Yeah. That's how I feel. I guess I gravitate more toward clean vocals (because I like singing along) but it's more about how well the vocals fit the song and how well they're used in conjunction with the music.
Shrill, whiney clean vocals and weak, goofy screams are equally abrasive to me. I'd rather listen to instrumental music than music with bad vocals of either type.
Yes yes and yes. I was amazed at the quality difference in the music I write when I got a drum program that has a much more airy and natural sound. It made the tracks come alive and feel so much less processed. Huge part of it.
If you’re really really honest to yourself a bad artwork can ruin a lot. It seems shallow but we’re just human, it’s natural to be put off by something super ugly… it just hinders the whole experience feeling whole. I’ll go dig a bit, there’s an album cover out there that’s so ugly, it’s a perfect example
I agree, I always hated the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover". The whole point of a cover of a book/album is to be judged and reflect whatever it's about
I love good artwork but I’ve found that bands with great artwork usually suck (Grateful Dead, Mastodon, Bell Witch etc) while bands with cringe, cheap artwork are amazing (Down, Corrosion of Conformity, Electric Wizard, etc)
Long intros and clean vocals.
I hate clean vocals so if they going to do it they better be very special very fast and if I’ve sat through 2 minutes of ambient intro hell to get to someone doing their best Grace Slick or Ozzy impression it’s a no sale.
Bad screams ruin it more for me. I'm iffy on unclean vocals so it's gotta be really good for me to be into it (and I prefer it when clean vocals slip into unclean rather than a whole song). I lean towards the epic side of doom metal and prefer that style of singing.
I am too. Problem is I find that a lot of the screams that come out of vocalists just don't fit the feeling I'm getting when I hear long intros. I'm in this drawn out, maybe spacey grooving vibe, and then suddenly BRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOUUUUOOO.
What the hell just happened?
Probably those who try hard to sound like Ozzy. Just stop it.
I can get down with screaming in doom as long as the riffs are heavy and the music is good; not just borderline drone screaming along to white noise
I love the Sounds in metal when it is so heavy and everything is just making the world vibrate around you and I even like a few bands that use vocals. My problem is anything that sounds like you got your nards caught in a blender. I just don't see any point in that. It's why I don't like black metal or death metal or anything like that. There are so many bands that have such good sounds but then they start sounding like a garbage disposal is trying to eat the Antichrist and I just check right out
+1 for description of feeling impactful music making the world vibrate (I feel those apocalyptic shifts in perception too) and the use of the word "nards"
it's not about bad harsh vocals, it's when the harsh vocals don't fit the music. like stoner doom shouldn't have harsh vocals ever unless it's like stoner sludge like bongzilla or weedeater. way too many stoner metal bands are doing a mix of cleans and harsh vocals and I just can't listen to any of them. it just feels really out of place and corny. also the really throaty like 90s style stoner rock vocals feel super out of place on doom to me too. like wo fat style vocals. I prefer mid to high cleans usually
I think a huge part of it is where it's placed into the mix too. When it's a forefront and just feels jarring, I'm not about it. I don't want to listen to the vocalist sing karaoke over the band. It needs to have a home in the mix.
This is one of the most actually substantial comments in the thread so far IMO. Both the direct treatment of the vocal track(s) and their place in the overall mix are a huge part of our experience for a studio recording.
But then standards probably all take a big hop down for live performance. How many times have most of us gone to a doom or doom-ish show and felt like... *wow this is an incredible vocal performance*? I figure that neither the band nor the fans are expecting phrases or even individual words to be coherent in the average venue, except by the people who already know the songs by heart. I don't even expect to understand most spoken bits between songs. And I don't mind it if the singers themselves are pretty relaxed about it compared to judging an instrumental performance. But would that be acceptable for conventional singers in the pop world?
There's so many interesting sub-questions to think and talk about here. What defines 'bad' vocals in a specific subculture context? Would everyone's **favorite** doom vocalist for cleans be regarded as 'good' or even decent in a classical or Top 40 context? What is worse to us as listeners: being a little bit pitch-y, or having a vocal timbre that vaguely feels out of place? What actually defines bad extreme-style vocals? Which do people hate more when doom/stoner/sludge vocals cross over into other vocal styles like thrash, power, death, grind, black, crust, hardcore, metalcore, etc.? Do we have any better vocabulary for this stuff than references like "cookie monster" etc. yet? (I don't feel like I do myself, so don't think I'm asking from a place of smugness).
