed. And their newer stuff still totally sounds like classic non-growling Opeth. Songs like Harvest, Isolation Years and Face of Melinda would have been right at home on the last few Opeth albums.
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For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
As a personal reason for not liking it's fair enough. But the "personal argument" has already been dropped a few pages ago. It has even been suggested that the existence of this type of vocal is merely a consequence of people's lack of talent (who cannot sing like Freedie Mercury).
Criticizing growling vocals for lacking a melody is like criticizing heavy metal for being heavy and with distorted guitars or criticizing the prog for being complex and intricate.
Sure, anyone may not like growling vocals because they lacking a melody, or prog bands because they are too pompous and complex, but that's just a personal reason for not liking something. As a general critic, it is silly.
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Most of the stuff my son listens to has harsh vocals. I have heard so much of it from him that it has broken me down. It's a matter of exposure and incremental tolerance.
He started off with Lamb of God. And initially I was put off, but then the more he exposed me to other vocalists, Randy seemed almost tame in comparison (which is saying a lot).
That stated, I do have a threshold. If I am going to be interested, there typically has to be something else about the song, band, or music in general that is redeeming. Or even the individual personality of the singer. It also helps of course when they do EXCELLENT clean vocals as well.
Some of my favorites:
- Tatiana Shmayluk. As DoctorAction mentioned, the versatility. Her YT reaction videos are already the stuff of legends. It's how SEAMLESSLY she can enter and exit all the vocal styles she pulls off. The growling is SO contrasted with her incredible cleans, that it definitely takes you aback like no other vocalist, male or female. Also, the rest of the Jinjer band is amazing.
- Alissa White-Gluz. Keeping with the ladies, she was Tatiana before Tatiana. Just not quite on that level. But a similar shock. Both ladies are very attractive too....which adds to the depth of the contrast, as it were. Besides that, she plays with Jeff freaking Loomis! And, personal bias.....I was there at the Nightwish "Debacle" in Denver when she and Elize Ryd filled in for Anette Olzon. I was just a few feet away, and her stage presence....like Tatiana's.....is, shall we say, palpable.
- Michael Akerfeldt. Opeth is so great/interesting as a band, and the cleans are so good, that it's easy to have him on the list.
- Randy Blythe. Still pretty much sounds the same after all these years. I say that as a compliment. For doing as many live shows as they have done with him singing like that, it's impressive. Lamb of God is a great band too.
- Jake Superchi. From the black metal band UADA. He can do VERY low death growls to high pitched screaming. My affinity for him is based primarily on one of my favorite YT videos, Cult of a Dying Sun. They filmed it in a remote area of Washington state near Mt. St. Helens. That environment SO adds to the mood/impact of the song.
Wondering if you could also add vocalists who walk the line of what we would define as harsh by today's standards? Especially those not typically known for such. Like Russell Allen, for example. He tinkered with more aggressive vocals on certain parts of The Odyssey album, and then went almost all that direction on Paradise Lost. The change was in no small part to match the sound of the music/tenor of the album, but was rather off putting for a lot of hardcore Symphony X fans.
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Paul Kuhr from November's Doom and especially with Subterranean Masquerade is one I think of as a favorite extreme vocalist.
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Matt Heafy says that if you do it right - Harsh vocals should put no more strain on your voice than actually talking.
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For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
As a personal reason for not liking it's fair enough. But the "personal argument" has already been dropped a few pages ago. It has even been suggested that the existence of this type of vocal is merely a consequence of people's lack of talent (who cannot sing like Freedie Mercury).
Criticizing growling vocals for lacking a melody is like criticizing heavy metal for being heavy and with distorted guitars or criticizing the prog for being complex and intricate.
Sure, anyone may not like growling vocals because they lacking a melody, or prog bands because they are too pompous and complex, but that's just a personal reason for not liking something. As a general critic, it is silly.
I'm not sure I understand your point; isn't all criticism personal in nature?
Necessity is the mother of invention when it comes to art; people have something to say and they find a way to say it. Peter Buck sucked at guitar early on, and their music reflected that. Tony Iommi had only two full fingers on his fretting hand, so he used a certain guitar (Gibson SG) tuned a certain way, and played certain chord shapes.
I don't like growls at all, but I'm not suggesting that everyone who can't sing like Freddie Mercury ought to pack it in and go away. Having said that, though, Peter Buck GOT good, and Tony transcended his limitations fantastically. I do think that the growls/harsh palatte is a limited one with limited runway to growth.
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Wondering if you could also add vocalists who walk the line of what we would define as harsh by today's standards? Especially those not typically known for such. Like Russell Allen, for example. He tinkered with more aggressive vocals on certain parts of The Odyssey album, and then went almost all that direction on Paradise Lost. The change was in no small part to match the sound of the music/tenor of the album, but was rather off putting for a lot of hardcore Symphony X fans.
