death metal albums with fry vocals only

[z3r0]

do albums like this exist? i'm really into death metal drums and riffs but i can't get into these low death metal growls you hear in most death metal albums.

the vocals in death metal influenced albums i enjoy:

arkangel - dead man walking

acid bath - peagan terrorism tactics / when the kite string pops

converge - petitioning the empty sky

pantera - the great southern trendkill

shadows fall - somber eyes to the sky

only oldschool bands recommendations please.

[MacabreEternal]

48 minutes ago, z3r0 said:

the vocals in death metal influenced albums i enjoy:

pantera - the great southern trendkill

 

Huh?

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, z3r0 said:

I can't get into these low death metal growls you hear in most death metal albums.

Try harder.

[z3r0]

37 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Try harder.

i won't force myself to do anything. unless you recommend something with listenable vocals and not something which sounds like clogged sink:))

1 hour ago, MacabreEternal said:

Huh?

it was influenced by death metal. you can't deny it

[Nasty_Cabbage]

Oookay. I'm going to be taking those examples aside since you did say death metal influenced and your examples are... well lets just say questionable at best, and try to recommend albums without lower end gurgles and grunts, which actually should be pretty easy. There's tons of actual death metal out there that utilizes a more black metal style in the vocals primarily, but I'm going to tell you now that if one *ugh instead of and *agh is going to ruin your experience you might need to spend some more time slaving away in the metalcore mines.

 

To start with I'm no going to throw you into the deep end, and you mentioned Shadow's Fall so lets see how some melodeath without the lower end finds you. In this case since we're focusing on vocals I'm going with Mikael Stanne of the band Dark Tranquility. While it's true they incorporate cleans occasionaly I can assure you you won't find a more precise and developed harsh growl anywhere. His enunciation is perfect.

 

Now you said old school reccs so lets travel back a ways. A person could be forgiven for disliking the delivery of Chris Barnes in Cannibal Corpse (who have fairly or unfairly come to represent death metal to the mainstream out of the know), though I would argue not Jeff Fischer, but that's another story. I'm not going to lie, dude, my instinct here is to post Demilich and let you wallow in your misery, so just know I'm using restraint. You will not find a better harsh vocalist on this or any other day than the mighty John Tardy of Obituary. If he occasionally dips too low for you I would kindly suggest you leave the hall.

Now I'm going in for my last really basic pick. You've no doubt surmised that death metal is more than just a style of vocals, and that the genre encompasses a very rich and historic tapestry of music so I'm never going to be able to quite give you an absolute Ace card for your particular taste with these three made-for-rookies picks. If they didn't work for you, explore. Follow your gut, and read the history. You're sure to find something that lands for you.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

4 hours ago, z3r0 said:

i won't force myself to do anything. unless you recommend something with listenable vocals and not something which sounds like clogged sink:))

it was influenced by death metal. you can't deny it

The harsh vocal hurdle was something all of us had to negotiate at one time or another. I had to do it in 2004. I say "had to" because that's when I realized by just sticking with my old safe 80's & 90's bands I was missing out on way too much good shit. It's not as hard and it won't take as long as you might think to get past it. You'll have to completely change the way you look at vocals. Harsh vocals are just another percussive instrument in the mix. The melody in metal is instead provided by the instruments. You'll gradually start to get used to it, then you'll like it, then you'll come to prefer it.

The reward will be that you'll have the option of listening to and enjoying so many more bands because like it or not the vast majority of the best metal, like 95% of it has been using harsh vocals since before the turn of the century. I do feel your pain. I once believed I'd never be able to get past those damn vocals. Now I rarely listen to anything with clean vox. When they try to slip some cleans past me onto a black metal album I get pissed off. 

So I can't recommend to you any metal with clean vocals from the 21st century because I just don't listen to anything like that. All my hundreds of favorite metal bands use harsh vocals. I find them quite listenable and enjoyable. Your alternative is to stick with more mainstream crap like Arkangel, Shadows Fall and Pantera if that's what you're into. Don't matter to me what you listen to. None of those 5 bands you listed have anything to do with death metal btw. You don't know what you're talking about. In fact if you really like those Arkangel and Acid Bath vocals I think you should look into some black metal. Because those sound much closer to black metal vocals than they do to gutteral clogged sink death growls.

