screaming/gutteral vocals
 

What makes this music?
Personally I hate this type, I turn the radio to a different station as soon as I hear it.
But some people are REALLY into this.

What do you like about it? (no disrespect intended!)

guttural?

such as necrophagists vocals, I think.

....
radio = bad

That was a bad example. There are plenty of Death Metal bands that do it.
Really low vocals, with sounds like grunting and stuff.Sounds like an animal or something

The agression, intensity I guess. I dispised it at first but it eventually grew on me. I see it as normal as any other way of singing. Most people think that it is rediculous and that Death Metal bands have no skill.

Random Person- "I could just bang a trash can and scream at the top of my lungs and it would be as good as (whatever death metal band we were talking about)".

Not true, it takes much skill and talent to do gutteral vocals and not sound like and idiot. I use to say said line all the time before I saw a metal show for the first time (Nile, Hypocrisy, Decapitated, ect), now I kick myself for saying it.Try it yourself. Record yourself singing death metal, then compare it to and actual artist. You will be able to tell the difference.
/rant

I don't like low screams. They bother me. High screams are good though.

I don't mind some screams, but I'm fairly particular about them. I'm not a fan of low frequency waste-disposal vocals.

The biggest thing I dislike about them is if it's the way all of the songs are sung, which is where my dislike for Black/Death metal comes in, it's a preferances thing. I'd prefer 90% clean (includes "rough" vocals as well) vocals with a few screams.

But for sure. screams aren't all bad, they certainly can add some energy to a song. I mean I fuckin love Nick's screaming on QOTSA's "I feel like a millionaire..." song, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I love both styles. You can't appreciate it until you try to do it. I'd explain further but odds are unless you do alot of drugs, my logic will not make sense

Screaming is just a more powerful (in my opinion) way of expressing what you are singing about. Although, it's really just a matter of what you want your music to sound like. You either like it or you don't.

drugs are what turned me off to most screaming bands.

I love good screaming/growling - a vocalist who is willing to scream/growl, and experiment (ala Mike Patton) is far more interesting and diverse than a straight clean vocalist.

Growling and screaming have many facets. E.g.

* Insightful growling (some Opeth)
* Beautifully intense growling (death metal).
* Sad/depressing/doomy/sorrowful (doom metal)
* More grunty growling which serves atmosphere (Isis).
* Thin sounding growling which gives an evil sound (Agalloch)
* Growling full of pure rage (Devin Townsend/SYL)
* Narrative growling which tends to be more articulate (folk metal)

Then you get vocalists who add more dimensions. Screaming and clean vocals can also be divided as above. Then you have vocalists like Devin Townsend, Garm, Daniel Gildenlow and Mike Patton who are full of versatility. Wormphlegm uses 2 vocalists to achieve some incredibly skilled/depraved/sickening vocals which help to paint the picture of a torture chamber (intentionally).

Clean vocals are not the be all and end all of music - they're just a tool which a vocalist can use. However, it is bad when you get a vocalist who can't growl with any tone, and only growls. Demilich's vocals get quite repetitive.

What you have to remember is that practically everyone was born to hate these kinds of vocals. Many grow to like them. I was indifferent towards them at first, but Opeth got me into growling ages ago, simply because Akerfeldt is a fairly diverse, articulate and good growler (and good at clean vocals too). Deep Purple and Judas Priest got me into screaming. I suppose black/folk metal has taken my interest in screaming further.

I can tolerate it sometimes, if its done tastefully in my opinion. I really have to be in the mood to hear it though. I don't mind it as much when screaming gets traded off with regular singing

i much prefer guttural vocals to shrieked vocals. it's cool when bands do both though, like suicide silence and dead to fall (hey, not that guttural, but still).

in death metal there are two kinds of growls much more guttural which is for more death/grind stuff such as Suffocation then their is stuff that is more throaty and fluid which is like old Amorphis and Bolt Thrower

in black metal it's generally more raspy and tend to use high-pitched screams

personally i enjoy all kinds as long as it suits the music

Black Metal Screech/Growls are better than Death Growls.

I also like Alexi Laiho's vocals (Children of Bodom). But I don't know what genre to class the band in. They have the elements of Power Metal, Death Metal and Black Metal.

Vocals in this kind of music are used as an instrument.

compare to guitar for example.. theres only so much use you can make out of clean guitars. Distortion (like growls), or feedback (like screams) can add dynamics and variation to the music to portray a wider variety of emotions.

They take alot of getting used to... i have been listening to harsh vocals for 4 or 5 years and they now make up about 50% of what i listen to (with 15% clean and 35% none at all) obviously there are good and bad harsh vocalists just as there are good and bad singers, but when its done well it takes just as much, if not more talent.

some of my favourites..

Alan Dubin (Khanate). Unearthly terrifying screams which turn every sentence into a tortured death scream.... perfect contrast to the bleak droning soundscapes of the music. Listen to: Skin Coat

Jacob Bannon (Converge). one of the most beautiful screams in hardcore... he stretches his voice to almost breaking point (Listen to: Tremour) to compliment the crushing riffs.

Drew & Kathy (Circle Takes The Square) Male and female dual screamed vocals.. the technical imperfections and cracking voices here are what makes the perfectly pure emotional screams.

with low, gutteral vocals i find it harder to distinguish good vocalists... but i am very fond on Aaron Turner of Isis, and Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till of Neurosis... who have a more metalcore style (rather than death metal)

Music is a form of expressing ones self through sound, if you want to express how you feel by screaming like a ninnie down a mic then i suppose it's still music, plus you can always just listen to the rest of the music behind the vocals.
personally i'm usually too hungover to deal with overpowering screaming vocals.

Bring Me the Horizon, a band i find particularly terrible. "BURPING" down a mic is not music. Its noise. And not even inventive noise. Just noise.

Screaming to me is fine in moderation.

Scream all the time & I think it gets boring & lessens the effect,I couldn`t listen to an album where it`s like that in every song.

I think if you scream less , when you do scream it sounds much more intense & powerful.

Bring Me The Horizon are an example of BAD screaming.

screaming all the way through is just like singing all the way through... theres variations within the vocal style.

of course there are bands that utilise screaming well. but i generally cant stand it in a grindcore, metalcore etc etc context

I really don't like those bands that just 'growl' the whole time. I like screaming sometimes, like Donita Sparks style. But I heard that band Kitty, really did not like that.

I call them Extreme Power Metal, like Dragonforce. I like is vocals a lot too. The are definitely unique and it works well with their style.

Thanks for the info. The most screaming I can handle is "cowboys of hell" by pantera.

totally true.. i guess it all comes down to what kind of ears you have as well.. some people have got the ear for listening to this kinda stuff AND being able to define who is better at harsh vocals than not...

i love both styles, especially when they are overlaid, or 2 vocals do one of each at the same time..

example - glen benton on 'legion' by deicide, the high and low mix sounds incredible on there.

You can't really say it much better than he did.

Opeth also got me into Death Grunting and Mikael is probably one of my favorite grunters.

Morbid Angel IMO are one the greatest bands in this genre. Esp, with Vincent.

I don't like grunts, and I don't like black metal vocals. I like the stuff in between. Underoath has some good screaming, though they're not death metal, or screamo.

I tried gutteral vocals once, i completely f***ed up my vocal chords and could hardly talk for a week. Dunno how those guys do it every night. It sounds ludicrous though most of the time. The only growling i can listen to is Phil Anselmo/Max Cavelera type.