Since you mentioned Russell, it's funny that I have no problem listening to some growling vocals like Mikael or Nick Holmes, but somehow I got a little tired of clean vocalists who abuse the drive, like Russell Allen or JSS. It doesn't make much sense, but ... :lol
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Paul Kuhr from November's Doom and especially with Subterranean Masquerade is one I think of as a favorite extreme vocalist.
Checked out Nephilim Grove. Wow. November's Doom been around for 30 years.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvLp3XPNAZ0
I love how Corey sounds on this track... :metal :metal
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Sure, but I can say that melody is important to me and I'm not interested in music that doesn't have a lot of melody or has less melody in certain aspects. Like, I would not want to listen to an album that was all drums, or an album where the drums were the lead instrument and all the other instruments just rhythmically followed the drums with little to no melody. But not liking those albums wouldn't mean I don't like drums. I like drums when they are a complement to other instruments. I don't like them when they play an outsized role to the detriment of other elements, like melody.
For sure, but that's about the balance of different elements in the music as a whole, rather than the vocals themselves. Lots of bands that mostly/entirely use harsh vocals have extremely melodic music going on.
Besides which, lots of bands that use clean vocals have no interesting sense of melody.
But balance is my point. I'm not one of the people who is completely anti-harsh-vocals, but what I don't like is when the whole album or most of the album is harsh vocals, because that quickly gets monotonous and annoying. I like the use of harsh vocals to punctuate certain points in the music, but if it's the whole thing, it loses its ability to punctuate and now it's just amelodic vocals where there very well could be melodic ones (and there is little reason, from my perspective, not to have melodic ones).
To go back again to drums, having a long complicated drum fill is a great way to punctuate certain points in the music, but if you do a long complicated drum fill every 20 seconds, it loses its ability to punctuate and now it's just interrupting the melodic parts to do something amelodic that is no longer really having much effect. It would become monotonous.
This is all my opinion and my preference. But I really do like growls so much more the more selectively they're used, to emphasize certain parts.
As for bands that have clean vocals but no interesting sense of melody, I don't really have any reason to be interested in them.
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Wondering if you could also add vocalists who walk the line of what we would define as harsh by today's standards? Especially those not typically known for such. Like Russell Allen, for example. He tinkered with more aggressive vocals on certain parts of The Odyssey album, and then went almost all that direction on Paradise Lost. The change was in no small part to match the sound of the music/tenor of the album, but was rather off putting for a lot of hardcore Symphony X fans.
Since you mentioned Russell, it's funny that I have no problem listening to some growling vocals like Mikael or Nick Holmes, but somehow I got a little tired of clean vocalists who abuse the drive, like Russell Allen or JSS. It doesn't make much sense, but ... :lol
Exactly why I brought him up for discussion. It's more difficult to adjust to as a listener when it was never the norm.
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I'm not sure I understand your point; isn't all criticism personal in nature?
Well, criticism is judging the merits and faults of something (expressed in a simple way). I have a Ph.D in Biology and in nowadays pandemic times I HAVE A LOT OF CRITICISM about people's actions and opinions about viruses, viral evolution, vaccines, epidemiology, immunology etc. But I don't think they are personal criticisms. They are criticisms based on technical arguments. But the nature of this subject is different, more objective.
Going back to our subject, I think that in general our opinions are totally personal because there is a lot of subjectivity, you are right. Possibly I expressed myself poorly.
My point is that there is a difference between your personal reasons for not liking something and a wannabe more ambitious elaboration of how bad something is (which is still personal).
Saying "I don't like heavy metal because it's heavy" is different from saying "heavy metal is heavy, so it's mediocre". IMO, the last argument is weak.
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I'm not sure I understand your point; isn't all criticism personal in nature?
Well, criticism is judging the merits and faults of something (expressed in a simple way). I have a Ph.D in Biology, and in nowadays pandemic times, I HAVE A LOT OF CRITICISM about people's actions and opinions about viruses, viral evolution, vaccines, epidemiology, immunology etc. But I don't think they are personal criticisms. They are criticisms based on technical arguments. But the nature of this subject is different, more objective.
Going back to our subject, I think that in general our opinions are totally personal because there is a lot of subjectivity, you are right. Possibly I expressed myself poorly.
My point is that there is a difference between your personal reasons for not liking something and a wannabe more ambitious elaboration of how bad something is (which is still personal).
Saying "I don't like heavy metal because it's heavy" is different from saying "heavy metal is heavy, so it's mediocre". IMO, the last argument is weak.
That's fair; those are different logical arguments, so I follow you.
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Hearing growls for a whole song or album is an assault on the senses. It's just too much. I find it like a lot of the alt rock bands of the 2000's. They had the same tone, full on assault in their guitar and bass tones.
No nuance. I want my signing to have nuance. Your growl for a part of the song where you are mad, angry, in pain then I'd love it. But without context and just full on growls through a full song it unappealing to me.