Here are some examples of killer black metal with fantastic vocals. But don't focus on the vox, focus on the music.

 

Murg - Varg & Björn

 

Schrat - Alptraumgänger

 

Tsjuder - Desert Northern Hell

 

Behexen - By the Blessing of Satan

 

[AlSymerz]

Instrumental death metal is a thing.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

1 hour ago, AlSymerz said:

Instrumental death metal is a thing.

Shhh! Don't tell him. He needs to learn to embrace the *urgh

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Once you go black you never go back. And as it happens July is black music month so what better time for a n00b to get heavily immersed in black metal?

 

 

11 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Shhh! Don't tell him. He needs to learn to embrace the *urgh

You think he'd like this?

Gargling - Depraved Ingestion of Cranial Discharge, Chicago 2022

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

20 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Once you go black you never go back. And as it happens July is black music month so what better time for a n00b to get heavily immersed in black metal?

 

 

You think he'd like this?

Gargling - Depraved Ingestion of Cranial Discharge, Chicago 2022

 

😆We've got to do something about this vile disgusting music corrupting our school children! I mean look at these song titles. Extirpate the Debilitated Seed, Sprouting Metastatic Flora, Mephitic Expulsion. This vocabulary is too advanced for them! How are they supposed to process this when they won't here any of this used until pre-med.

[AlSymerz]

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Shhh! Don't tell him. He needs to learn to embrace the *urgh

Bah, too often the urgh sucks.

Fuck the undecipherable growl, I'm going for death metal sing-a-longs for all the family to enjoy.

[z3r0]

14 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

you might need to spend some more time slaving away in the metalcore mines.

actually i've been trying to find some good death metal influenced metalcore for a really long time and it's hard to find anybody in the genre who's into that kind of stuff right now

thanks for your recommendations anyways. all perfect. this might be the best answer so far. really helpful. thanks for sharing your knowledge

and i already know carcass. necrocitism might be my favourite death metal album along with merciless - the awakening

13 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

Instrumental death metal is a thing.

share some bands. that would be really helpful

11 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Shhh! Don't tell him. He needs to learn to embrace the *urgh

i'm a girl by the way

[z3r0]

14 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

In fact if you really like those Arkangel and Acid Bath vocals I think you should look into some black metal.

the last time i've tried to get into black metal i thought the quality sucked but that was a really long time ago so i might try again. death metal is much more well produced in my opinion. but i always appreciated black metal bands for staying in the underground. i will check your recommendations. thanks

11 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

You think he'd like this?

 

i like my sink unclogged

[GoatmasterGeneral]

8 hours ago, z3r0 said:

the last time i've tried to get into black metal i thought the quality sucked but that was a really long time ago so i might try again. death metal is much more well produced in my opinion. but i always appreciated black metal bands for staying in the underground. i will check your recommendations. thanks

i like my sink unclogged

Ah, I see. Yes, if I'd known clear production was to be a consideration I might have chosen different albums. But most of those were reasonably accessible, especially the Murg and the Tsjuder. I like black metal because of the rawness not in spite of it. There's really not much I listen to from major label metal bands of any genre with their plastic overly compressed production, that's just the way I look at things. I tend to forget that most people look at it the opposite way and prefer the overproduction to the underproduction.

At least you've given us a little more info to go on now. I was mostly trying to go by the vocals from those 5 bands you listed yesterday, trying to think what you might like. Funny how knowing you're a girl changes what I think you might like. Necrotism and The Awakening, very interesting, I'll have to give this some thought. You're focused on 90's death metal in 2023 because why? I'm quite old myself, so I deffo have old school sensibilities, but yet I tend to prefer younger more recent bands' takes on that old school sound because of the beefier production. As long as there are no clickety plastic drum sounds.

