Metal Reviews

I'd say push past the growing sense of pain, because the damage you cause only deepens your growl. Like I said, I'd go to a concert with 6-7 bands, knowing 90% of the lyrics all around, and grunting along hurts after 4 hours, but hey...

Well, I can't tell you to do that. Your throat isn't meant to hurt while growling, mine wasn't hurting when I first started when I didn't even smoke. You may end up losing your voice if that hurting is actually doing damage to your voice chords.

Some people have said I sound like Layne Staley. I guess my natural singing style is like that, but I think I have more of a Jon Oliva style. I can singing like Matt Barlow does on, say, "Melancholy (Holy Martyr)," but when I have to put power behind it I get very harsh, like Jon Oliva does. There seems to be no real middle-ground with me. It's either soft or heavy. Haha.

I'm a "peter" singer :
25% Gabriel
25% Hammill
25% Steele
25% Tatgren

I wish I was a Mike (Patton) :?

"Peter" is another word for "dick," so I agree. 100% peter.

Hey, I'm not in a band or anything. Only reason I want to growl is whilst listening to grind or whatever, not worth fucking myself up over.

Edit:


There's one of what you wanted.

I play guitar.... though its kinda low in my priority list this year, slowly but surely i'll get to it !

My influences/inspiration mainly comes from sloppy first wave black metal/thrash metal. Nowadays i'd just prefer to do things myself, unless i find people who are in the same stuff as i am..

Venom, Bathory, Sabbat, demo/EP Sodom, Possessed, Vulcano, Sarcofago etc etc

Oki, I just copy paste this from my site:

My main vocal influences are: Timo Kotipelto, Alexi Laiho and John Connelly (Nuclear Assault).

Musical influences (as in guitar): Iced Earth, Overkill, Exodus, Annihilator, Stratovarius, Helloween, Children Of Bodom, Judas Priest, Imagika, Megadeth, In Flames, Soilwork, At The Gates, Norther, Cryhavoc, Rebellion, Paragon, The Great Kat, Slayer.

I have a couple of "band thingies" so that's why the diverse influences
Bands are metal, thrash, power and death metal...

Worked for me, worked for my bro, too.

And I still have my normal voice. I never changed a thing... I just had fun at concerts, had a sore throat once in a while, then got a deeper, more raspy growl. Maybe it was all practice, and I learned to go deep while conservatively keeping the pain at a minimum in the latter hours of the concerts... I dunno. Still, grinding away at it somehow worked.

how do you guys try to practise improvising?

I play keyboard so I usually set up a simple jam with myself (oh my!) and just repeat the same chords until I'm comfortable and then try to solo over them while keeping them steady. that's sort of a pain and it's gradual, but I'd hate to progress just by playing over other people's songs.. I suppose I really need a band.

Keyboards are not D00m. :evil:

they're pretty prog though 8)

and then, with a little imagination & skill keyboards can be part of pretty much every music style... 8)

yep, haha. I was resisting the temptation to post something about Tarantula Hawk because at this point I'm actively refraining from making every thread about doom metal

and I think An Albatross prove the "keyboards fit anywhere" rule

but I do play progressive sounding stuff, mostly lengthy pieces with a lot of minors thanks to my musical preferences.. I've started throwing in some simple jazz chords and progressions but at this point it makes my compositions sound more like music for japanese roleplaying games than anything particularly mature.

I guess I could invent symphonic math-prog-doom but I get the feeling I'd be playing it just because I could and not necessarily because I liked it..

then I'd be happy to be your singer... symphonic math-prog-doom sounds like fun to me....

I have my own über kvlt one man (+technical advisor) band (The Tree Of Wisdom Grows From Frozen Ground - pretentious... perhaps ). I have only made two tracks so far. They both have this big wall of distortion (sort of Velvet Cacoon meets Forest (rus)) that covers (what I like to believe is) subtle melodies of great beauty. It was my intention to have vocals and I've penned the lyrics and everything but my growls come off to brutal and spoils the 'noisy tranquility' I'm trying to create. Therefore it might turn out to be instrumental... Both tracks are still on the working table and are frankly shit at the moment..

I've never experienced the above mentioned problems with growling, but I have a very deep and raspy voice in general so that might be the reason.. Sometimes I get a little sore but it is nothing a cup of coffee can't fix..