My frustrations with Growls, Screams, and other Harsh Vocals

[Perpetual Change]

K gaiz, here goes...

Over the last couple of years, I've been getting into a lot of newer bands. Typically, these bands heavily use growls and screams and other types of harsh vocals. I don't really like these vocals, but usually if the music I'm hearing is good enough I'll endure them. But I'm noticing it's actually getting harder for me to put up with this kind of stuff now. I don't know why. Maybe it's because more and more new bands seem to using harsh vocals. I almost feel like I can't find ANY interesting proggy metal-oriented music that doesn't make use of harsh vocals.

This year, for example, was dominated MUSICALLY for me by bands like TerresacT, Periphery, James LaBrie's solo record, and, more recently, also bands like Alcest. Each of these bands, though, seems to have felt the need to scream and holler over music that really could have been just as good without those elements.

I remember when I first heard Opeth and Devin Townsend years back (the first bands I liked with harsh vocals) I thought, "well, I don't like when they yell, but it's pretty good." But that was when there was also a lot of interesting music being put out by prog-metal bands that DIDN'T scream. Now, it feels like harsh vocals are becoming a pretty defining characteristic of any interesting music that comes out, and I'm just not sure if I can make the jump into listening to stuff like that all the time.

The icing on the cake occurred earlier today, when a friend was showing me a song from The Ocean's new album. I was listening along, thing to myself that it sounded good, and then about 6 minutes into the song all I hear is RAAAAAAAWR. I just kinda shook my head and asked myself why they had to do that.

I love me some proggy metal, but I don't know if I can get used to harsh vocals being something "everybody" does, rather than just "some" artists. Kinda sucks, though. It seems more and more like I have to choose between interesting new stuff with vocals I'm not crazy about or standard metal fare I've heard by a hundred bands already with vocals that are pretty tolerable.

Damn. It's too early for me to become a fogey  

[LudwigVan]

Lately, there does seem to be an element of "lets throw some harsh vox in the mix, just so that we can sound like modern metal".   i.e.  Injecting harsh vox purely for the sake of trying to hook the attention of a younger/hipper metal fan   

[j]

I listen to a LOT of bands that use harsh vocals, but I still don't really care for them most of the time.  The growls that are done well are so few and far between, and the rest of 'em come across as lame and "trying-too-hard", rather than adding anything of substance to the music.  Even in bands whose harsh vocals I like, the vocals are almost never one of my favorite things about the music.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: when I really step back and think about it, the whole idea seems really juvenile.  And it's made even more-so by the way every fucking metal band is doing it nowadays.

Of course, if you disparage growls on a metal forum, you can expect lots of "man up and learn to like them" and "you're so closed-minded", etc from people who are really into them.

-J

[Fluffy Lothario]

I made a post like this in the Controversial Opinions thread a while back.

In the last ten years, metal has become almost completely dominated by death growls, screamo yelling and black metal being-raped-by-a-hippo vocals. For whatever reason, from all I can gather every time I care to check out metal bands people are talking about, the genre's largely been swallowed up its own inaccessible ass since then. There's almost no middle ground between hard rock and extreme forms of metal anymore (and by 'extreme forms', I mean anything where, the majority of the time, they're not trying to sing in any sense of the word), and to top it off, there's not exactly a hell of a lot in the way of decent hard rock anymore either.

If you don't like those vocal styles, I suggest forgetting about metal and moving on. If it keeps going the way it has, the genre's hardly gonna have a decent artist (decent for those of us who don't like harsh vocals) that isn't vintage in ten years time.

[Perpetual Change]

My problem though, fluffy, is that I LOVE the music that's coming from these bands. I listen to stuff other than metal, but what's gonna fill that niche for me if I just ignore everything new that comes out?

[Ħ]

I'm not exactly in love with them, but I appreciate them just like any other instrument.  It adds a whole new color that makes the painting a whole lot more unique.  Like JLB says, there's a reason it's there.

[Sigz]

It is getting ridiculously common, but I can't say it really bothers me that much. In most of the music I listen to I don't pay too much attention to vocals, growled or otherwise. They don't bother me, and in the best instances I love them, so it's all good.

[RuRoRul]

I feel pretty much like this too. In fact the harsh vocals that I can tolerate are usually the ones most people insult like "nu-metal" type ones or the "metalcore" style of having a few screams with mostly clean singing. I find it really difficult to get into bands that use death growls at all, to me they just sound comical and not something I really want to be listening to at all. There always comes a point when I just think "Why am I listening to this when I'm literally just enduring some of the vocals to hear the music? The music isn't that good." Same with bands that always use harsh vocals, whether it's growls, melodeath screams or even thrash metal shouts. If they are the only type of vocals in it, I won't be listening to that band.