Judging from what I've seen at shows black metal generally seems to have more appeal to women than death metal. Maybe it's the fashion aspect. Like at MDF when a black metal band takes the stage suddenly there's all these girls in sexy black outfits and too much makeup and long black nails drenched in perfume standing among us holding their phones up taking pics when they were nowhere to be found for the death metal band that just finished playing 2 minutes ago. But I know there are death metal girls too, I've even known a couple. Guys think that's pretty much the coolest thing ever when a girl is genuinely into dm. 

You seemed to be conflating death metal with extreme metal though when you said some of those bands you mentioned were "death metal influenced" because they weren't. You should know that a lot of us metal nerds do like to make very pedantic distinctions between the different sub-genres. It's clear that within a few albums Phil changed Pantera into a much heavier band than they'd been before he joined. It was his personal love of heavier more extreme metal that dragged the rest of them into more extreme waters. Dime would have been quite happy continuing to play recycled Kiss and Priest riffs. But they were never death metal influenced, I hear much more thrash and black and sludge than death in their sound. But admittedly I don't listen to much Pantera because I really can't stand them, they're too mainstream for me. But I was struck yesterday by how much the vocals on that Acid Bath album sounded like Phil at times, hadn't ever noticed that before, must be a New Orleans thing. 

At the end of the day the majority of the death metal I like best has a specific vocal timbre which is fairly low but doesn't degenerate into silly bdm, deathcore or slam territory with their pig squeals and clogged drains. Most of us here don't like that kind of stuff either. That Gargling album I posted was just a joke. But yet the cavernous Incantation clones I gravitate toward probably aren't going to interest you either, so I guess I won't have too much for you on the death metal front.

Funny you mention death metal and metalcore in the same breath as it would seem to me those two genres are like oil and water and will not naturally mix. But I listen to sfa in the way of metalcore because I find it absolutely insufferable so I don't really know that much about it. Unless we're counting bands like Integrity as metalcore whom I love. But anything with a melodic sing-songy chorus gets clicked off immediately if not sooner.

Anyway I do hope you find what you're looking for. It does seem like youre looking for melodeath, like that Dark Tranquility Cabbage mentioned, you should definitely look into them. I do still believe you should just learn to embrace real death metal vocals. Most of those 90's bands vox weren't too gurgly and inaccessible anyway, they were still rooted in thrash. But I'll leave the mainstream death metal recos to the mainstream death metal experts. Slow here on the board now because it's the weekend, but there are some more of us. Not sure about this instrumental death metal Orca mentioned because without the growly vocals how would we even know it's death metal? If you ever find yourself in need of any black metal advice though you know where to find me and I'll be happy to help.

[SurgicalBrute]

9 hours ago, z3r0 said:

and i already know carcass. necrocitism might be my favourite death metal album along with merciless - the awakening

Apologies if you're already aware of these, but I think they'll all kind of fall into the same wheelhouse as Merciless

Protector - A Shedding of Skin

 

Massacra - Enjoy the Violence

 

Possessed - Seven Churches

 

Sepultura - Arise

 

Kreator - Pleasure to Kill

 

Sadus - Illusions

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

It occurs to me you'd probably like Lamb of god, they seem to be a big hit with the modern mainstream metal crowd, and they've always garnered comparisons to Pantera from the beginning. I haven't heard any of their more recent albums because they're not my speed, I call them "Blythecore" because I think Randy's screamo vox absolutely ruin that band. But many people seem to really dig them. I'm sure you probably already know about Log though if you know about underground stuff like Merciless - The Awakening. 

 

I would say that melodeath (melodic death metal) would probably be the closest thing I can think of to metalcore with some death metal influence. Hardcore death metal dudes don't considerr this sub-genre to be "true" death metal, but still both the death metal and the metalcore influences are clearly present here so it might interest you. This kinda stuff was my gateway into extreme metal back in the early/mid 2000's. I haven't listened to most of this stuff I'm gonna post here in many years as my tastes have gone pretty far in the other direction. 

 

Dark Tranquillity - Fiction, Sweden 2007. I was absolutely head over heels with this album in 2007. Seems like 30 years ago to me now not just 16.

