Essentially what the title says. A vocalist that can coddle you to sleep. A lullaby perhaps?

Biggest for me is Mark Hollis from Talk Talk (RIP). Non metal but his voice just had an “it will be alright”” vibe for me.

Pete Steele similar. For a more metal example. When Uncle Pete reassured I knew everything was going to be okay. RIP again. Maybe there’s a theme here for me.

Anyway. Any other examples?

Neige from Alcest. Very soothing and calming vocal style. A lot of the time he is just humming wordlessly singing along with the music and, especially on the debut, it sounds like a lullaby.

Johan Edlund definitely gives me this vibe in some of Tiamat's more rock-oriented stuff. Their cover of WASP's "Sleeping in the Fire" is probably the most salient example of this.



Actually, a couple others I thought of, Teonanacatl from A Deeper Kind of Slumber and of course Do You Dream of Me? from Wildhoney. Not sure how I forgot that one at first.

Layne Staley and Chis Cornell for me.

Layne is a great example. Agree.

Glenn Danzig, Nick Cave, Andrew Eldritch, and Mikael Akerfeldt would be mine.

I really enjoy Kristoffer Rygg's voice on post-black metal Ulver. He's just got a really soothing voice.

Still Life - Damnation era Akeferldt on the clean vocals, absolutely.

Vincent and Daniel from Anathema.
James Hetfield in the 90's era on songs like Unforgiven, Bleeding Me, Low Man's Lyric, Hero Of The Day.
Neige from Alcest has that celestial, dream-like haze.

Non-Metal: Smoothest voice to ever exist on planet earth - Sam Cooke.

Devin Townsend is an obvious pick. I also love Tom Englund, Jonas Renske and Daniel Gildenlöw. They're all capable of some extremely warm, soothing tones that I can just kinda fall into.

if you like Mark Hollis, try Steve Hogarth-era Marillion...

I dunno, I always thought Danzig was trying to channel his inner Elvis Presley, or perhaps Jim Morrison, with his post Misfits stuff. Not bad, not boring, just sort of the style he was going for.

As for Eldritch, one of the things that drew me to the first couple Paradise Lost albums was that the first time I heard them I thought, "Wow, that guy sounds just like the dude from the Sisters of Mercy!" (and then later noticed that on the vinyl record, a message to that effect was even scratched into the run-out.) I was a bit of a Sisters of Mercy fan back then, and kind of dug that sort of goth-tinged vocal. Peter Murphy from Bauhaus has a bit of that style in his voice as well. So, I don't know if I'd call it "Wet blanket boring" but sort of, it's just vocals that suit the style of music.

There are a lot of rather generic, faceless vocalists in bands over the years, neither great nor particulary bad, just kind of, well, bland and generic. Too many to name.

Fantastic. Admittedly I know only their hits like Kayleigh but he’s great. Will explore more.