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Sure, but I can say that melody is important to me and I'm not interested in music that doesn't have a lot of melody or has less melody in certain aspects. Like, I would not want to listen to an album that was all drums, or an album where the drums were the lead instrument and all the other instruments just rhythmically followed the drums with little to no melody. But not liking those albums wouldn't mean I don't like drums. I like drums when they are a complement to other instruments. I don't like them when they play an outsized role to the detriment of other elements, like melody.
For sure, but that's about the balance of different elements in the music as a whole, rather than the vocals themselves. Lots of bands that mostly/entirely use harsh vocals have extremely melodic music going on.
Besides which, lots of bands that use clean vocals have no interesting sense of melody.
But balance is my point. I'm not one of the people who is completely anti-harsh-vocals, but what I don't like is when the whole album or most of the album is harsh vocals, because that quickly gets monotonous and annoying. I like the use of harsh vocals to punctuate certain points in the music, but if it's the whole thing, it loses its ability to punctuate and now it's just amelodic vocals where there very well could be melodic ones (and there is little reason, from my perspective, not to have melodic ones).
To go back again to drums, having a long complicated drum fill is a great way to punctuate certain points in the music, but if you do a long complicated drum fill every 20 seconds, it loses its ability to punctuate and now it's just interrupting the melodic parts to do something amelodic that is no longer really having much effect. It would become monotonous.
This is all my opinion and my preference. But I really do like growls so much more the more selectively they're used, to emphasize certain parts.
As for bands that have clean vocals but no interesting sense of melody, I don't really have any reason to be interested in them.
Again that all makes sense, and again I'd argue it applies just as much to melodic based stuff as well. Non stop guitar shredding is boring. A singer who sings with the same energy and tone for a whole album is boring.
Even with 100% harsh vocals, the good vocalists don't just do the same thing the whole way through.
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Sure, but I can say that melody is important to me and I'm not interested in music that doesn't have a lot of melody or has less melody in certain aspects. Like, I would not want to listen to an album that was all drums, or an album where the drums were the lead instrument and all the other instruments just rhythmically followed the drums with little to no melody. But not liking those albums wouldn't mean I don't like drums. I like drums when they are a complement to other instruments. I don't like them when they play an outsized role to the detriment of other elements, like melody.
For sure, but that's about the balance of different elements in the music as a whole, rather than the vocals themselves. Lots of bands that mostly/entirely use harsh vocals have extremely melodic music going on.
Besides which, lots of bands that use clean vocals have no interesting sense of melody.
But balance is my point. I'm not one of the people who is completely anti-harsh-vocals, but what I don't like is when the whole album or most of the album is harsh vocals, because that quickly gets monotonous and annoying. I like the use of harsh vocals to punctuate certain points in the music, but if it's the whole thing, it loses its ability to punctuate and now it's just amelodic vocals where there very well could be melodic ones (and there is little reason, from my perspective, not to have melodic ones).
To go back again to drums, having a long complicated drum fill is a great way to punctuate certain points in the music, but if you do a long complicated drum fill every 20 seconds, it loses its ability to punctuate and now it's just interrupting the melodic parts to do something amelodic that is no longer really having much effect. It would become monotonous.
This is all my opinion and my preference. But I really do like growls so much more the more selectively they're used, to emphasize certain parts.
As for bands that have clean vocals but no interesting sense of melody, I don't really have any reason to be interested in them.
Again that all makes sense, and again I'd argue it applies just as much to melodic based stuff as well. Non stop guitar shredding is boring. A singer who sings with the same energy and tone for a whole album is boring.
Even with 100% harsh vocals, the good vocalists don't just do the same thing the whole way through.
I'd say there would be some harsh vocalists that have more variety in their vocals then some clean singers.
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Tomi Joutsen from Amorphis is an amazing clean singer, can also do death metal growls, screams and black metal style shrieks.
Check out 'Queen Of Time' for proof of just how good he is.
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- Tatiana Shmayluk. As DoctorAction mentioned, the versatility. Her YT reaction videos are already the stuff of legends. It's how SEAMLESSLY she can enter and exit all the vocal styles she pulls off. The growling is SO contrasted with her incredible cleans, that it definitely takes you aback like no other vocalist, male or female. Also, the rest of the Jinjer band is amazing.
She is amazing. Even though I'm not a fan of her harsh mode I fell in love with her a bit watching that one take vid on YouTube. Incredible talent. That switching is mad.
Matt Heafy says that if you do it right - Harsh vocals should put no more strain on your voice than actually talking.
Yeah, I've heard that before. There's a famous teacher called Melissa Cross (?) that used to teach that technique. Including to Peter Dolving from The Haunted, iirc.
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- Tatiana Shmayluk. As DoctorAction mentioned, the versatility. Her YT reaction videos are already the stuff of legends. It's how SEAMLESSLY she can enter and exit all the vocal styles she pulls off. The growling is SO contrasted with her incredible cleans, that it definitely takes you aback like no other vocalist, male or female. Also, the rest of the Jinjer band is amazing.