I understand some people like harsh vocals, and on paper it does sound like it can add to the song ("Growling is dark bits, clean vocals is lighter bits") but I just don't get any listening pleasure from hearing someone trying to growl, so it doesn't matter why they're doing it or if they think it's artistic. And while I wouldn't usually feel the need to complain about a part of music I don't like, since there is plenty of it, it's just annoying that harsh vocals seem to be ruining music which *could* be good, and by something not very intergral to the actual music.

[Bombardana]

One of my main complaints with -core music is throwing in bad harsh vocals over the top of clean singing. It really doesn't work for me.

[Fluffy Lothario]

My problem though, fluffy, is that I LOVE the music that's coming from these bands. I listen to stuff other than metal, but what's gonna fill that niche for me if I just ignore everything new that comes out?

I guess I had more luck in the sense that I lost interest in the music most metal bands were making at about the same time I lost interest in the vocals they were using.

I don't listen to metal all that often nowadays anyway. If I do want my fix, I just turn to the surviving bands I am still interested in, or listen to older stuff. I have a small list of modern metal bands I do mean to check out at some point, but I'm still yet to go through a phase where my interest in the genre picks up again and I give those bands the time of day.

[TAC]

My problem though, fluffy, is that I LOVE the music that's coming from these bands.

Perp, I agree 100%. I love Darkest Hour, and have tried to endure the vocals, but I just can't.

I liken growls to onions. Totally kills whatever I'm eating.

[Cool Chris]

I'm not exactly in love with them, but I appreciate them just like any other instrument.  It adds a whole new color that makes the painting a whole lot more unique.

That's how I view all my vocals, less as lyrics and more as an additional instrument. The problem I have is that the 'instrument' of harsh vocals sucks, and often totally sounds out of place with the other instruments. Like if a band threw in a bassoon, or a xylaphone in with guitar/bass/drums/keys. That instrument would more than likely clash with the other instruments, and totally drag down the overall sound.

There are exceptions, CJS' Jeckyl or Hyde, for example, the harsh vocals are layered nicely with James' vocals. And the overall sound benefits from it.

[ehra]

Growls are fast becoming similar to double bass, if you're teh metulz then you're going to have both anymore. The good bands that know how to show restraint when putting together a coherent sounding song will know how to use it to its best effect, the rest will throw it around willynilly.

[Durg]

Opeth is pretty much the only metal band so far that I've been able to tolerate the growls.  I think because, for the most part, the "evil" sound matches the lyrics.  A sort of demonic vs angelic dialogue musically.  But the songs that are all growls, I can't get through.  I just absolutely love the music in "Bleak" and I've listened to it so many times that the growls don't bother me at all.  In fact, I get it.  I can totally get wrapped up in the emotion of the music.

However, the metalcore/screamo stuff that is just constant high pitched screaming just plain sucks, in my opinion.

[jsem]

I used to hate harsh vocals, but I've learned to endure it and sometimes like it. But growls a la Napalm Death are terrible, or death growls overused - like all growls in a song. Perfect is a band like Ensiferum - they're absolutely epic

[ZBomber]

The only band I love with harsh vocals is Meshuggah. I still am having trouble getting into Opeth because of the vocals, even though its been like 2 years now.

[RobD]

To be perfectly honest, this is how I feel about the vast amount of 80's metal vocals - they all seem to be competing to reach the highest notes and it bugs me tremendously in a large number of bands. But similarly when it's done right it's fantastic. Both are a trend/of the time, but it doesn't mean that it can't be good and enjoyable, and more importantly, relevant to the music.

[King Postwhore]

My problem though, fluffy, is that I LOVE the music that's coming from these bands.

Perp, I agree 100%. I love Darkest Hour, and have tried to endure the vocals, but I just can't.

I liken growls to onions. Totally kills whatever I'm eating.

It's the era we grew in. I agree with you.

To be perfectly honest, this is how I feel about the vast amount of 80's metal vocals - they all seem to be competing to reach the highest notes and it bugs me tremendously in a large number of bands. But similarly when it's done right it's fantastic. Both are a trend/of the time, but it doesn't mean that it can't be good and enjoyable, and more importantly, relevant to the music.

I always thought that too.  Buy the end of the 80's there were so many high end singers that the grunge era grew from that.  I'd bet this will happen to growls at some point.

[Zantera]

I find this trend pretty fascinating.
After discovering Opeth and a lot of other bands utilizing harsher vocals, i tolerate that type of vocals, and find myself even enjoying it if done well. (combined with good music)
However, i do find it funny how almost every new band has harsh vocals, it's like clean vocals just doesn't do it anymore.

