Metal Reviews

Falsetto kicks ass. Attempting to make guttural noises when your voice is by nature incapable of doing so and making up for it by acting tough-as if you can make the noises you are failing to produce-is gay.

No voice is naturally gutural except if you had throat cancer.
That was pretty stupid of you Petey...

Never said it was.

It's a terrible thing, throat cancer. Terrible, terrible thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTL99FzOGw4

That's extreme music

I should have been more clear but I wasn't talking about vocals in that part of my post. That portion of my post was in response to TheVoice and I was mainly talking about the trend in clean female vocalists discussing "women in metal" (regardless of their position within the band) in interviews without having a clue about the history beyond women as clean vocalists (or in Arch Enemy's case trying to seem "groundbreaking" by using an "extreme" (if Angela can even be called that) female vocalist when its been done many times in the past and with greater effectiveness), and talking about "feminizing" a genre so that women "fit in more" when, again, when musicians like Rachel Kloosterwaard and Jo Bench and many others managed to "fit in" just fine. It was more of a criticism of that "take" on women in metal bands than on the vocalist issue.



Can't speak for others but I'm not "breaking a leg" here. I'm pretty sure Rachel is one of the primary examples that jumps to most people's heads when this argmuent pops up, as it should be. The woman sounds more demonic than many male growlers out there (this comment isn't an attempt at a "battle of the sexes" here, just pointing out that she has done her job more than well in every band she's been in, and I'm sure anyone who has seen her live has been blown away by her ability) so why should she be lumped in with the 10 thousand incompetent Angela-wannabes out there. As for Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult (black rather death metal example), that always pops out to me because I didn't know their vocalist was female for a long time until I first noticed her real name being used. While I, too, can "see" Metalhead_Bastard's point (and in many cases I agree with that point), to me its equally idiotic to pass off more than competent female vocalists just because they happen to be female. I'd love Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult as well as all of Rachel's work regardless of their gender, because honestly their sex does not even come into play in how the vocals sonud. Rachel by no means sounds like a female "trying to sound male" but sounds exactly as any vocalist of a brutal death metal band should.

The point here is, while most females can't seem to pull off harsh vocals properly, there are some that can and condemning them once you find out the person behind the voice is female is fucking retarded.

As for the "size"/"macho" aspect, first of all bahahahahahaha. Second of all with all the scrawny bastards in the metal scene I find it hilarious that some people wouldn't "judge" a scrawny guy like Joe Wolfe from Heinous Killings just cause "zomg predator vocals" and yet would bring up "but she is teh scrawny and small" argument over a female who growls fucking well. Are we being serious now? This whole argument just seems so black and white its funny and also implies a "static" state of being across the board. How's about we judge the music or perhaps next we'll be shaking our pitchforks and asking "wuts dat kneegrow doin in Blasphemy!"

Arkona have a pretty damn awesome female vocalist too, by the by. Awesome not because she sounds like a man, but because she fits the music wonderfully.

That never came up at all, you fabricated that yourself, probably because the argument was linked to masculinity, which in turn could be associated with 'size' or 'machoness'. Obviously some male vocalists can seem ridiculous attempting to make demonic sounds when they're scrawny or whatever, but thats a differant argument completely.

Surely you can see how such statements can be interpreted as a "size/macho" issue?

To be honest some percentage of what I said was to rile people up.

That's cool then, as long as I am no longer being accused of fabrications:P

The accusation stands, whether or not you proved me wrong, I can't really afford to be seen backing down now. Unlucky, it's too late.

Erm...I pointed out where you made reference to the ridiculousness of female extreme vocalists due to "size" issues, so how the hell am I making up that you wrote what you actually did write? Am I missing something here...?

That was, in my country at least, a joke.

In my country it was a momentary blip of confusion on the raidar...forgive us, we are occasionally slow on the uptake.

Way to set us back another 20 years.

To be fair, I think 80% of "growlers" "grunters" and whatnot are pretty fucking annoying, male or female.
I can tolerate them if the music is good enough or if they are way back in the mix or even masked by massive reverb, but truth be told, it's so cliche that it is a bore.

"I moved here from Canada, and they think I'm slow, eh?"

+1

It's the number 1 reason I can't get into more death metal. Only the real standouts and classics are worth a purchase for me, and even then, it's usually *despite* the growling.

Same here. But I like "natural" screamers quite a bit though it fits best in the punk/hardcore category.