She is amazing. Even though I'm not a fan of her harsh mode I fell in love with her a bit watching that one take vid on YouTube. Incredible talent. That switching is mad.
And it's funny; if she sang in "regular" mode, I'd own multiple Jinjer records. Because of the harsh vocals, I own none. Granted, from a skill perspective, she's good at it (and looks fantastic doing it) but it's just not a dynamic I want to hear. I guess I'm just not that angry anymore! (I'm kidding!)
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Yup, I have no use for the Jinjer vocals.
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I'm not sure I understand your point; isn't all criticism personal in nature?
Well, criticism is judging the merits and faults of something (expressed in a simple way). I have a Ph.D in Biology, and in nowadays pandemic times, I HAVE A LOT OF CRITICISM about people's actions and opinions about viruses, viral evolution, vaccines, epidemiology, immunology etc. But I don't think they are personal criticisms. They are criticisms based on technical arguments. But the nature of this subject is different, more objective.
Going back to our subject, I think that in general our opinions are totally personal because there is a lot of subjectivity, you are right. Possibly I expressed myself poorly.
My point is that there is a difference between your personal reasons for not liking something and a wannabe more ambitious elaboration of how bad something is (which is still personal).
Saying "I don't like heavy metal because it's heavy" is different from saying "heavy metal is heavy, so it's mediocre". IMO, the last argument is weak.
That's fair; those are different logical arguments, so I follow you.
:tup :tup
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Yup, I have no use for the Jinjer vocals.
Not a fan either.
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For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
Criticizing growling vocals for lacking a melody is like criticizing heavy metal for being heavy and with distorted guitars or criticizing the prog for being complex and intricate.
uh, no, it's not. It's criticizing a style I don't like and giving a reason why. The rest of your comment is pure, 100% speculation.
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For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
Criticizing growling vocals for lacking a melody is like criticizing heavy metal for being heavy and with distorted guitars or criticizing the prog for being complex and intricate.
uh, no, it's not. It's criticizing a style I don't like and giving a reason why. The rest of your comment is pure, 100% speculation.
Of course, so are those other examples.
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Just saw this thread, thought I'd chime in.
Personally I love them, but it was a love i grew into. A while back I would have nothing to do with them, but gradually certain styles of growl vocals grew on me, I'd say it was Spencer from Periphery that finally pushed me over the edge when I saw him live. Now my current listening has about half growls, with my current favorite singers being Riley McShane from Allegaeon and Mayu from Nemophila. Riley has a good clean style as well, and I wish he would use it more tbh. Mayu has a great blend, and can switch seamlessly from one to the other,just a tremendous talent.
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Just saw this thread, thought I'd chime in.
Personally I love them, but it was a love i grew into. A while back I would have nothing to do with them, but gradually certain styles of growl vocals grew on me, I'd say it was Spencer from Periphery that finally pushed me over the edge when I saw him live. Now my current listening has about half growls, with my current favorite singers being Riley McShane from Allegaeon and Mayu from Nemophila. Riley has a good clean style as well, and I wish he would use it more tbh. Mayu has a great blend, and can switch seamlessly from one to the other,just a tremendous talent.
I agree with you about Riley. But I think Allegaeon is one of the best bands out there. The way they mix Death Metal with Prog Elements is really good.
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Just saw this thread, thought I'd chime in.
Personally I love them, but it was a love i grew into. A while back I would have nothing to do with them, but gradually certain styles of growl vocals grew on me, I'd say it was Spencer from Periphery that finally pushed me over the edge when I saw him live. Now my current listening has about half growls, with my current favorite singers being Riley McShane from Allegaeon and Mayu from Nemophila. Riley has a good clean style as well, and I wish he would use it more tbh. Mayu has a great blend, and can switch seamlessly from one to the other,just a tremendous talent.
Love, love, love Allegaeons covers, espescially the Close to the Edge one but have not taken a stab at their albums yet.
Which one should I start with?
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Just saw this thread, thought I'd chime in.
Personally I love them, but it was a love i grew into. A while back I would have nothing to do with them, but gradually certain styles of growl vocals grew on me, I'd say it was Spencer from Periphery that finally pushed me over the edge when I saw him live. Now my current listening has about half growls, with my current favorite singers being Riley McShane from Allegaeon and Mayu from Nemophila. Riley has a good clean style as well, and I wish he would use it more tbh. Mayu has a great blend, and can switch seamlessly from one to the other,just a tremendous talent.
I agree with you about Riley. But I think Allegaeon is one of the best bands out there. The way they mix Death Metal with Prog Elements is really good.
Absolutely, as you say the mix they do is outstanding, and technically they hold their own as good as anybody. I've had a pretty big music boner for them for a few years now, and it only got bigger when I saw them live (last show before fucking covid :angry: ). Apoptosis would have been my AOTY for that year if it wasn't for my favorite band releasing a beast of a double album to edge it out.
