metal and making lyrics unrecognizable

[flames]

Hello

I picked up Come Clarity a while ago and liked it, but I don't normally listen to straight metal so the style is quite new to me. Vocally come Clarity is not too bad because I can recognize about 50% of the lyrics but I got "Colony" and "Soundtrack to Your Escape" last week and I seriously have trouble making out more than 5% of the lyrics.

The lyrics to some of the songs that I found online exhibit a very high level of creative talent and writing, but I don't get if they are better than most of the mainstream stuff out there why do they hide what they're actually singing and make people hold the lyrics in front of them to actually listen to a song.

Is this just how metal is mean't to be? Any reason for doing this that someone who is not new to the genre can explain to me?

 

[Veenox]

Hi there!

You're obviously very new to metal so initially you're going to have a very hard time understanding the vocals. However, once you start listening to metal more often, you'll begin to notice that the lyrics are actually quite easy to understand. It's just a matter of adjusting to growled vocals, rather than the usual vocal styles present in most other music.

Happy listening!

 

[MECOSARIO]

Guitars dude !!!!...this shit is about awesome music and not about what a swedish dude with a very different life than mine talks about!!!

 

[flames]

Hi there!

You're obviously very new to metal so initially you're going to have a very hard time understanding the vocals. However, once you start listening to metal more often, you'll begin to notice that the lyrics are actually quite easy to understand. It's just a matter of adjusting to growled vocals, rather than the usual vocal styles present in most other music.

Happy listening!

Yeah I am quite new and can't decide yet whether it's my style or not. Musically, I like it. But the vocals do put me off sometimes, it may be because I'm not used to them as you said. How did you find out about metal music originally? If you also had this issue with vocals did you just try to keep listening closely until you got it?

 

[waif]

I don't normally listen to straight metal

Anyhow, that's what printing lyrics is for. Once you know what he's saying it isn't hard to understand. Stuff like Wormed, Barnes-era Cannibal Corpse, and tons of brutal death metal and goregrind has much harder to understand lyrics. Also, a lot of black metal is pretty incomprehensible, especially since the vocals are generally pushed way way back.

Now then...
Extreme vocals go back pretty far. Lemmy of motorhead sang pretty deep, but still clean. Tom Warrior of Celtic Frost was a big influence on a lot of extreme metal bands. Tom Araya of Slayer utilized a high shout not far from a scream. Early death metal bands like Morbid Angel and Death used vocals that had not yet fully crossed over into guttural, but were definitely extreme. Similarly, early black metal bands used a shrieking technique you can hear on stuff like Deathcrush by Mayhem. Eventually, you wind up with this basic breakdown:

Death metal usually uses deep growls

Brutal death metal uses what even deeper guttural grunts, sometimes alternating with pitch-shifted screams

Melodic Death metal general uses a higher register strangled growl, although some bands such as The Black Dahlia Murder and Paths of Possession use gutturals

Grindcore/Goregrind often uses pitch-shifted vocals to get a disgusting gurgling sound, absolutely indecipherable

Black metal generally uses raspy vocals, often pushed backward in the production. Also, sometimes deep clean vocals are used for narration.

so...if you listen to extreme metal you're gonna have trouble understanding the vocals

BTW, I'm not a metal historian, so I can't guarantee complete accuracy in my history lesson there...