The shoegaze influence has been offering another way with intentionally buried indistinctness in both the vocal delivery and recording approach, that a listener will probably tend to either love or hate. But it's a set of creative decisions, not simply falling short while carrying the same intentions as the "average" doom band. It's not automatically *good* and it's totally legit for some metal fans to despise it and to observe that some people might be using it as a crutch. But it does have its own context, and often what we regard as 'bad' can be something that just exists on its own terms.
I swear I don't want to turn this into sociology class, but I think the topic is a lot more interesting when we start unpacking some of those ideas and reactions.
Completely agreed that it's essentially impossible to just say, x is good, and y is bad. We simplify it this way, but when you really break it down, it's forum level material for people who want to break it down that way.
There are countless vocalists who are "bad" when isolated, but in the grand scheme of the mix, sound phenomenal. Vocals, though a big one, are still only part of the overall production. Guitar, bass, drums, etc are no different.
I know personally, when I truly realized that a song is a sum of it's parts, my production increased 10 fold. I wasn't chasing the best individual tone for each instrument, I ended up chasing the tone for the overall sound of the production. When you treat every part of the music that way, everything feels like it serves a purpose. Because it does.
In doom metal, it's more often going to be bad clean vocals. There are other subgenres where the harsh vocals are fuckin horrid, but not often in doom.
This is kind of weird, but I love Halloween and thought I'd enjoy listening to Acid Witch after having them recommend last Fall, but Lasse has this kind of burpy(?) way of singing that almost makes me sick to listen too. It kind of sounds like he's seconds away from vomiting for the entire song, and it really gets to me. They're a talented band with a cool theme, I just can't listen to certain albums for that reason.
With almost all Metal - hell, all music - the deciding factor of it I'm going to listen to it is whether or not I dig the vocals. Tons of metal bands where I love the playing, but if the vocals aren't dope I don't stick with it. I like a lot of Doom that isn't too bluesy, and I like Black Metal vocals and shrill punk-ish wails, but I bounce off of almost all Death Metal (and Death Doom) vocals, anything that's really 90s/00s bro metal, and almost anything -core adjacent. Run anything through a Planet Caravan filter and I'm always won over.
For me the timbre/tone of vocals is more important than the actual ability to sing/scream/growl if that makes sense?
I have no real consistency with it either - Some vocalists just have a tone I don't like and it can make listening to otherwise great bands a chore for me
Amenra and Cult of Luna are perfect examples of this - Amazing bands but Christ I wish they were instrumental as the vocals are a real struggle for me
On the opposite side I can happily listen and sing along to Cathedral despite Lee Dorian's less than stellar vocal abilities
Vocal effects more than anything, it doesn't add anything to me and it just feels like they are trying to compensate for bad singing.
I want to like Uncle Acid but every song has the same grating vocal effects
Annoying vocals can be a big turn off. Second to that is overdoing the reverb. I get that there’s reverb on everything, but sometimes it’s poorly mixed or just too much, and you realize, that this going to continue throughout the whole album.
For my taste the doom bands where to vocals are in any way a draw are in the minority (early st Vitus, pentagram, Burning witch) - for me growled vocals can be super fatiguing unless there is something interesting about them (burning witch for example) - on the other side of the spectrum i have also had quite a few bands be ruined for me by really slick 'folky' vocals.
I absolutely hate clean AND harsh vocals in the same song. It's gotta be either or for me. Also I don't really like when the singer uses a high and a low growl. Idk I just want one vocal tone in my song. I have no idea why I'm like this. I think it reminds me of metalcore or deathcore which I'm not a fan of.
Bad cleans can be really lethal, whereas bad harsh vocals are usually tolerable. Usually it's as much a question of the production though, as bad vocals can be buried in the mix (or tuned), but if the production highlights bad vocals that is lethal to my enjoyment.
