Opinion on growling

Just a simple poll to see what prog fans think about growling in music.

I'm indifferent to it.

Depends really. I have a hard time with growls in prog. In Death Metal I'm fine with them. This is probably also why I don't like most of Opeth's work. Orchid is brilliant though.

I do like it, very much in fact, especially the blood curling variety of growls in old school death metal like John Tardy.  I don't necessarily like a lot of the music that tends to involve growls very much any more, got bored of it.  But I am NOT comparing it to clean vocals.  'Clean vocals' is very vast.  There are so many different styles because it's the normal way to sing and compared to that, growls are a much smaller niche. 

I dig shrieks, when used right. I like growls some of the time, but not all the time.

German incantations (see Deutsch Nepal) > Shouting > Shrieks > Growls

I don't prefer growling vocals in prog music but to death metal.Old Entombed = perfect brutal vocals.

Well since my music exploration started with Metal and very soon drifted to even heavier stuff, I guess I'm fine with it and I can say I even like it. But for many years now I haven't explored any new bands that uses them, so the stuff I like are older bands I used to dig (and still do of course) like Orphaned Land, Sepultura or Dan Swano projects like Pan.Thy.Monium.


Edited by Sagichim - June 02 2014 at 13:08

Don't mind it at all, it's usually found in music meant to sound like it's played by demons or aliens or lizard people.

Well, in the kind of melodic death metal that's closer to normal heavy metal with DM influence than the opposite way around growled vocals can sound pretty silly if the riffing style is meant to go with a vocal melody.

I'm obviously fine with it.

Back in the late 80's, I didn't care for the more guttural approach at first. Napalm Death and such sounded silly to me as I preferred the more mid-ranged growls of Death and Morbid Angel's early stuff, but I eventually warmed up to the gutturals by the early 90's.