Funny you should mention that - we just discussed that last time we spoke. They had used a microphone at one point that refined Johan's voice so much that the band felt it came out too clean, and didn't sound like Johan...They then had to "muddy it up" to make it sound like him again, the way he sounds naturally, live if you will. It was one of those fancy mikes that takes out distortion, I think, but don't quote me (I was too busy beaming at my brother to pay attention). He does have a very deep, powerful voice that most of us cannot duplicate in "normal speaking voice" as you call it. When he speaks in person, he sounds very much like he sounds in the beginning of "1000 years of oppression", if that gives you any idea. It comes out sounding wrong when you clean it up artificially, like one would have to do with, say, Brittney Spears or someone like that, to "prettyfy" the voice. Some mikes do that automatically. I think the band aims at sounding as much as possible like they do live, without distortion and stuff, so now they're wanting to use some new techniques to get that sound in the studio. The studio environment is very different from a live environment though, the mikes don't work the same way and are set up to cut out backgroundnoises and to "prettify", they have those fancy "spitshields" on them and are mounted so that singers like Johan are prevented from handling and moving the mike back and forth like one can during a live show. You cannot yell full blast into one of those things and have it come out the same as a live show mike, and a really good studiomike would pick up on the hand holdning it if you were to hold it. Makes for a whole different thing, so if anything, they'd have to bring Johan's voice back to how it is supposed to sound, as a differnce to how it came out sounding after the fancy mike corrected his natural bellow. Shit that's hard to explain... it's a different kind of thing to make a voice sound like something it isn't, rather than making it sound like it really is supposed to be. Some people sound like shit when they sing without distortion because they can't sing and they've had their tracks distorted to make them sound good, that they sound nothing like they do in real life. With Johan it's the opposite. Does that make sense?
