Your favourite Borknagar vocalist

Your favourite Borknagar vocalist

  • Garm (Kristoffer Rygg)

    Votes: 8 15.7%
  • ICS Vortex (Simen Hestnaes)

    Votes: 24 47.1%
  • Vintersorg (Andreas Hedlund)

    Votes: 19 37.3%

  • Total voters
    51
As far as Garm in concerned, I think he is only a studio musician so I wouldn't call him 'the best rounded' member, as the only live videos I've seen of him from Ulver were atrocious. Besides, I might concede and say Garm was the best 'black metal' singer, but I would rather see Vortex sing non-metal anyways, like Opera, Acoustic and Folk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FhwuffdMuU

Garm just did a live show a couple of days ago.
 
although i like vortex the best overall, i give it to garm due to olden domain being my favorite Borknagar album, but this is a super tough choice because all 3 are among my favorite vocalists.
 

The video is not good to compare them. At all.

About the video:

Garm songs? sure, but he slays Simen and Mr V together, on both grim and clean vocals on those songs. He did it on studio, so...it's not fair.

On the other hand, I prefer 2nd to Mr V, he is more true to his vocals and at the same time respects a little more the original vocal lines, butchered by Simen (at least on The Dawn Of The End, where he's awful). Also Mr V's grim vocals actually sound black metal, while Simen is more on the death metal growling range.

-- o --

I think there's no right way to compare them, cause all has different vocal tones, techniques, range (Garm - very deep baritone vocals /later with extended range towards tenor, Vintersorg -less deep, more versatile baritone w/some extended range to tenor, Simen deep tenor, strong on high, very weak on low notes), and more important, totally different styles.

While I think the only way to measure them as singers is just our personal opinion, I think it's more fair to choose 2 or 3 Borknagar songs from each guy where their vocals shine the most and "try" to make an "objective" analysis.

As an example why I prefer Andreas over Vortex and Garm I'll mention 3 songs, one per album:

1- Inherit the Earth. I love the choirs that Andreas does a lot more than Simen and Garm's ones. He sounds very epic on this one, specially on the "Past, present and future" part of the song.

2- Cycled. Mr V is the guy who brought emotion to Borknagar's vocals. His grim vocals are awesome, and his clean ones are really versatile. Soft spoken, low singing, high pitched chorus, he does everything! where he shine the most is on the sentence "The boulder rolls heavily - is it in vain?"...it gives me chills every time I hear it.

3-Grains. My favourite song from Origin. Mr V really put his heart into singing (and Lars is marvellous too, as we can hear on White, my 2nd choice of the album). I dunno how this can sound, but that song sometimes - on a certain mood - touches me badly, more than a lot of doom metal/ambient stuff.

a 4th track worth of mention would be Gods Of My World.

Anyway, the 3 guys are incredible and Borknagar maybe is the band with the best vocals on their career as a whole.

pd:
My Fav Simen songs are Colossus, Oceans Rise and Winter Millenium (Universal as a 4th choice).

My fav Garm songs are The Eye of Oden, The Winterway and The Dawn Of The End (Vintervredets Sjelesagn as my 4th choice).
 
simen is unlistenable in those songs from the video...
i've never thought that vintersorg was a great live vocalist but at least you're able to recognise which song he is singing!

i've some problems also with his latest way of singing.
he has a really beautiful voice but i think he is going beyond his possibilities.
he has a warm and full voice when singing low-middle tones, while it becomes stretched and weak in higher tones.
in my opiniom the album where he is perfect is cosmic genesis (just listen to the enigmatic spirit) not too low not too high....just..PERFECT!
 
I just really liked Garm's tone.

However, the reason why I like Mr. V a lot more than Vortex is the emotion he puts in the singing. I listen to the other 2 and don't hear much, but Mr. V is very passionate about it.
Garm is simply my favourite because I like his rustic clean vocals, very viking and epic. I also like his screams more than the others.


Vortex was good for Borknagar for what he did, no one else could really take his place on those songs.
Speaking of taking places, have any of you heard Vortex sing any of the Garm era songs? It's not too bad, but he screams in some different places than Garm did...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erhvqlz7er0&feature=channel_page[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0YyiJN12iQ&feature=channel[/ame]
 
But Garm's voice was not over produced with Borknagar, or on Shadows of the Sun... The Sham Mirrors, yes, I agree it does sound to electronic.

Oh and I hate Dimmu Borgir, so pretty much anything they do to me sounds like crap... They ruined Vortex's voice by far.
 