@Martin...give Apoptosis or Proponents for Sentience a shot. (the Yes cover they did was Roundabout, not CTTE btw)
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@Martin...give Apoptosis or Proponents for Sentience a shot. (the Yes cover they did was Roundabout, not CTTE btw)
Will do thanks..... and yes of course it's Roundabout ... total slip of the mind
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I bought Elements of The Infinite when they toured with Summer Slaughter. I mainly went for them.
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I bought Elements of The Infinite when they toured with Summer Slaughter. I mainly went for them.
I went to summer slaughter and missed their set by 10 minutes cause I got held up at work. I was so fucking pissed
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Bought Apoptosis of their Bandcamp just now will give it a listen soon
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I bought Elements of The Infinite when they toured with Summer Slaughter. I mainly went for them.
I went to summer slaughter and missed their set by 10 minutes cause I got held up at work. I was so fucking pissed
They were doing Meet and Greets at their merch booth and I got them to sign the CD. Biomech was a great live song.
I really hope I get to see them again soon.
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I bought Elements of The Infinite when they toured with Summer Slaughter. I mainly went for them.
I went to summer slaughter and missed their set by 10 minutes cause I got held up at work. I was so fucking pissed
They were doing Meet and Greets at their merch booth and I got them to sign the CD. Biomech was a great live song.
I really hope I get to see them again soon.
They cancelled a headlining tour because of covid last April, so I'd imagine they'll hit the road asap.
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For the people who are criticising the "because they lack melody" reason for not liking harsh vocals by saying "that's by design," my response is, yeah, no shit, captain obvious. :\ And it's STILL why I don't like them. I don't like vocals to be devoid of melody, whether intentional or not.
Criticizing growling vocals for lacking a melody is like criticizing heavy metal for being heavy and with distorted guitars or criticizing the prog for being complex and intricate.
uh, no, it's not. It's criticizing a style I don't like and giving a reason why. The rest of your comment is pure, 100% speculation.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were working with empirical evidence that was statistically treated here. :lol
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Whether you agree with it or not, saying, "I don't like death growls because they aren't melodic enough," is a fair and valid criticism.
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Whether you agree with it or not, saying, "I don't like death growls because they aren't melodic enough," is a fair and valid criticism.
For sure, and so are "I don't like metal music because it's heavy" and "I don't like prog because it's complex and intricate", which was the comparison that Dedalus made and that for some reason kirks disagreed with as a comparison.
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Whether you agree with it or not, saying, "I don't like death growls because they aren't melodic enough," is a fair and valid criticism.
For sure, and so are "I don't like metal music because it's heavy" and "I don't like prog because it's complex and intricate", which was the comparison that Dedalus made and that for some reason kirks disagreed with as a comparison.
This.
Most of my family and acquaintances don't like metal because is heavy and don't like prog because it's complex. They are also valid arguments for not liking. In fact it is not that difficult to give an argument to justify that you don't like something.
And I said that in the reply #135.
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There's great and shitty clean and harsh vocals.
When I really enjoy either it's to do with some subtle nuance/melody/timbre/lyric/backing or who knows what but it gets inside and light's up the synapses, clicks all the switches.
I think there's a lot more impossible-to-understand, subjective, personal reaction to vocals than is convenient to a thread like this.
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I said they’re ok, but my real answer is they’re great in the right context and when done well (so not A Nightmare to Remember). Bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet For My Valentine, Trivium, Killswitch Engage, All That Remains, and Opeth especially have always been good at mixing cleans and screams. And obviously outside of metal and punk music they don’t really make sense, although I feel like some pop artists like Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga could make them work as background textures in some of their more bombastic songs.
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(https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fb%2Fb5%2FConverge-JaneDoe.jpg&hash=17b6c3547e4ac6df805e235e892a07f1194976ba)
This album is very acclaimed. I might enjoy this album with different vocal style. I just can't stand that screaming, very annoying to me. I'd rather listen to any metal growls than these vocals.
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone. Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone.Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
I never quite understood why this comes into the argument when there's a dislike for harsh vocals. It's not as easy as some think.
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Growling is really hard actually. I can do it but not for a whole song, I lose my voice at some point.
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Growling is really hard actually. I can do it but not for a whole song, I lose my voice at some point.
It absolutely is. I just don't want it through a whole song. I was it to emphasize a moment of anger, aggression in a song. Sort of like what a guitar pedal does for a guitar.
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Growling well might just be as difficult as singing cleanly well. I'm not a singer though, but I can't come close to doing growls or screams without losing my voice.
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There is a correct way to do Growls that won't damage your voice. It's guttural and comes from the Gut area, making it a low sound, almost like the throat singers. It's how the Hu does their vocals. And how Females can do growls.
Also, it is not easy to go out and constantly do those type of Growls without damaging your vocals. To me, it's why I think Mikael stopped doing Growls all together. As it is not helping his voice, and he has done damage that he doesn't want to do any further, and he also could just want to sing more clean as he is older and doesn't feel angry. Of course he'll still do them live, but even people here say he has lost his growl power, and that could be because of him not feeling angry anymore and doesn't want to mess up his vocals anymore than he has.
