^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