Uh, Vintersorg singing simen era songs live is really bad. I mean really.

yes i know, i've seen the wacken concert's video....

but sadly there are not so many singers that are really good live.
i generally don't like live albums, i'm a great fan of concerts, i usually go from 10 to 20 concerts per year....but i love being there, seeing the show, tasting the music with my ears.... i don't like live cds or dvds. i've never bought one, neighter of my fav groups.
i went to see agalloch some months ago, and even if they are one of the bands i like mostly now, i've to say that hauhgm was totally out of tune for all the concert.
i can accept this if i'm there, because the concert has is own atmosphere and doesn't need to be flawless, it was also the first time for me seeing agalloch live, and has been one of the most intense musical experiences i've ever made, but honestly he had serious problems with intonation (maybe he could not hear himself?!?).
i was happy and satisfied with the concert, but if i wans't there i would never listen to it on a cd, i want a perfect product if i'm going to listen it in my stereo, that's why i don't buy live cds.

another example i can give you are falconer. i like mathias blad's voice. i think it is very beautiful and warm, an incredible full timber, his voice is what transforms (for me of course) an ordinary and a bit mediocre powermetal band (musically speaking) in a folkishmetal band that i like quite a lot.
but i've seen the videos from wacken and i tought "whaaaaat?????" :OMG:
he was totally without voice and had big big problems with high notes...i was so disappointed :erk:

 
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The Falconer video was terrible!!! :rofl:DD and not just the vocals! the guitars make some mistakes here and there too!

I don't hear power metal, except of them and a couple more of bands...At least they are not so bad as Dragonforce :rofl:

@The Archaic: On live shows there're a lot of things that can make you perform bad. On big stages like Wacken those problems are the less, but still there's a chance to happen. Some bands have $$ to put a flawless equipment/people to sound always great, others not, or prefer to sound more naturally using less FX and such.

I agree to some extent about the Vortex's live performance now with Dimmu - downtuning the songs btw. On the past he wasn't so great. On Arcturus he wasn't flawless live, even on Shipwrecked in Oslo, where some vocals were re-recorded or altered on the final product. On inferno 2005 he wasn't great at all, but he is more solid than V live generally speaking.

note: Even I prefer Oyvind live for Arcturus over Simen.
 
I don't hear power metal, except of them and a couple more of bands...At least they are not so bad as Dragonforce :rofl:

me too.
i discovered them just because the guitarist is the same of mithotyn :)
i listend to them and thought "not so bad for being power"
 
I also think we're being a little harsh here... we can't really judge unless we do it ourselves so I dunno. Just as an observer I am giving my opinions, if they're coming off a bit strong to any members of the band/board my apologies.

Being honest it's not to being harsh IMO. Here you can find some real opinions instead the usual "OMGZ - insert singer name here - he is God!!"; " he is the best of the world!" and some other comment, of the worst kind.

About the power metal bands, recommend me some, altough I know the genre and most of them are the too way similar to each other, like the 'bagpipe' kind of folk metal bands (except In Extremo) - shit, I hate bagpipes :rofl:

About Vortex... the Inferno bootleg is not good. I found better the Metalmania material. Shipwrecked still kick ass, at least the final edition is near flawless. I have a bootleg from France where he did a better job than Inferno.

I have 2 full concerts with Oyvind and he did a great job IMO. The songs from AHS and The Sham Mirrors were really great, specially Nightmare Heaven and Kinetic (also they played To Thou Who Dwellest..!!!). He was kinda weak on the LMI repertoire, where Vortex is stronger.

We'll have the chance to hear Mr V, Vortex and - hopefully - Lars on the same song, so that song will be a fantastic chance to compare and enjoy they voices.

Someone knows if Lars played live with Ásmegin? I wonder if there's a live bootleg with him.
 
@The Archaic: Thanx for the recommendations, but I know those bands quite well and only Symphony X is kinda interesting. BG-SA, Stratovarius, Rhapsody and such are very similar to each other and I don't like that style too much (specially in Sonata and Rhapsody). Kamelot has some decent stuff.

I found a good power metal band some time ago with a little celtic and progressive influence, called Wuthering Heights. They are, in my opinion, far better than the 'power metal classics'. Lost Horizon is pretty decent too.

About 'My Domain', I think Simen will do the lead vocals, but I don't think that he'll sing on more songs. I wonder how Simen will sound on the song.
 
I found a good power metal band some time ago with a little celtic and progressive influence, called Wuthering Heights. They are, in my opinion, far better than the 'power metal classics'. Lost Horizon is pretty decent too.

You might like Wintersun....



A Vortex solo album? That would actually be kind of cool.
 
I know Wintersun and Ensiferum already and yes, they are more of my liking (on the Ensiferum case, just the 1st album which is very epic...when Jari left the band, it lost that viking epic feel, now they are more into folk influenced power metal for me).

Vortex said he had tons of written material , but Dimmu keeps him busy all the time... it's such a pity.