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Whether you agree with it or not, saying, "I don't like death growls because they aren't melodic enough," is a fair and valid criticism.
For sure, and so are "I don't like metal music because it's heavy" and "I don't like prog because it's complex and intricate", which was the comparison that Dedalus made and that for some reason kirks disagreed with as a comparison.
I think I mis-read something here.
Both of those are valid reasons for not liking metal music and not liking prog. You guys are right. I was wrong. Sorry about that, Dedalus, I'm not even sure why I replied that way. :facepalm:
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone.Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
I never quite understood why this comes into the argument when there's a dislike for harsh vocals. It's not as easy as some think.
Not as easy as many people think? Yes, I 100% agree with that.
But I think singing melodically and in key with good timbre, timing and resonance is VASTLY more difficult than making cookie monster noises. For one thing you do not have any issues whatsoever with pitch if you're growling. It's impossible to hit a bad note because there aren't any notes - they're all the same. That aspect alone makes melodic singing more difficult.
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Whether you agree with it or not, saying, "I don't like death growls because they aren't melodic enough," is a fair and valid criticism.
For sure, and so are "I don't like metal music because it's heavy" and "I don't like prog because it's complex and intricate", which was the comparison that Dedalus made and that for some reason kirks disagreed with as a comparison.
I think I mis-read something here.
Both of those are valid reasons for not liking metal music and not liking prog. You guys are right. I was wrong. Sorry about that, Dedalus, I'm not even sure why I replied that way. :facepalm:
All good, and I did actually wonder if perhaps you'd misread Ded's post so good to have that cleared up! :tup
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone.Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
I never quite understood why this comes into the argument when there's a dislike for harsh vocals. It's not as easy as some think.
Not as easy as many people think? Yes, I 100% agree with that.
But I think singing melodically and in key with good timbre, timing and resonance is VASTLY more difficult than making cookie monster noises. For one thing you do not have any issues whatsoever with pitch if you're growling. It's impossible to hit a bad note because there aren't any notes - they're all the same. That aspect alone makes melodic singing more difficult.
I think of Growls as more of a Technique.
Like how easy it is to Hammer on and Pull off on guitar, while it is more difficult to Pick Sweep, or Tosin's Slap Guitar. :biggrin:
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Whether you agree with it or not, saying, "I don't like death growls because they aren't melodic enough," is a fair and valid criticism.
For sure, and so are "I don't like metal music because it's heavy" and "I don't like prog because it's complex and intricate", which was the comparison that Dedalus made and that for some reason kirks disagreed with as a comparison.
I think I mis-read something here.
Both of those are valid reasons for not liking metal music and not liking prog. You guys are right. I was wrong. Sorry about that, Dedalus, I'm not even sure why I replied that way. :facepalm:
Don't worry!
I came to think that I had not written correctly (because sometimes I think I write mentally in my language, but using English, and it gets confusing :lol), but as the ariich understood ...
:tup
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I don't mind them when used sparingly, but it has to be sparingly. Otherwise proper singing only. Also it's hard to take a vocal style seriously when it's named after a friggin' Sesame Street character.
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone.Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
I never quite understood why this comes into the argument when there's a dislike for harsh vocals. It's not as easy as some think.
Yeah, can we please stop degrading the things we don't like?
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone.Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
I never quite understood why this comes into the argument when there's a dislike for harsh vocals. It's not as easy as some think.
Yeah, can we please stop degrading the things we don't like?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I've been fighting that battle for years now. I would respectfully say "don't hold your breath"! :) :) It's as if it's genetically impossible for most humans to say "yea, that's of merit, I just don't like it." I'm not speaking of anyone in particular here, just speaking broadly, but people seem to have this need to rationalize their feelings, that if they don't like it it or believe in it, it must be CRAP. I know for me, I rarely have to think about whether I like something or not; it's instinctive or visceral, so I can't really take any intellectual credit for that.
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^that's a really good point. I definitely do not think about whether or not I like a piece of music. The "liking" or "not liking" just...happens.
I want to make sure I'm not bashing growling or harsh vocals. That's not my intent with this thread. I was genuinely interested to see if the age factor is actually a factor and I think it is. I think if we had a poll of people who are 50 or older and a poll of people who are 49 or younger, both with, say 1000 participants in each, I think the older group would skew more heavily to "not liking" because harsh vocals are, relatively speaking, a fairly modern element. I mean, yeah, they've been around for a long time, but I can still remember a time when most, if not all, of the bands using those types of vocals were considered "underground" but I think it's moved much closer to the mainstream in the last, oh, 20 years or so. I mean, I saw Trivium - a group that is easily 50/50 on growls/clean vocals sell out the Comcast Center.
