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High pitched screaming vs. Cookie monster vocals vs. Gutteral noise
I love Heavy Metal. In fact I have to say it is my favorite of all genres. But it seems that the vocals can be very different from several different eras of the art. I suppose I grew up hearing the high pitched screaming of Paul Stanley, Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bruce Dickenson. The Cookie monster vocals came later with Slayer, Clutch, and Pantera. And I can even appreciate some of the Gutteral noises, like from Soulfly. But now I feel I can only take it in measured doses. Play Soulfly's "No" and I can get it three times in a row, and dig it. But 20 tracks in a row of blowing out your vocal cords in my ear can get really lame. Maybe I'm just getting old. 39...pushing the big four oh. I can still listen to KISS and Sabbath all day long, but Damage Plan and Coal Chamber are needed one or two tracks at a time. Sometimes I will hit the forward button on the I-Pod shuffle mode to hopefully cleanse the pallete quickly with some Hendirx, Doors, or Cream. This is solid proof that I'm becoming an old fart, or my eclectic musical palet recognizies pained vocals and realizes... it's way out. Great vocals are infused with many feelings. A constant state of anger or pain isn't great. It's annoying.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by vannatta on -
Metal rules - but yes, the Cookie Monster vocals can be really annoying, and the Gutteral noise falls even below that category for me. I can get in to it, for a tune or two, but then for the very reasons that both of these techniques don't work _musically, is that there is normally no cadence to it (cadence being the tension and release that we get from things like tempo changes, chord changes (the chord progressions themselves) and even soft and loud sections in songwriting etc...) so yeah, I'm not surprised that you are moving away from that... and certainly that you can't too much in a row, since there is no release... (no matter how old you are, or how how young you still may feel...)
;)
Rock on...
Van
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Permalink Reply by Dansemcabre on -
I totally agree with you there and I'm only 28 I can listen to only so much of one kind of music before I get bored or annoyed and look for somthing new. The really cool thing about metal is that it's such a broad genre with such a great history that spans the globe I can actually listen to metal longer than any other genre cause there is so much variety. from good old american thrash, to theatrical european death metal, to the old school rockers who started it all I can listen to metal almost every day and not get board and when I do I just broaden my horizons. I was getting board with prog. metal recently so I went out and got a kidney theives album, now I'm listening to electro/goth metal for a change. Now don't get me wrong I don't listen to metal exclusively I break it up with punk, alt. folk, blues, even pop (not much choice there I work at home depots) but Metal is what I come back to every day. as for vocals I guess I really have to go vocalist by vocalist. I can't stand some singers/screamers but others i like so I guess it's just a matter of taste. I also really like female vocalists in the metal genre.
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Permalink Reply by TylerDurden on -
Metal...that's like bringing up religion and politics at christmas dinner for some families ->
I dig metal, love the fact that there are so many types of metal, different sounds. As I was a huge druggie, I was stuck on the very basics of metal. Sabbath, Pantera, Metallica, Halford was definetely in there, Testament, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth -> I refused to listen to anything else...because I was angry, and addicted to pain and hatred at that time...
now that I've cleaned up, I've taken to MOG, Purevolume, Dizzler.com, Last.FM, and I've realized that there is great music to be heard, and I am now overloaded with my downloads...my collection on random goes from Pillar (christian metal) to Anthrax, to Mushroomhead, to Soulfly, to Pig destroyer, to Dead Kennedys, to dillinger Escape Plan, to Shane & Shane (christian worship) -> and 500 other bands and solo artists...
I do love thrash and heavy stuff, even if the aggravated vocals get a bit annoying because I've always been in it for the MUSIC, not neccessarily for the lyrics or vocalists. I'm a never die Pantera fan, Anselmo's other stuff though is hit or miss, DOWN was great, Superjoint Ritual was decent though borderline annoying, and Viking Crown was despicable, a disgrace to his other work...Dime did Rebel Meets Rebel, and although I could here Dimebag's heavy riff-n-lead style, I was severly put off by David Allen Coe on lead vocals, so I don't listen to it...
So, I can hang with the cookie moster all the time, I learn to just tune it out and go with the drumes, bass, or guitar line...
Gutteral Noise, like Black Dhalia Murder, is overwhelmingly annoying, Cannibal Corpse while fun for 1 or 2 listens is not sustainable in my ear canal...
High Pitched Screaming I can hang with, but I guess I have to take on the stance of the rest of our chatters here, and say, I do change a song if I've heard too much of it's particular style, it's very sanity-progressive to listen to lots of different type of metal, rock, punk, electro, blues, classical music once in a while -> it's just like cleaning your colon, you can't just eat steaks every meal, although that sounds good, you need some fruit to loosen the stool...I need some lighter stuff once in a while, but not too often, I always go back to overstuffing myself with steak ->
good line of discussion dog ->
Gotta say, Bullet for My Valentine is my favorite of the moment, and if this goes as planned, here is HAND OF BLOOD from B.F.M.V.
