Sounds more like hardcore screaming distorted by the microphone, than actual BM.
What technique are you using?

Apart from that, the guitar is good, drumming needs to be faster IMO.

Well, I was trying to produce a really raw sound. So I put alot into those vocals. But you're right, they do sound a bit hardcore. I've been a vocalist for a while and that's not how I usually do my vocals, but I was trying really hard to be raw. Any advice on how to get a sound similar to Mortuus from Marduk. I love his vocals so much.

Mortuus... I'm pretty much sure he's pushing his guts out through his throat to produce those vocals. No pain no gain in this case I guess.
I could be wrong though, he has quite a unique sound. But I can't imagine how one could produce such vocal without raping the chords.

I'm going to be honest. Sounds a bit metalcore. Trying a bit too hard. Not very black metal. Both the music and vocals I dislike. Other than that.. fantastic!

I have a few questions.

I've started to learn how to do death grunts now after listening to a friend of mine(16 years old, like me) who is really good at growling. It only took me a few attempts to find that stomach support where I can make very deep, guttural sounds without feeling anything in my throat at all except vibrations. I can feel the death grunt tone(''ghhhrrrrrrrrr'') in my voice, the only thing is that the ''human element'' is still there, i.e. it sounds like death grunts but with a hint of my usual voice(''oooouuuuhhh'') still there. I guess that practicing is the key to eliminating this element. I try to press my voice as far down my throat as I can, and sometimes it sounds really good, my growling friend even tells me that I can do it and that I'm free to do some guest vocals on his band's demo, but I started learning 3 days ago, and it can't go that fast, can it? To the growlers in here, how do you practice and how long did it take?

Also, what bothers me is that I get extremely dizzy from doing this. When I've done it for a few minutes, I get this nicotine kick kind of sensation where I go dizzy and my arms starts to tingle, which I assume indicates that I'm not getting enough oxygen. I don't know why, cause I inhale heavily in between every word, but still it happens very fast. I've heard other people claiming that practicing growling causes them to get dizzy; does anybody know why and what to do about it?

Also, I read lots of rules on practicing in order not to hurt the throat, like practicing very little in the beginning, drinking this and that, techniques and the likes. But the thing is, I don't feel a thing in my throat when I'm ''growling'', can it still do damage even though I can't feel anything?

HeidraCatharsis, the "human element" will stay there all the time. Something of your natural voice will always be reflected while growling (high or, especially, low).

About the dizyness, well, that will pass with training. The reason for the dizyness is that huge amount of oxygen are inhaled, but not enough time passes for it to get absorbed in the blood before you exhale.
If it's not gone in the first month, don't worry too much, just do more breathing exercises. What are breathing exercises for vocalists you ask? Google will answer that.

Regarding your friend's band, join in! I mean, why the hell not?
It'll give you more motivation for practising, and will pump your vocals to the top level faster.

Also, it is important that you drink water and warm up for at least 10-15 minutes before practising. This is seriously important.
I suggest you get those Melissa Cross exercises. I have them, so you can add me to MSN or something, and I'll send the proper ones (I have exercises for bass, baritone and tenor voice).

I am practising for about 5 months. You can hear me on my Youtube profile (down in the signature area).

You say you inhale heavily in between each word: this is probably the cause for your dizziness. Breathing to heavily and too often. You should try to growl whole phrases and breathe in more lightly in between those. You should not need more air while growling than while singing, and if you can't do it the key is to push more with the diaphragm. Take a look at Melissa Cross's Zen of Screaming, she explains this, taking small breaths, quite thoroughly.

Let's not forget that Melissa's DVD is for screamers, and not for growling. There's quite a big difference between the two.
I said all this because I wouldn't recommend the DVD for someone who wants to learn growling. Nevertheless, she does give some good tips, but not all tips are good for growling

Thanks for the tips! SpiralLoiter, if you could PM your MSN to me, I can add you so that we can talk there.

Well, she talks mostly about general singing technique, a little bit about screaming, and a tiny, tiny bit about growling.

Neo, let's conclude that she mostly talks... too much if you ask me hehehe
Actually, those hardcore "singers" talk more about how cool she, rather than giving useful tips...
A fuckin' ad DVD...

Hey just browsing the posts on singing and just wanted to relay my experience. I have been singing for 20 years in the halford/tate style and had noticed problems with soreness and stamina starting.I know this advice may be un popular but i got myself to a vocal teacher and he explained that my registers (chest and falsetto )over the years were not combined properly resulting in almost losing my voice.It takes a bit of time and alot of practice to sing properly but you could risk losing your instrument and none of us wants that! No matter what style you enjoy singing there are some universal truths about singing that only a proffesional can teach us. Hey it saved my voice and career.

I'm starting to sing and growl too. When I sing clean, I can emulate Bruce Dickinson or Warrel Dane fairly well, and I can growl out Carcass, old Esniferum and Wintersun songs. I pretty much practice by starting with some clean songs that aren't too challenging, moving to some more intense clean stuff, then some mixed growl/clean, and full on growl. I find I can get an hour or so out of this before my throat hurts, then I stop.

I still have much to learn, and eventually I'd like to add a good scream. I like Petri Lindroos' voice a lot, I'd love to be able to get a deeper version of that happening.

Black Metal style vocals in my Viking Metal solo project - www.myspace.com/elkveri

Hey, good job!
Sounds good, but the vocals are quite distorted...

Cheers. Yeah I use pretty poor equipment. Also, the myspace player lowers the quality a bit.

HELLOU BOYZ!



I've been doing the grunts since i was fourteen, influenced by In Flames, Arch Enemy, COB, Ensiferum and whatnot...