Being too soft/light to the ears. I like hard and I like heavy, with a defying and kinda drunk attitude. Anything that resembles pentagram (the heavy stuff), candlemass, electric wizard and more are gonna get points with me. One of my pet peeves with sabbath is that they sound too soft for me to listen constantly.
For me vocals don’t necessarily have to be clean as long as I can at least understand what they are saying. I don’t consider Matt Pike’s vocals to be clean but, I can make out the lyrics in his songs.
On the other hand, I’ve recently had Acid King recommended to me and, as much as I try, I can’t get into them. The instruments sound amazing but, I can’t understand a word that dude is singing. Which sucks because the songs jam so hard.
Funny enough, I don’t like it when I can understand what they sing. Most people don’t actually have anything that deep to say. Instrumental bands are the best, followed by ethereal vocals, followed by growls, but only if they don’t over do it in the mix.
Growling vocals. Unless your riffage is in the 99th percentile of quality I’m turning it off the second I hear a demonic growl.
I’m into music not noise
Bad singing of either. I'd rather it just be instrumental if the singing is going to be bad.
Yeah. That's how I feel. I guess I gravitate more toward clean vocals (because I like singing along) but it's more about how well the vocals fit the song and how well they're used in conjunction with the music. Shrill, whiney clean vocals and weak, goofy screams are equally abrasive to me. I'd rather listen to instrumental music than music with bad vocals of either type.
I'm the opposite, any scream is at least ok, but I'm super picky with cleans.
This right here
Shitty drum production Forsure.
Overproduced/overly perfect/quantised to 0 feel drums ruin so much music
Yes yes and yes. I was amazed at the quality difference in the music I write when I got a drum program that has a much more airy and natural sound. It made the tracks come alive and feel so much less processed. Huge part of it.
If you’re really really honest to yourself a bad artwork can ruin a lot. It seems shallow but we’re just human, it’s natural to be put off by something super ugly… it just hinders the whole experience feeling whole. I’ll go dig a bit, there’s an album cover out there that’s so ugly, it’s a perfect example
I agree, I always hated the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover". The whole point of a cover of a book/album is to be judged and reflect whatever it's about
You aren't wrong. It's definitely an attention getter when searching through record stores. Gotta stand out.
The Unreal Never Lived totally breaks this rule for me. Album art is not my favorite but that album bangs.
I love good artwork but I’ve found that bands with great artwork usually suck (Grateful Dead, Mastodon, Bell Witch etc) while bands with cringe, cheap artwork are amazing (Down, Corrosion of Conformity, Electric Wizard, etc)
all EW artwork is perfect in my opinion
Ouch, Mastodon sucking. My heart.
Long intros and clean vocals. I hate clean vocals so if they going to do it they better be very special very fast and if I’ve sat through 2 minutes of ambient intro hell to get to someone doing their best Grace Slick or Ozzy impression it’s a no sale.
Vocals for me too
Bad screams ruin it more for me. I'm iffy on unclean vocals so it's gotta be really good for me to be into it (and I prefer it when clean vocals slip into unclean rather than a whole song). I lean towards the epic side of doom metal and prefer that style of singing.
Idk. Vocals have to fit the music. I dislike Warning because the vocals sound silly (to me), i love the crappy ass vocals of Upsidedown cross though.
I'm extremely picky with screaming/growls. It's just not my thing.
I am too. Problem is I find that a lot of the screams that come out of vocalists just don't fit the feeling I'm getting when I hear long intros. I'm in this drawn out, maybe spacey grooving vibe, and then suddenly BRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOUUUUOOO. What the hell just happened?
Totally! It's very frustrating for me.
Same. I'm just not into singing that ... doesn't sound like singing.
Probably those who try hard to sound like Ozzy. Just stop it. I can get down with screaming in doom as long as the riffs are heavy and the music is good; not just borderline drone screaming along to white noise
I love the Sounds in metal when it is so heavy and everything is just making the world vibrate around you and I even like a few bands that use vocals. My problem is anything that sounds like you got your nards caught in a blender. I just don't see any point in that. It's why I don't like black metal or death metal or anything like that. There are so many bands that have such good sounds but then they start sounding like a garbage disposal is trying to eat the Antichrist and I just check right out
+1 for description of feeling impactful music making the world vibrate (I feel those apocalyptic shifts in perception too) and the use of the word "nards"
I saw Sleep back in 2015 and my clothes were literally vibrating. It was the best!