08_-_Hand of Blood.mp3
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Permalink Reply by Third Eye Fine on -
Okay; I'm late to the party. Not the first time. But dear old Tyler and I actually had (I thought) a rather enlightening discussion on this very subject. Oh; by the way -- I love "cookie monster" as a descriptive phrase for the post-metal vocal style (the post-metal era began the moment Kurt Cobain made a fool of Axl Rose backstage at whatever show that was; I'm sure you've heard the story), but I prefer pterodactyl to "high pitched screaming" to describe guys like Ozzy, Brian Johnson and Rob Halford (Paul Stanley always sounded more like a baritone trying to hit notes out of his range, to me). But as far as I'm aware, no one was doing the cookie monster vocals until Nirvana made the pterodactyls look like a joke. Me, I always kind of liked the pterodactyls. I mean, could a cookie monster ever do a rousing cover of "Mama Weer All Crazee Now"? Could they ever do anything that you could call rousing? Dean put it well, I think: "A constant state of anger or pain isn't great. It's annoying." A last couple observations: the greatest pterodactyl of all time wasn't in a metal band: Brian Connolly of Sweet. And the greatest singer for a metal band -- well, maybe the greatest frontman, to draw a subtle but meaningful distinction -- was David Lee Roth, neither cookie monster nor pterodactyl.
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Permalink Reply by vannatta on
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Dude, better late than never - just glad to have you back.
I agree with you on Roth, for that style? - greatest frontman of all time - and he could hit the pterodactyl range, except he did it while he was singing real notes (not screeching, as you said, like a pterodactyl) - an important distinction I think. Roth has the timbre of a Tenor for sure, but enough range to hit some decent Bari depth, and his upper range, well, that can only be improved upon by saying - castrati - and I mean that as a compliment. I also agree with you on Paul Stanley, although he is fairly unique in that his falsetto still has, depth, punch, and grit to it... a style(?) fairly unique to him. Ozzy, Brian, and Rob, are all pretty distinct to one another in other ways, but yes, fall under the meta-tag of pterodactyl.
I think there is a book forming here ... "From Cookie Monster to Pterodactyl - A Complete Compendium of Rock Vocalists" - because I think that we can all agree, that Rock is at the root of it all. I'm sure that some here may open a can of worms concerning whether Van Halen is more pop than metal, but clearly, I hope that we don't go there.
Speaking of what Nirvana did, I think that many of the songs that have been sung in either pterodactyl (or even a good strong falsetto for that matter) - would sound better in a lower to mid tenor range, or even a Bari that could get up to say, a D ... and without going Cookie Monster of course. Many Rush songs come to mind. Geddy Lee is awesome, but some of the songs themselves (even though they are all written for Geddy to sing, might be better served in a lower range) - especially given the nature of Pert's lyrics.
That is what Cobain was doing I think... singing hard driving stuff in that range, and so yeah - post-metal - and certainly Dave Grohl has taken up that torch since - of course, not in exactly the same _way...
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Permalink Reply by Dean on -
Maybe I'm not too clear on exactly what Cookie Monster vocals are. I envisioned that it was some deeper more decerned register of singing, with a deep voice for sure, than the High Pitched Screaming which Xarpex described so well as Pterotaclyl. You see I dig both of my interpretations of these styles. It's the, quote, Guteral Noise that I'm begining to take in only small doses. Tyler (currently residing in the where are they now file) set up a very funny video that actually descibed Cookie Monster as Guteral Noise for me, so I guess I under defined what I meant originally.
It could be there is something inbetween Pterotaclyl and Cookie Monster, like Clutch or Nirvana. Maybe it's Oscar the Grouch :) Or lets call it The Grinch. And even a slight diference between those. Like, agreeing Rob Halford is a Pterotactyl but Paul Stanley is not. But he's no Grinch either. Gene Simmons is the Grinch in that band. Is Paul Stanley a Raptor? An Eagle? Or just a Peacock? I guess most frontmen are Peacocks to one extent or another. Maybe that's what should make a great distinction of an awesome frontman, a Peacock feather. Is that too glam?
Glam, and all the other labels, brings me to another point. While labels tie down, they also define. And setting up music into all these sub-catagories becomes important the more they splinter off from each other. We can all see very clearly that our group of peeps is made up of some very eclectic music fans. That's just it, music fans. Music. It's all music. Good, bad, indifferent, and the ugly. It's not all Rock and Roll either by the way, but I like it, like it, yes I do ;).
Music, Rythem and Blues, Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, Clear vocal styles. We all agree that these are labels and definitions we can all agree on. Madeline loves John Waits. Now he may have a Grinch vocal style, but he's not Heavy Metal. I think we would all agree on that. What label can you put on him? He's practically a Crooner for crying out loud. Right out there next to Frank Sinatra. Although I never saw Sinatra play the ivories like Waits.
The original discussion thread meant to be towards Heavy Metal. What is that genre exactly? For me, a fan of the early beginnings of the genre, it is clearly defined. And I have to say, with all due respect, that David Lee Roth belongs in these discussions just as little as Tom Waits and Frank Sinatra. You see, Van Halen is not Heavy Metal or Pop. They are Hard Rock, just like Aerosmith or Rush. I would say Van Halen wasn't even Pop when they were popular, let alone now. A good example of Pop now is Katy Perry, and a good example of Metal now is all the bands that were seriously considered it back then in Van Halens hayday, like AC/DC and Metallica, and for new ones, The Sword comes to mind.
It might be real fun to actually try to put more pen to paper and define all of this music that we all love and classify and define it all. Or maybe your inclined to just call it music and leave it at that. Either way, I look forward to more discussions on this thread and other blogs, with real music fans, the Mogpeeps.
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