I know it's not easy to do, which is probably one of the reasons I think 90% of the growling vocals I hear when I'm researching new music on Amazon.com sounds somewhere between ridiculous and awful. Once in a great while I hear a band doing it in a way that doesn't make me just hit "next" on the list of bands I'm checking out. So, yeah, I think it's definitely a talent. But the very few and far between nature of finding really good ones kind of supports my theory that there are a large portion of bands out there doing this because they can't find a good vocalist.
I think really great growlers are even more rare than really great vocalists who sing all clean. I've probably checked out 100 bands that use growls and with the exception of about maybe 4 or 5 of them I found the bulk of them to be worthless, and maybe 1/2 of the time the growling ruins what could have been some killer music with melodic vocals.
Someone mentioned Jinjer - that's a perfect example. Amazing music, unlistenable vocals
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There isn't an option for me.
I love them, but I don't wish all bands would use them because I love clean vocals too and obviously I don't want all bands to do the same thing.
This is kinda where I am. They are perfectly fitting for some bands' music, and not others. And some singers do various types of harsh vocals in much more pleasing ways than others. For the spectrum of harsh vocals I like, on one hand, you have bands like Nightwish that is all about clean vocals, with any contrast coming from just aggressive belting from Marco. But then you have the odd song (Yours Is an Empty Hope) where Floor growls out of nowhere, and it is pretty amazing. It works because it is rare, and the part is written well into the song. Or a band like Queensryche, where with Todd LaTorre, they a just sprinkled in here and there, but are not a main feature of the band's music. I like that. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a band like Jinjer, where the switching is part of their sound and their gimmick, and Tatiana growls like nobody's business. I like both of those. I also like bands like Trivium, where they use a pretty wide variety of harsh and clean vocals, from grunts, to growls, to screams.
Again, for me, it just depends on whether or not it fits the music and sounds good to my ears. That said, I can't think of a single band I like that rely on those types of vocals exclusively, and I guess even for those bands that use them a lot that I actively like, that is only a handful of bands (Epica, Trivium, Jinjer, for the most part).
Oh, and 51 years old.
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone. Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
Okay, so how about Tatiana Shmayluk, Matt Heafy, Todd LaTorre, or Devin Townsend, for example? All of those how incredible clean vocals. And they are also recognized as having some incredibly powerful harsh vocals. I don't get this argument. If you don't like it, you don't like it. That's fine. But don't put it down by trying to argue that folks who vocalize that way can't sing. Many can. I would take any of those all day any day over, say, Bob Dylan.
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Just for the record, I'm 50 years old and love growling and any kind of harsh vocals when done right. But I'm sure the majority of my age group are not too keen on them.
But then I think it's not so surprising, the older you get the more your mind is set (generally speaking) and you have a harder time to adopt and adapt to new styles. When rock was young, the kids loved it and their parents saw the devil in disguise. When metal was young, the kids loved it .... and so on and so on.
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^that's a really good point. I definitely do not think about whether or not I like a piece of music. The "liking" or "not liking" just...happens.
I want to make sure I'm not bashing growling or harsh vocals. That's not my intent with this thread. I was genuinely interested to see if the age factor is actually a factor and I think it is. I think if we had a poll of people who are 50 or older and a poll of people who are 49 or younger, both with, say 1000 participants in each, I think the older group would skew more heavily to "not liking" because harsh vocals are, relatively speaking, a fairly modern element. I mean, yeah, they've been around for a long time, but I can still remember a time when most, if not all, of the bands using those types of vocals were considered "underground" but I think it's moved much closer to the mainstream in the last, oh, 20 years or so. I mean, I saw Trivium - a group that is easily 50/50 on growls/clean vocals sell out the Comcast Center.
I know it's not easy to do, which is probably one of the reasons I think 90% of the growling vocals I hear when I'm researching new music on Amazon.com sounds somewhere between ridiculous and awful. Once in a great while I hear a band doing it in a way that doesn't make me just hit "next" on the list of bands I'm checking out. So, yeah, I think it's definitely a talent. But the very few and far between nature of finding really good ones kind of supports my theory that there are a large portion of bands out there doing this because they can't find a good vocalist.
I think really great growlers are even more rare than really great vocalists who sing all clean. I've probably checked out 100 bands that use growls and with the exception of about maybe 4 or 5 of them I found the bulk of them to be worthless, and maybe 1/2 of the time the growling ruins what could have been some killer music with melodic vocals.
Someone mentioned Jinjer - that's a perfect example. Amazing music, unlistenable vocals
Now it's your turn to make a good point: I think there are far more bands out there with fantastic music and subpar vocals, growls or not, than the other way around. I rarely "don't like" a band because the guitar player isn't Yngwie or Eddie, but there are a ton of bands that I WOULD like if the singer wasn't the singer. Hell, there are bands I like only parts of, because of the singer. Michael Schenker; he's a top three guitar player for me, yet I don't own ANY MSG that doesn't have Gary Barden or Graham Bonnet or Doogie White on there in some capacity. I have no real use for Robin McCauley or Michael Voss. Yngwie is another one; I have all his albums with Jeff Soto and Joe Lynn Turner, and all his instrumental albums, but not interested in the 40 others with singers I don't like.
