There is a spectrum known as emotion, in it, there's a diverse range; ranging from happiness, sadness, desperation, anger, and many others if you want to get into the technicalities of their definitions.
If you follow it closely, clean vocals represent a sense of calm or hope, as opposed to growling vocals representing anger, desperatism, and other darker themes. And that's when it clicked, growling is not an immature form of some punk-wannabe assholes trying to be different in the name of idiot-teenage rebellion; it is as valid a form of art as Beethoven's 5th symphony.
Back to metal, as a musician, you have to experience it first hand. I write music with growls, screams, and clean vocals, all the same, because I am trying to emulate the spectrum of emotion as I see fit. If you growl, you will feel the gut-wrenching beauty of hate, anger, desperatism, and depression. Anders hits a point close to a ghostly-gasp in some of his vocals, close to his voice cracking while screaming, and it makes chills run up my spine.
So I conclude that to think growls are the sounds of men taking shits while playing heavy music, is a very naive decision to make, and is coming from a close-minded and ignorant perspective; or at least it is to say that it's uncreative and false. I could understand saying "i don't like it", but I can't understand saying "it diminishes the music and would be better if it wasn't that way"; that's just arrogant.