[Gorille85]

Most of the times, I love harh vocals. And I much prefer them when it's a female that's doing it! (Alyssa White-Gluz, Leïlindel, Dominique Persi, etc.)

[skydivingninja]

Vocals are a pretty important part of rock music for me, and one of the reasons I spurned growls to begin with is because I was jacking off over JLB, Roger Daltrey, and David Gilmour.  Now I've gotten into harsher vocals a lot since I discovered Opeth, but even now, if the vocals really really suck, I probably won't care about the music, even if it is good.  The thing about them, while they're very common nowadays, is that in 90% of cases where they're used, actual singing wouldn't sound right.  Take "One More Time" off Static Impulse.  Even using his raspier Awake-voice, James would not have fit in on that frantic heavy riff where Peter is growling.  Mikael Akerfeldt's clean voice wouldn't fit in the ending of "Blackwater Park."  Growls are great if they sound good (for example, I hate Meshuggah's vocals and screamo-style vocals) and if they fit the music.  So if bands want to use harsh/screams/growls, let 'em.  If it sucks I just won't listen to them.

[Rina]

I'm cool with the "harsh vocals" so it doesn't bother me, but it does seem like you can't find many that don't have vocals like that.

[ariich]

I still keep discovering newer bands with minimal/no use of harsh vocals, so this doesn't bother me at all.

[Rina]

I still keep discovering newer bands with minimal/no use of harsh vocals, so this doesn't bother me at all.

Recommendations please! I'd like some new stuff to check out!

[pain of occupation]

K gaiz, here goes...

i cant tell if he's referring to the community as guys, gays, or maybe both (?) 

[Rina]

K gaiz, here goes...

i cant tell if he's referring to the community as guys, gays, or maybe both (?) 

[bosk1]

Damn. It's too early for me to become a fogey 

Don't worry.  You're fogeylicious.   

[Lowdz]

I can't stand them usually, can't get into Opeth and BTBAM etc because of the "vocals". It seems the easy option rather than come up with a melody, rather like rap to me.
When MP said the reason he did the growls on ANTR was because James' voice didn't suit the lines I had to think "then write something that does!". It's not like the growls fit the lyrics there... Everyone survived... not Everyone was wiped out and I want revenge RRRRRROOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRR

[King Postwhore]

Damn. It's too early for me to become a fogey 

Don't worry.  You're fogeylicious.   

New to the E! lineup!!

[YtseBitsySpider]

hmmm rather than onions, I like the harsh vocals to tobasco...they sting for a bit, but its not that bad and then the clean vocals come back in. It's the bands the use both that Im into big time right now. Soilwork, Five Finger Death Punch, Killswitch Engage, All That Remains and others...Solution .45 and that guy's previous band who's name strangely escapes me now.

[Sigz]

Scar Symmetry^^

[Fuzzboy]

STRAPPING YOUNG LAD

[Zook]

TAC's onion analogy is exactly how I feel.

[lithium112]

I've actually grown to like quite a few bands with harsh vocals, but I definitely get what a lot of you are saying. I used to HATE harsh vocals to the point where I literally couldn't stand to listen to music with them. Somehow, though, I managed to get myself into Opeth. To be fair, I thought (and still think) that Mikael Akerfeldt's harsh vocals are the best in the industry. But even after that, it took me like a year and a half to get into BTBAM. But my acceptance of them took off from there.

An important thing I realized, though, is that there are SO many different types of growls. BTBAM uses a whole bunch of different ones, especially on Alaska and they're quite different to Opeth's harsh vocals, which are different to the vocals from bands like Killswitch and stuff. To this day I still hate some types though like the really Death Metal ones (think Annotations of an Autopsy) or pig squeals.

Basically what I've learned about harsh vocals is that I enjoy their use when they are also mixed with clean vocals. I find the two styles can contrast and compliment each other and are interesting to listen to in the context of the same song.

This advice might sound kind of cliche, but try really giving the music a chance and keeping an open mind. Try and appreciate, if anything, the texture that harsh vocals add to the mix. It's an acquired taste, like beer or something, where once you force yourself to experience it enough, you'll start to enjoy it and it will open up a lot more musical options. At least this was my experience.

[sneakyblueberry]

I recently had a similar experience as PC with the stuff from Intronaut.  The music was killer, but as soon as those growls came in it was hard for me to appreciate the music underneath.

I really like growls at times (I do like a faux death metal growl now and then for fun and my wife hates it because she thinks I sound like a demon ). I listen to stuff like Opeth, Protest the Hero, Gatherer, BTBAM and whatnot.  When I first heard these bands, growls were quite new to me and I found it all rather refreshing from the usual.  It is getting a bit stale now, I must agree.