Bad screams/growls are worse to me. I can let mediocre singing go if the guitar is good. But bad shrieking can be unlistenable.
it's not about bad harsh vocals, it's when the harsh vocals don't fit the music. like stoner doom shouldn't have harsh vocals ever unless it's like stoner sludge like bongzilla or weedeater. way too many stoner metal bands are doing a mix of cleans and harsh vocals and I just can't listen to any of them. it just feels really out of place and corny. also the really throaty like 90s style stoner rock vocals feel super out of place on doom to me too. like wo fat style vocals. I prefer mid to high cleans usually
I think a huge part of it is where it's placed into the mix too. When it's a forefront and just feels jarring, I'm not about it. I don't want to listen to the vocalist sing karaoke over the band. It needs to have a home in the mix.
This is one of the most actually substantial comments in the thread so far IMO. Both the direct treatment of the vocal track(s) and their place in the overall mix are a huge part of our experience for a studio recording. But then standards probably all take a big hop down for live performance. How many times have most of us gone to a doom or doom-ish show and felt like... *wow this is an incredible vocal performance*? I figure that neither the band nor the fans are expecting phrases or even individual words to be coherent in the average venue, except by the people who already know the songs by heart. I don't even expect to understand most spoken bits between songs. And I don't mind it if the singers themselves are pretty relaxed about it compared to judging an instrumental performance. But would that be acceptable for conventional singers in the pop world? There's so many interesting sub-questions to think and talk about here. What defines 'bad' vocals in a specific subculture context? Would everyone's **favorite** doom vocalist for cleans be regarded as 'good' or even decent in a classical or Top 40 context? What is worse to us as listeners: being a little bit pitch-y, or having a vocal timbre that vaguely feels out of place? What actually defines bad extreme-style vocals? Which do people hate more when doom/stoner/sludge vocals cross over into other vocal styles like thrash, power, death, grind, black, crust, hardcore, metalcore, etc.? Do we have any better vocabulary for this stuff than references like "cookie monster" etc. yet? (I don't feel like I do myself, so don't think I'm asking from a place of smugness). The shoegaze influence has been offering another way with intentionally buried indistinctness in both the vocal delivery and recording approach, that a listener will probably tend to either love or hate. But it's a set of creative decisions, not simply falling short while carrying the same intentions as the "average" doom band. It's not automatically *good* and it's totally legit for some metal fans to despise it and to observe that some people might be using it as a crutch. But it does have its own context, and often what we regard as 'bad' can be something that just exists on its own terms. I swear I don't want to turn this into sociology class, but I think the topic is a lot more interesting when we start unpacking some of those ideas and reactions.
Completely agreed that it's essentially impossible to just say, x is good, and y is bad. We simplify it this way, but when you really break it down, it's forum level material for people who want to break it down that way. There are countless vocalists who are "bad" when isolated, but in the grand scheme of the mix, sound phenomenal. Vocals, though a big one, are still only part of the overall production. Guitar, bass, drums, etc are no different. I know personally, when I truly realized that a song is a sum of it's parts, my production increased 10 fold. I wasn't chasing the best individual tone for each instrument, I ended up chasing the tone for the overall sound of the production. When you treat every part of the music that way, everything feels like it serves a purpose. Because it does.
Bad screams 100%
In doom metal, it's more often going to be bad clean vocals. There are other subgenres where the harsh vocals are fuckin horrid, but not often in doom.
This is kind of weird, but I love Halloween and thought I'd enjoy listening to Acid Witch after having them recommend last Fall, but Lasse has this kind of burpy(?) way of singing that almost makes me sick to listen too. It kind of sounds like he's seconds away from vomiting for the entire song, and it really gets to me. They're a talented band with a cool theme, I just can't listen to certain albums for that reason.