 

Dark Tranquillity - Lost to Apathy, live in Milan, Where Death is Most Alive DVD

 

Dark Tranquillity - The Treason Wall, live in Milan. These dudes are far too happy to be a death metal band.

 

Dark Tranquillity - Final Resistance, live in Milan. Have to admit I got really into this one just now. Might have to turn in my goat metal card.

 

Hypocrisy - The Arrival, Sweden 2004, harsh vocals but mostly higher register, no gurgles.

 

Opeth - Harlequin Forest at the Royal Albert Hall 2010, (their best song imo) mix of mostly clean with harsh vocals

 

Opeth - The Drapery Falls, also off the same Royal Albert Hall DVD, mostly clean with some harsh.

 

Amorphis - Silent Waters, Finand 2007. These guys have actually used mostly clean vocals since their first couple of albums, don't know why I didn't think of them sooner. 

 

Amorphis - House of Sleep, official video. I can't even hear any death metal at all in this one honestly, but it sounds metalcorey to me somehow.

 

Amorphis - The Smoke, mostly clean but with just a few harsh growled vocals in the chorus

 

Swallow the Sun - Morning Never Came, 2003. Harsh vocals on their first 3 or 4 albums then transitioned to mostly cleans. I haven't heard any of their later albums because of this. This one is from their debut.

 

Insomnium - Daughter of the Moon, 2004

 

[AlSymerz]

11 hours ago, z3r0 said:

share some bands. that would be really helpful

 

A link for you

[Dead1]

Atheist

Gorefest

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

14 hours ago, z3r0 said:

 

share some bands. that would be really helpful

Blotted Science

[Dead1]

Also perhaps stuff like The Haunted

 

[z3r0]

i accidently found out while doing my research that i was in fact looking for melodeath (which at times gets too melodic to me but it's still great) either for deathcore with high-pitched fry vocs like this record:

 

if anyone here's into deathcore you can share something alike

thanks everyone for all the great reccos. this is the most active and committed metal forum i've ever seen. so much people with actual knowledge on the subject. in most forums people don't bother replying to my dumb posts or don't know what i'm talking about

On 7/2/2023 at 11:46 PM, Dead1 said:

Atheist

 

just perfect. orgasmic to my ears

[SurgicalBrute]

7 hours ago, z3r0 said:

if anyone here's into deathcore you can share something alike

Just FYI, that's not really deathcore. Deathcore would sound more like what you said you didn't want in vocals....they tend to either be very low or use that "pig-squeal" type sound. (I know, this shit is very confusing. Don't sweat it too much, as you'll pick it up with time).

Based on the link you gave, it sounds like what you're looking for is things like Hardcore Punk, Death metal mixed with Hardcore or 1990's style Metalcore. Those are styles that tend to use those yelled/screamed vocal styles.

Black Breath

 

Merauder

 

Integrity

 

Converge

 

Discharge

 

Doom

 

[MacabreEternal]

8 hours ago, z3r0 said:

i accidently found out while doing my research that i was in fact looking for melodeath (which at times gets too melodic to me but it's still great) either for deathcore with high-pitched fry vocs like this record:

 

if anyone here's into deathcore you can share something alike

thanks everyone for all the great reccos. this is the most active and committed metal forum i've ever seen. so much people with actual knowledge on the subject. in most forums people don't bother replying to my dumb posts or don't know what i'm talking about

just perfect. orgasmic to my ears

Posting YouTube links is much easier than your current method, just copy the details from the browser on the page you are watching on YouTube and paste into your post - no need to do it as a link.  Also, label all YouTube videos that you post please as when the links (inevitably) break us mods can repair them if we know what it was supposed to link to.

[Dead1]

Obituary's vocals are also quite unique and not low by DM standards

 

 

[z3r0]

On 7/2/2023 at 7:19 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

If you ever find yourself in need of any black metal advice though you know where to find me and I'll be happy to help.

are you into blackened death metal?

On 7/2/2023 at 7:19 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

plastic overly compressed production

by good production i actually meant the golden era of the 90s where even some better known underground bands like arkangel and acid bath had well recorded and mastered production. i myself rarely listen to anything produced after that decade.