I tend to enjoy harsh vocals with music that tends toward the heavier, riff-based, "evil" sounding approach, or else stuff thats' fast and punkish. I don't like harsh vocals going on much when the guitars are all melodic and beautiful, although I guess there might be some exceptions...I think it's kind of an ugly contrast. That said, shouty, exuberant singing in the style of Venom or Motorhead can work really well for a lot of different sounds. I do enjoy some really "melodic" metal with harsh vocals though. Maybe it's partially nostalgia, but Dark Tranquillity's The Gallery used to be one of my favourite albums back in the 90s and I still think it's really good.

The Gallery is freakin great and Mikael Stanne is actually one of my favorite vocalists in metal all together, hell I don't think that there's a Dark Tranquillity release that I don't like.

I brought it up because it seems to suggest a contradiction in my reasoning: the guitars are just dancing out melodies the entire length of the record...hell, they barely play any chords, it seems, in some of the songs, and yet for some reason it still works for me. I don't like much o the stuff from afterProjector at all..the experimentation mostly worked for me on that one, but they lost something for me afterwards and never got me excited again.

I would agree that after Projector they did kind of loose something/ go a bit downhill or whatever but I still like all their stuff.

I think subject matter can play a huge part in it, with there being a middle ground. For example, my band is pretty melodic, but my singer - who is definitely not a growler - wants to cover I's "Storm I Ride", but in his vocal style. I think this can definitely be pulled off, as the music isn't too harsh for it to sound too jarring, and the subject matter of the lyrics centers around an "epic" feeling. However, if he wanted to do a Suffocation number, I might be a bit skeptical.

Likewise, harshes could certainly work, and have worked, over really heavy rock n' roll style death metal (although I'm yet to hear a band really pull off originals in this vein, but I digress), but if you were to take, say, "The Trooper" and put harshes over it without changing anything about the tone of the rest of the song, it wouldn't work very well, I don't think.

Which brings me to my final point, and really the only time I want to kill a small child when hearing harsh vocals, and that is when a band covers a pop song for shits and giggles, and thinks it is hilarious to just randomly throw in some harshes. Generally it is more metalcore bands I find that do this, so not really the kind of music I go out of my way to listen to anyway, but it still annoys the HELL out of me.

I'm a lot more easily pleased with my harsh vocals than most here, but my usual right way/wrong way rule is to aim to be inhuman. Not simply meaning being as deranged and crazy as possible like Bethlehem or Wormphlegm, but just the simple old fashioned low pitched poorly enunciated death roar is effective enough. Once you start toning it back into making it musical, rhythmic and human, it starts to just sound like a dude yelling at you, which doesn't really carry any immense, demonic, evil or downright demented imagery. I guess hardcore screaming has a role in harcore and other punk styles, since it's trying to represent human anger against society, but death metal tends to go for less immediate and social atmopsheres, and thus hardcore screams really don't fit. Melodeath vocals on the other hand don't fit anywhere, they just sound like ass.

One final little thing is I hate screams over acoustics. It's luckily something limited to suicidal BM bands, but it's awful.

That's an interesting point actually. Because as a bonus track for the english version (I think) of Carolus Rex, Sabaton did a cover of Amon Amarth's "Twilight of the Thunder God" with clean vocals. And this, in my opinion, worked but for very different reasons. Amon Amarth's version worked because, being a song of the viking apocalypse, made it feel like a dark and brutal fight with Thor's last stand against the giant snake. Sabaton's version keeps the scale of it, but played up more the fantastical scale of the whole encounter, making up for the brutality of the encounter being lost.

This doesn't happen very often, so it would be interesting to see it happen again and see how it compares.

Haha, your post reminds me of Vital Remains and their hilariously shitty cover of "The Trooper":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MakJWP0VxgU

Ruined by the vocals alone. I don't understand how how such a veteran band composed of obviously capable musicians could pull this off and think it was perfectly acceptable.

I feel I am alone in this, but I personally don't feel vocals make or break an album at all and dig any kind of vocal style as long as it isn't obnoxious and annoying. From froggish Demilich and Inquisition to Abominable Putridity to Bruce Dickinson, as long as it fits the music I'm cool with it, even the most generic pig squeals. Dani Filth's highs in his later career or Glen Benton's monotonous growls on his last Vital Remains album, however, are fucking annoying.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and Chuck on Death's final album. They made me want to gouge my own eyes out.

FINALLY, I find someone who feels the same way = )