Genesis vs. The Dillinger Escape Plan

Genesis.

 

*Bows*

 

Thank you for a civil reply to my snarky commentary. At least you have a sense of humor. In regards to the "falling back on the whole 'growling' defense', it is an insurmountable wedge that drives me from these bands. I cannot listen to it. I find it campy and ridiculously over-the-top. It does nothing for the composition; in fact, it detracts from the music altogether. In addition, It is done by so many bands of so many "metal" genres as to utterly lack in originality (hence my questioning the entire "progressive" title of these bands).

 

A progression can be defined as moving away from accepted modes of operation, but the inane growling has been done for decades now; ergo, it is not original. And when you say, quite rightfully, that "the focus is on the rest of the music", I would say the stupid thing is that growling like Linda Blair possessed occurs so often in the compositions of these bands as to constitute an anchor that each of these performers drags around with them. It is an unnecessary impediment in what possibly might be a much larger group of fans listening to the music. Unfortunately, until this lunacy is ended and someone actually has the balls to break the mold and actually "progresses", then there will always be a gulf between us.

I hadn't thought of what you said about the growling being unoriginal, and you may be right on that, but that's also because it's a staple of metal.  It wouldn't be metal (well, sometimes) without the growls, any less than it would be symphonic prog without the Mellotron.  Some things are kind of essential to the music.

Also, more often than not, I think you'll find that for the good majority of the heavy bands on this website can effectively use both clean and harsh vocals to convey different moods.  Look at Opeth: Akerfeldt has a beautiful clean voice and they fit wonderfully with the clean passages in their music, but when they need to bring the rain with the heaviness, nothing else would work but a deep, guttural roar.  That's one of the cool things about progressive metal bands is that most of them realize that there is a purpose to these different stylings, unlike most metal bands who do growl just for the sake of the convention of growling.

Even then, for the most part the growling is just a textural thing with the music.  The growling is anchored around the music, not the other way around.  And metal isn't meant to be an accessible genre, the music is supposed to be challenging and difficult to listen to, but rewarding to the people who adapt to its stylings.