To this moment, i have sort of obtained a normal tone, and i can hold a note for almost twenty seconds now... The thing is, that i can't yet reach high notes, at least not while looking like a faggeth.

So yeah, how do i do to make it look like i'm Anders Friden trying to mix a death grunt with a scream that would make Eric Adams proud?

Hell, i'll go with making it seem almost like 3 Inches of Blood.

the mikes i use with my band ae so bad that my scream cant be understood when i sing directly int it. so i have to stand a few feet from the mic stand when we record

Wow... I liked that a lot.

Hey, I am a vocalist in a blackened death metal band. My brother also does vocals.
www.myspace.com/severedvictim
I do the vocals on the songs Pain and Howls of Chaos, and I'm the one singing in the video of Forgotten. My brother does vocals on the other two.
Most of our songs arent recorded great, we are still learning how to mix with the 16 track recorder. Let me know what you think.

Sorry for double posting, but I may as well contribute. If you can do a halfway decent growl, the way to get it deeper is to curl your tongue up to the roof of your mouth. The farther back in your mouth it is, the deeper your growl will be, hence why bands like Akercocke with the super deep growls have mostly unintelligible vocals. They sacrifice clarity of words for the deepness of the growl, thus they pronounce words sort of like a person without a tongue would.

Holy fucking shit, that helped SO MUCH. THANK YOU.

No problem, took me awhile to figure that one out by myself. Glad I could help.

I'll have to try that next time I practice.

You (or anyone else) wouldn't happen to know of a cure for this, though- when doing my Carcass-style growling, sometimes there's a note in the voice that just won't go away. I'd like to get that to be more or a pure growl, though I don't want all the vocals to be deep and unintelligible. Sometimes drinking milk or orange juice helps, but the effect of that is temporary.

Im not sure what you mean by a note, also I havent really listened to much carcass so I dont know what exactly your shooting for. But Im assuming since you dont want unintelligible but still moderately deep if Im reading your post correctly. Just try to keep the tip of your tongue around the edge of that ridge in the top of your mouth a short distance behind your teeth, and when your tongue is not touching there when your pronouncing something try to keep it sort of perpendicular to that spot. Hope that makes sense.

Okay guys, I've got a query for you all.

I'm trying to nail a good juxtaposition of clean and harsh vocals. What, in your opinions, is the best style of growl to accompany clean singing? Basically, which growl is easiest to smoothly combine with clean singing and is least likely to damage the clean voice?

I would guess that it depends more on your clean vocals. Aesthetically speaking, I don't think that power metal vocals and DM vocals mix well, but some bands mix growls and clean singing in a lower register well, like Amorphis, Rapture, and Wintersun.

Thanks, I'll work on that.

I did try the other trick for the lower growl and I was surprised at how dramatic it was compared to my normal growl. Now I just need to practice it and control it a little better.

Well, I'm still experimenting with getting a good combination, so I've got a few options on how to handle the cleaner aspect. It'd certainly be closer to thrash grittyness than to power metal operatics.

It's kinnda depressing. I used to do really good black metal and death metal vocals, now all I can pull out is a mixture of like post-hardcore/metalcore style vocals. Now that's alright as I work with a metalcore band with some friends, but I'm more a black metal guy and I'm attempting to do some stuff that's equivelent in style to Xasthur, Leviathan, Burzum, and Graveland mixed all together.

What sort of exercises, techniques, tutorials, etc (whatever will help me develop some good black metal vocals) do you suggest?

Well, I can pull off a reasonable black metal style by tipping my head back a bit, curling my tongue and sort of gargling out a high pitched screech.

Try gargling a little bit of water in the back of your throat until you can do it without any liquid. It works for me.

Thanks, I appreciate the suggestion.

Regarding BM... the stuff I do (see signature), is simply high pitched death metal growling.
When you're a beginner it's not very high pitched, but if you keep pushing, the range will grow. My vocals are not BM standard though - I have no idea how to do those so they won't hurt/burn...

I got a prob with my growling:
I can actually execute pretty solid, dirty death metal growl, kinda similar to Opeth's style.
The problem is-the volume.
I can't growl at the same volume of my regular speaking voice, which is a real pain in the ass when I'm rehearsing with my band.

So any fucking tips for how growling louder would be appreciated

1. Time, practice and stamina.

2. Maybe you can't. Some styles of growling cannot be done loudly. You just need to use the mic to get better volume.

my vocal range goes from angela gossow to bruce dickenson:hail:

hmmm...i started a year ago with screams from cob (i was 13 then) ,i was happy when i could scream along to one sentence,now after 1 year i can scream/growl pretty good i guess,without damaging my throat.

The only problem is,that i lose my ''screaming'' voice pretty fast,what can i do to stop that?

Oh,and i like to growl along to melodic death/old school death metal most.

Well, try experimenting in how you deliver the vocal. That can help with keeping your voice longer. Different delivery methods tend to be less harsh. There's also all sorts of home "remedies" to keep your voice. They've been mentioned in this thread at one piont or another. Just drink water before and possibly during a vocal session. Tends to help.

I was listening to Nattefrost taking a leak typing that, really distracting.

Thanks!

oh btw,i tried some heavy metal/thrash metal songs with my vocals,the songs ''set the world on fire'' by annihilator and ''washington is next'' (especially that one) by megadeth were pretty good.

Quick question, sorry if its been covered. I read through a lot of this thread and didn't see it covered. I've been trying to find some guys to start a band with, aiming towards a death/thrash sound with a mix of Hypocrisy or Bolt Thrower style vocals. But anyway, I've been smoking for about 2 years now, I've almost got the perfect mix of what I'm looking for but its just lacking, could it be that smoking is what is keeping me from that last little bit?