My one suggestion has to do with the growlies. Their use in this song is very much like in Blur the Lines - the chorus gets underlied by a slow drawn out growl of a couple of words. Have you experimented with making those growls more punctuated rather than drawn out? For example, you could make "parasites" three distinct growls "Pa-ra-SITES" instead of one long blended "paaaraaasiiiites". And make "decay" two sharp syllables where the last one morphs into almost a maniacal growl, "De CAYYYYYYYYY" rather than "deeeeecaaaaay". I have no idea if any of that makes sense, but it might be a way to add more energy and vigor to the chorus (not that it really needs it, of course). My personal impression is that the growls as they are almost seem to sap a bit of energy rather than injecting more. But that's where everyone else can tell me I'm crazy, because what the hell do I know about death vox anyway??
Wow!, Thanks, Ken. That's some of the most educated/useful constructive criticism that we have received! I guess that's why they call you "The Professor"
When you didn't post your thoughts originally, then didn't mention anything when I saw you at Powerfest, I just figured that you hated the song
Seriously, I appreciate your comments and pretty much agree with you. I am the one that added the growls to our songs as a way to make our music a little more agressive and set us apart from a certain un-named band (that starts with an "N"
) that everyone says we rip off too much.
I know that I have a bad habit of holding out growls too long... The funny part is that the only reason is that truely "enjoy" doing it. I love the way the growl rumbles in my chest and throat. Then, Tony started doubling my growls in the studio and the way that they aren't distict and defined enough does tend to, as you say, "sap a bit of energy rather than injecting more". This is definately somthing we are working on...
Also, we are experimenting with some new tunings and after John doing those fill in show with Twelfth Gate, he has actually developed a pretty wicked growl himself. This is cool and in a way makes my backups a little less necessary. Now, I am trying to find places to use them where they will have more impact instead of justing being there for the sake of "being heavy".
Thanks again for the input. We are really getting excited about writing new material. I will try to put up the link for the other demo song ("Chaos Bringer") next week....
