20 FAVORITE EXTREME METAL VOCALISTS
As promised, here is a mini-list of my "20 Favorite Extreme Metal Vocalists". I was originally open to including some of these entries in my regular "100 Favorite Singers" list, but since I came up with more than enough for that one, I figured that a better idea and fairer representation would be to rank them in their own countdown. It really would have been the same as including MCs in my list, since cookie monster growling/screaming is most often as far removed from melodious crooners as Tu Pac is.
The first time I heard Anaal Nathrakh it most certainly woke me the fuck up. Mainly because it was "Pandemonic Hyperblast", which is probably the most ludicrously heavy song ever recorded. Dave Hunt can actually do far more than just sound like he is trying to shred his voice out of his body though, as his Ihsahn-esque clean singing attests to.
The silliest vocals in all of metal? Pretty solid bet right here. I prefer not to take metal the least bit seriously so Macabre's Corporate Death's absolutely ridiculous vocal delivery just tickles me to no end. I really cannot describe what the hell this guy sounds like. One truly has to hear it to believe it. Even after you hear it, you still probably will not believe it.
I have been a Napalm Death fan as long as I have been a death metal fan and that band's longest serving vocalist Barney Greenway has always gotten the job done quite nicely. Napalm's chunk-tacular riffs are that much heavier with Greenway barking and roaring right over them and the dude is relentlessly running all over the place live. You would never would know the guy was in his mid-forties already.
Possibly the most well respected man in death metal history, I am actually a bigger fan of the late Chuck Shulinder's writing and guitar playing than his singing. His vocals also evolved from album to album. Barely out of his teens when Death's debut Screaming Bloody Gore was released, Chuck eventually transformed into one of the foremost screamers the genre has ever had. Yes I know that I also put "Painkiller" to represent Rob Halford on my other favorite singers list, but I have go with Death's cover here as well since Shulinder's ball-exploding wail was never better represented.
Lamb of God's Randy Blythe has improved dramatically since the band's early days. Burn the Priest and New American Gospel Randy pretty much had a, (as Chris Adler put it), "low, medium, and high" range. Blythe more often that not just sounded like what a robot would scream like. See Meshuggah's Jens Kidman. Nowadays though, Randy can go everywhere with his voice, the act of pitching his screams in itself being most impressive indeed.
Morbid Angel's post-David Vincent returning shenanigans have been rather, um, confusing. I am using rather kind words here. Also at some point, Vincent became comfortable enough in his sexuality to dress like this. Yet regardless of how unintentionally ridiculous the man often is, Vincent undoubtedly delivers in the death metal vocals department and he is one of the better enunciaters too.
For most Cryptopsy fans, there is but one frontman for the group and it be Lord Worm. None of the band's other vocalists over the years sound anything like him, but then again no metal vocalists out there have EVER sounded anything like him. Rhythmless, gargling, barking lows sprinkled with random pig squeals is pretty much the guy's chosen style. So for a band like Cryptopsy whose the musical equivalent of ADD, this was quite a glorious fit.
Mr. Glen Benton or as some may call him, "that dude with the fucking upside-down cross branded into his forehead" could be consider the defining cookie monster vocalist. He is pretty much what you would play for someone who has never heard death metal singing before. Deicide has been a staple DM band since the genre was formed and Benton has remained highly consistent. He also layers screams on top of growls better than most.
When it comes to live metal vocalists, Frank Mullen may be my absolute favorite. I have seen the mighty Suffocation thrice so far and this guy is a goddamn riot on stage. Yes, that picture is a perfect example of what Mullen does, oh I donno, 99% percent of the time on stage. Yet his Brooklyn wise-guy ranting in between songs is also something that I could also listen to all day. As far as the man's actual powers behind the mic, they are quite excellent and have been since Suffocation's debut. Anybody else fronting this band would simply be all wrong.
When I met Erik Rutan after a Hate Eternal show which was possibly the most brutal show I had ever seen mind you, I simply said "You look like you're fucking possessed on stage". I got a laugh and a "Thanks man, that's exactly how I feel up there" from him, which is quite awesome. Seriously though, look at that guy. The exact sound you think he is making is the exact sound that he is making. The dude's lyrics, for what it is worth, are also great.
The only singer to make both lists of mine should not be surprising since Mikael Akerfeldt is rather famous for his excellence as both a singer and as a growler/screamer. Amazingly, Akerfeldt's beautiful clean vocals have improved just as well as his brutal ones and how the guy can bounce between them both so effortlessly live is indeed admirable. He has all but completely left his extreme singing behind now, but we got hours of Opeth and some Bloodbath too that we can bump for the rest of our days.
