Clean. No growl I've encountered could have matched the beauty of Jørn Lande's voice.

It depends on the genre and the style of the band sometimes either or both works. But personally i love music as heavy as i can get it, which generally means less singing. Maybe not growling either. Jens Kidman is prollly my favorite vocalist, he does kinda halfway between a scream and a growl.

It depends to genre but mostly i liked growling vocals

That really depends on the genre - in some genres you can't even think about clean vocals. And as much as I love bands like Meshuggah and Quo Vadis, I prefer clean vocals in general. There's is just another musical line then, and that's, what I search for...

On the other hand there are such talented growlers like Jason Peppiat from Psycroptic, which have so many versions of growling, shouting and shrieking, that I couldn't figure more versatility!

Like a lot of other people here, I think that it does depend, but I definitely like growls better. It defines metal nowadays, and clean vocals sometimes piss me off, especially live.

This is actually harder than you might think for me, because A) it depends on my mood, B) it depends on the voice/growl, and C) I like both equally

It depends on my mood, really. And it depends on the harmonization(sorry if I spelt that wrong) of the music with the vocals.

I prefer clean vocals, especially power metal

I love growled vocals. I have nothing against clean, but I just prefer growling (that or thrash shouting).

I'd say clean vocals only because I can live with the song with only clean vocals, but the song with only growled ones wouldn't work out for me.

But the best is combination of the two, of course.

Clean to me is more awesome. But growl is nonthelesss good depends on the genre too.

Depends on the mood. But I listen to mostly harsh vocals, so I'll vote for growl, which doesn't mean I don't like clean vocals when they're done good.

I mostly prefer clean vocals myself, however I love growls as well, really depends on my mood however. I'll always be in the mood for clean vocals.

I like clean vocals because I love good lyrics and I like to be able to understand them. Also growling just doesn't appeal to me in general,it makes me wonder why I am listening to whatever thing it is, even if the instruments are great, which is a shame.

Written by vezzy on 03.07.2010 at 15:27

I love growled vocals. I have nothing against clean, but I just prefer growling (that or thrash shouting).

There's a good point. I love thrash metal and I forgot about the concept of thrash shouting being it's own category. I tend to prefer the cleaner side of the thrash shouting thing, (for example Megadeth more than Slayer, though I like both) but much of it is good. I think it falls into the clean category officially, but I don't really think it should be in either. I feel like it's too growl-y for most clean vocals people and too clean for most growl vocals people or else thrash would be more popular.

This is a no-brainer for me. All other things being equal, would I rather have melody or no melody? Granted, not all other things are equal, since there's timbre, tone etc. to consider. Harsh vocals are very fitting in many styles, and I have no problems listening to an album full of them. But the highlights of many extreme metal albums are the occasional clean vocal melodies, and a person's clean vocal timbre is certainly more often recognizable and unique. There are plenty of great singers out there, but "great growlers" are harder to identify.

It does depends.. But mostly I do enjoy growling more than clean vocals.. For me, there is more power to a song when there are growling, but if there are some REALLY good clean vocals, I do love that. (Mercenary albums The Hours That Remain and Architect Of Lies, and Amorphis)