Death Metal Vocals

A

Agen0

New member
Hi,

I've been working on these harsh kind of vocals for a little more than a year now. About two days ago I had one of those "eureka" moments where I thought I had finally figured out how to do these vocals properly. I used to do them from my throat. It was uncomfortable and the sounded pretty damn bad honestly. This time I think I am doing a much better job, but I have a tendency to delude myself into thinking I'm doing something good when I am actually not.

So with that said I'm here to seek critique and opinions on how I'm doing.

This is a cover of a famous song by Opeth. It's called Ghost of Petition. I got the backing track off youtube so there are no original vocals in the back. It's just me. I did a little EQ tweaking and added the same kind of reverb, that they used in the original track. Compression and a noise gate. That's it.

Playing: ghost.mp3 - picosong

Also a section of Deliverance:
Playing: Untitled.mp3 - picosong

Thanks for any feedback.
 
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The vocals sound alright to me.

It might help to post an isolated track too since that's what you really want people critiquing.

The really important thing with these sort of vox is that you're not hurting yourself. How does your throat feel after an extended session of this with the new technique?
 
Yeah that's a good idea. I might re-record them and post without the music later.

I am fully aware that I need to be careful. I feel absolutely no pain of strain whatsoever during or after sessions. Although my voice is just a tad bit "tired" right now after a few sessions today. That's about it. I'll cut down on it a little and see if I just need to get used to them.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
Ha ha! It does sound pretty silly, but that's why you bury them in FX and guitars! :D
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And that's why you rarely hear anyone making acoustic brutal death metal. It just... doesn't work. :facepalm: :D

The lyrics are also over the top tryhard evilness, but hey, they were whatever satanic nonsense I could come up with on the spot. I didn't really plan any of this haha.
 
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I'm no expert but I've heard some cookie monster metal when a friend of mine used to listen to these bands a bit.
You sound pretty good. Doesn't sound try hard. I would hire you to play in my never-will-exist growly band.

Maybe FoulPhil will show up, I think he's the cookie monster expert.
 
It sounds really good it's fine how it is.

I can totally hear the harmonizer on all the tracks even the one that's supposed to be:

Raw vocals with no effects or even equalization (getting pretty unimpressive and silly at this point, lol):
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Not that it matters the vocals are fine, if that's how you like them. It takes a long time to figure out how to get different Death Metal sounds. I only use delay on mine and will harmonize some sections by recording low, mid and high vocals. It sounds better than using an effect/vocal processor.

 
Thanks for you reply. I'm not even sure what a harmonizer is. Is that some kind of pitch shifting thing? In any case that should be the raw audio I got from my mic. It's an SP condenser mic running through an M-Audio FastTrack MK-II. Maybe Ableton Live adds some sort of effect by default in the background? That would be pretty odd behavior imo. I think you might be referring to the parts where I double track. I record the same scream twice - usually one higher and the other lower in pinch and then mix them together. Forgot to mention that.

Cool song btw. I'll take some notes on your sound.

In the meantime I think I've gotten my lows better.

Playing: ghost2.mp3 - picosong

My main issue right now is that I run out of breath damn fast. I cannot do that part in one go. Perhaps it is a matter of learning how to use the airflow efficiently.
 
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Agen0 said:
Thanks for you reply. I'm not even sure what a harmonizer is. Is that some kind of pitch shifting thing? In any case that should be the raw audio I got from my mic. It's an SP condenser mic running through an M-Audio FastTrack MK-II. Maybe Ableton Live adds some sort of effect by default in the background? That would be pretty odd behavior imo. I think you might be referring to the parts where I double track. I record the same scream twice - usually one higher and the other lower in pinch and then mix them together. Forgot to mention that.

Cool song btw. I'll take some notes on your sound.

In the meantime I think I've gotten my lows better.

Playing: ghost2.mp3 - picosong

My main issue right now is that I run out of breath damn fast. I cannot do that part in one go. Perhaps it is a matter of learning how to use the airflow efficiently.
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It's pretty good doubling then because it sounds like a harmonizer. I can't get my doubles too tight. I'm really bad it doubling vocals, but it ends up sounding cool anyways lol.

If your main focus is on playing live you have to pace your breathing and not expend as much energy to complete a jumble of words. Use shorter bursts of vocals with time enough to take a breath.

I don't play live, so I pretty much just punch in and out if I'm having a hard time.
 
Yeah when I tried doubling for the first time I was actually quite surprised how cool it sounded:

This is one of my first attempts over a track. The track is from Whitechapel. There was a very low growl in that spot originally too, but mostly you can hear my dubbing over it:
Playing Alone In The Morgue by Whitechapel - picosong

Oh and I've taken the advice of not trying to sound like another singer (Akerfeldt in this case) and find my own sound. I think I'm starting to find it. My growls seem to sound the best and fullest when they are more "airy" so that's what I'm going for right now.

Playing Opeth (the file has the wrong name)

I can hold the growls for longer now. A trick seems to be pushing with my diaphragm instead or my ribcage and bending my back backward a little. I'm still nowhere close to being able to do this take in one go though. Not even sure if it's possible. When I look at Opeth live I can hear that he doesn't do his growls nearly as long as in the studio either. Listening to some acapella rips I can hear the cuts too. So I guess the professionals also record parts separately.
 
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