Speaking of vocalists that just get better and better, Behemoth is arguably at the top of their game right now. Very soon to drop The Satanist, (whose "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" video is everything music videos should be), their last opus Evangelion was their finest hour thus far I would say. Mainman Nergal, (Adam Darski), did have a sock-in-the-mouth style on Demigod, an otherwise excellent album, but his Morbid Angel-inspired vocals are now just as stellar as his band.
Another incredibly consistent death metal outfit, Immolation has been on a non-stop roll for years now. Since previous kings Morbid Angel have kind of been stinking up the joint as of late, Immolation has long since taken the throne as the premier hell death metal band, (us metal nerds and our sub-sub genres, amiright?). Ross Dolan is the band's long-standing vocalists, lyricist, and bassist and he is utterly perfect at his job. Plus the fact that he talks like Joe Pecci when he is not spewing forth his cookie monster evilness just makes him that much more awesome.
Speaking of Morbid Angel and speaking of evil, we now come to Mr. Steve Tucker. MA's second and superior vocalist only appeared on three albums with the group yet even with just those, the man proved himself as a superior vocalist in the field. The entire Gateways to Annihilation album just oozes evil and Tucker's performance on it is one for the books. Nader Sadek, (Tucker's supergroup with Cryptopsy's Flo Mounier and ex-Mayhem's Blasphemer), is damn good shit as well. Also for the record, I saw this guy knock a fan the fuck out who walked into his tour bus after a show once. True and hilarious story.
In the realm of Norwegian black metal, there is hardly a finer musician than Emperor's Ihsahn, (Vegard Sverre Tveitan). The mighty Emperor long stopped putting out studio albums, yet Ihsahn has had a flawless run of solo releases, (five to date), that have taken his music into more progressive and still fantastic territory. As a vocalist, Ihsahn has utilized his trademark scream as well as his operatic, King Diamond-esque clean vocals throughout his career. This makes him one of the more dynamically skilled extreme metal singers there is.
Simply put, John Tardy is one of a kind. When Obituary unleashed their debut Slowly We Rot back in 1989, there had not been anyone who dared do with their voice what Tardy did with his. He was twenty-one then and at forty-five years young at this writing, he still sounds like he is being torn apart by lions every time he steps up to the mic and basically blows the roof off of the place. Obituary is certainly a contender for the heaviest band of all time and if not for Tardy roaring at the top of his groin throughout their catalog, such a title could scarcely still be there's.
First off, how awesome is that picture? Secondly, Mayhem's sixth, (I think?), madman to take the vocal helm appropriately dubbed himself Maniac, (Sven Erik Kristiansen), and he is easily one of the most outrageous vocalists that extreme metal has ever had. Yes he was prone to doing shit like in that picture on stage, but Mayhem's most "famous" vocalist Dead did far worse. What sets Maniac apart are two things. His bizarre preacher talking is one, but another is when he lets loose by screaming like a cat from hell torturing a pig from hell with a chainsaw from hell. I for one cannot get enough of it.
At the Gates have gone down in history as making the greatest metal album of all time, Slaughter of the Soul. Riffs, songs, production, and of course extreme vocals have never nor will ever produce a more perfect result. Tomas Lindberg's blood-curdling screams are monstrously powerful. This guy could wake up a fucking cemetery. I indeed lost my voice within thirty seconds of trying to scream along while seeing At the Gates' reunion tour, which did not stop me from continuing to do so throughout the rest of it. Besides Lock-Up and his one-off the Crown appearance on Crowned In Terror, I sadly have not enjoyed any of Lindberg's other side-projects but still, the man's vocal legacy is surely sound.
I almost put Phil Anselmo in my "normal" singers list since he pitches his screams so perfectly that they often do not sound like screams at all. More like aggressive singing. With a career running four decades now, Anselmo may very well have the finest range of any metal singer ever. His Rob Halford-esque power metal wailing in the early Motley Pantera Crue days quickly gave way to the best thrash metal scream anyone has ever had, which in itself eases effortlessly into a southern blues bellow at the drop of a hat. Anselmo's large array of side projects are highly uneven, (there is the awesome that is Down and the pure shit that is Superjoint Ritual, case in point), but still, his place would be just as high on this list if Pantera was the only band that he ever joined.
I really have to stop having such anti-climactic people/albums/movies top al ofl my lists, because really, c'mon. Corpsegrinder cannot be topped. This man is a pile of metal meat. Chris Barnes, who is awesome mind you, I have to say simply got his ass handed to him when George here took the Cannibal Corpse vocal mantle on 1996's Vile. From the opening high scream on "Devoured By Vermin" until today and counting, this man has consistently delivered the best extreme metal vocals ever heard on album to album. Live, shit, he is a force of nature unto himself. He headbangs so ferociously that they need to make up a different word for it, (the man's neck is I believe four feet wide). Ferociously fast, surprisingly clear, and just as powerful low as he is glass breakingly high, yeah, Corpsgrinder is the goddamn man.
No comments:
Post a Comment