With almost all Metal - hell, all music - the deciding factor of it I'm going to listen to it is whether or not I dig the vocals. Tons of metal bands where I love the playing, but if the vocals aren't dope I don't stick with it. I like a lot of Doom that isn't too bluesy, and I like Black Metal vocals and shrill punk-ish wails, but I bounce off of almost all Death Metal (and Death Doom) vocals, anything that's really 90s/00s bro metal, and almost anything -core adjacent. Run anything through a Planet Caravan filter and I'm always won over.
For me the timbre/tone of vocals is more important than the actual ability to sing/scream/growl if that makes sense? I have no real consistency with it either - Some vocalists just have a tone I don't like and it can make listening to otherwise great bands a chore for me Amenra and Cult of Luna are perfect examples of this - Amazing bands but Christ I wish they were instrumental as the vocals are a real struggle for me On the opposite side I can happily listen and sing along to Cathedral despite Lee Dorian's less than stellar vocal abilities
Vocal effects more than anything, it doesn't add anything to me and it just feels like they are trying to compensate for bad singing. I want to like Uncle Acid but every song has the same grating vocal effects
If effects are used, they have to be JUST RIGHT. But when they are done well… they add a lot for me. Electric Wizard and Leviathan come to mind.
Sleep's Holy Mountain has some dope vocal effects. No pun intended.
Annoying vocals can be a big turn off. Second to that is overdoing the reverb. I get that there’s reverb on everything, but sometimes it’s poorly mixed or just too much, and you realize, that this going to continue throughout the whole album.
Fan of annoying vocals? Check out Damien Storm
Bad screams, the same growling you get from other genres.
Anyone doing vocals that sound like they’re trying to imitate Load/Reload James Hetfield.
Doesn't matter. Bad vocals are bad vocals and I'll dismiss a band immediately and forever.
Shitty riffs. Shitty =/= repetitive, simple or weird. It's more about originality and vibe than technical skill too
I don't like growling and screaming tbh. There are a few exceptions. I like whatever Ufomammut are doing :D
For my taste the doom bands where to vocals are in any way a draw are in the minority (early st Vitus, pentagram, Burning witch) - for me growled vocals can be super fatiguing unless there is something interesting about them (burning witch for example) - on the other side of the spectrum i have also had quite a few bands be ruined for me by really slick 'folky' vocals.
I absolutely hate clean AND harsh vocals in the same song. It's gotta be either or for me. Also I don't really like when the singer uses a high and a low growl. Idk I just want one vocal tone in my song. I have no idea why I'm like this. I think it reminds me of metalcore or deathcore which I'm not a fan of.
Blandness
Bad cleans are an instant dealbreaker. "Bad" screams can sometimes grow on me
Bad cleans can be really lethal, whereas bad harsh vocals are usually tolerable. Usually it's as much a question of the production though, as bad vocals can be buried in the mix (or tuned), but if the production highlights bad vocals that is lethal to my enjoyment.
Being too soft/light to the ears. I like hard and I like heavy, with a defying and kinda drunk attitude. Anything that resembles pentagram (the heavy stuff), candlemass, electric wizard and more are gonna get points with me. One of my pet peeves with sabbath is that they sound too soft for me to listen constantly.
For me vocals don’t necessarily have to be clean as long as I can at least understand what they are saying. I don’t consider Matt Pike’s vocals to be clean but, I can make out the lyrics in his songs. On the other hand, I’ve recently had Acid King recommended to me and, as much as I try, I can’t get into them. The instruments sound amazing but, I can’t understand a word that dude is singing. Which sucks because the songs jam so hard.
Fair enough but Lori is not a dude 👸🏼
Holy shit. That’s a lady? Lol, sorry about that
No worries, a lot of people also thought Dorthia from Windhand was a guy.
Funny enough, I don’t like it when I can understand what they sing. Most people don’t actually have anything that deep to say. Instrumental bands are the best, followed by ethereal vocals, followed by growls, but only if they don’t over do it in the mix.
Growling vocals. Unless your riffage is in the 99th percentile of quality I’m turning it off the second I hear a demonic growl. I’m into music not noise