I think it's far harder to find a world class singer than it is any other instrument, and as such, bands have to sometimes be more... not creative, but maybe tolerant, when it comes to vocals.
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I don't think that's surprising. The vocals are usually the centerpiece, and what people notice first. There is a reason the vocalist in the band is usually the frontperson. And even where a singer is very talented, in general, people who don't like the band don't like it because they don't like the particular timbre or style of the singer a lot more often than, say, because of the guitar tone.
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And while every decent guitar player has his own style, it's much easier to change the sound of your guitar, than to change the sound of your voice.
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I'm 36 and not a fan of growls. i don't know where that puts me but that's my age, lol Really HATED them in my 20's. i have softened a bit.
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^that's a really good point. I definitely do not think about whether or not I like a piece of music. The "liking" or "not liking" just...happens.
I want to make sure I'm not bashing growling or harsh vocals. That's not my intent with this thread. I was genuinely interested to see if the age factor is actually a factor and I think it is. I think if we had a poll of people who are 50 or older and a poll of people who are 49 or younger, both with, say 1000 participants in each, I think the older group would skew more heavily to "not liking" because harsh vocals are, relatively speaking, a fairly modern element. I mean, yeah, they've been around for a long time, but I can still remember a time when most, if not all, of the bands using those types of vocals were considered "underground" but I think it's moved much closer to the mainstream in the last, oh, 20 years or so. I mean, I saw Trivium - a group that is easily 50/50 on growls/clean vocals sell out the Comcast Center.
I know it's not easy to do, which is probably one of the reasons I think 90% of the growling vocals I hear when I'm researching new music on Amazon.com sounds somewhere between ridiculous and awful. Once in a great while I hear a band doing it in a way that doesn't make me just hit "next" on the list of bands I'm checking out. So, yeah, I think it's definitely a talent. But the very few and far between nature of finding really good ones kind of supports my theory that there are a large portion of bands out there doing this because they can't find a good vocalist.
I think really great growlers are even more rare than really great vocalists who sing all clean. I've probably checked out 100 bands that use growls and with the exception of about maybe 4 or 5 of them I found the bulk of them to be worthless, and maybe 1/2 of the time the growling ruins what could have been some killer music with melodic vocals.
Someone mentioned Jinjer - that's a perfect example. Amazing music, unlistenable vocals
Now it's your turn to make a good point: I think there are far more bands out there with fantastic music and subpar vocals, growls or not, than the other way around. I rarely "don't like" a band because the guitar player isn't Yngwie or Eddie, but there are a ton of bands that I WOULD like if the singer wasn't the singer. Hell, there are bands I like only parts of, because of the singer. Michael Schenker; he's a top three guitar player for me, yet I don't own ANY MSG that doesn't have Gary Barden or Graham Bonnet or Doogie White on there in some capacity. I have no real use for Robin McCauley or Michael Voss. Yngwie is another one; I have all his albums with Jeff Soto and Joe Lynn Turner, and all his instrumental albums, but not interested in the 40 others with singers I don't like.
I think it's far harder to find a world class singer than it is any other instrument, and as such, bands have to sometimes be more... not creative, but maybe tolerant, when it comes to vocals.
The thing with singinging I think is that the physical piece has to be much rarer than the ability to learn, say, how to play a pentatonic-based guitar solo. Given enough time and commitment to practicing I think I could probably teach ANY sufficiently motivated student to play a decent-sounding blues solo within 6 to 9 months give or take a month or two.
Compare that to singing. No matter how many vocal lessons I take and no matter how much I practice my beatheing and vowel enunciation exercises and no matter how many scales I sing and how many songs I rehearse, the physical limitations of my particular vocal chords, throat, mouth, etc. are never going to change and I am always going to sound nasal and pitchy as fuck because I just do not have the physical attributes that produce a pleasant sounding singing voice. No amount of practice will prevent my vocals from sounding mediocre at the very best.
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You might be right on the age thing. I'm an OG and I cannot stand the growling crap. Screams, shrieks, forceful and powerful vocals?- all day. Growls? -instant turn off. Show me you can actually sing, not growl into the microphone. Especially when the rest of the band is very talented, and the music and writing are strong.
Okay, so how about Tatiana Shmayluk, Matt Heafy, Todd LaTorre, or Devin Townsend, for example? All of those how incredible clean vocals. And they are also recognized as having some incredibly powerful harsh vocals. I don't get this argument. If you don't like it, you don't like it. That's fine. But don't put it down by trying to argue that folks who vocalize that way can't sing. Many can. I would take any of those all day any day over, say, Bob Dylan.
Indeed. Plus Bjorn Strid, Christian Alvestam, Dan Swano, Mikael Arkefeldt, Jari Maenpaa. Heaps that do both amazingly well. In fact all these guys would be more versatile than a lot of guys who only sing clean.