On growling

I’ve been into the metal scene for quite a while now, with the interest turning serious in my early teens, and I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of growling. For many years, music was not primarily playing drums for me (I did play, but without the genuine passion that I have today), but instead learning how to produce weird noises with my mouth; the wish to be able to do what the cool, big boys were doing was so strong that I can actually remember the exact moment when it finally clicked for me. I was sixteen years old and on vacation in Florida with my family (second time visiting the United States for me), walking down this beautiful beach that I don’t remember the name of, and all of a sudden, I just tried imitating this singer that had this fiery vocals going and it worked! It finally clicked in that special way when you know that you’ve actually improved – a true level-up. Since then I’ve been happily roaring away, focusing less on maintaining a single-stable voice but instead on learning what my throat can and can’t do, while getting more into drums, joining bands and so on.

But that was just the background for my interest, and not the focal point of this little essay; instead I’d like to share a few thoughts about the WHY of growling: why is it actually practiced? What is the appeal? What are its qualities, strengths and weaknesses?

My first conclusion after spending much time actively listening to – and analyzing – growling is that good growling works with the three M’s: the Monstrous, the Majestic, and the Maniacal; some people wish to use growling outside of these contexts, and those people are generally considered the dickheads and attention-whores of the metal scene, to put it in nice terms. Why? Because doing that is an insult both to the art of growling and the music where they applied the growling to; and if there are any hesitations about this quite judgmental statement, have no doubts, I will prove my point soon enough.

The Monstrous: the first M is quite obvious; growling is generally not considered a very human sound to make: it’s not specifically roaring, it’s not even someone speaking with a sore throat, but instead something almost predatory and bloodthirsty, a displacement of the self and an embrace of the ID and the reptilian part of the brain. There is no surprise that bands that use both clean and growled vocals, especially if the clean voice is female, are described as using the Beauty and the Beast-technique in their performances, as such an expression cuts down into the very heart of the matter: the haunting, awesome (traditional sense) and angelic clean vocals are contrasted with parts of pure, feral instinct. The Monstrous of growling allows it to present a different side of the world created by the music, a side where normal conventions break down and chaos reigns, a primal state of being; the man before you baring his sharp fangs as the werewolf emerges.

The Majestic: this one might not be as apparent at first glance, but is very much true nonetheless; growling is a powerful way to deliver lyrics. You will notice as this paper goes on that many attributes already mentioned in one paragraph will show up in the others, with this being the first: the displacement of the simple human. Growling can be Majestic because the almost transcendental impression it may give the listener: the imperial feeling of looking up at a giant throne, the voice booming down to you, otherworldly and detached from the common people milling about below. That is the reason why so many symphonic bands employ growling segments, or even only growled vocals; it adds to the power of the arrangement through its inherent Majesty. Why is this so? Clearly, it has very little to do with bared fangs and bloodied claws mentioned above, unless you’d count fear of the beast as majestic that is. I believe that one reason behind this state of being is that growling is not really a single voice; it is a distorted, twisted sound that happens to allow for words to be formed, and is delivered almost like a thick, off-key choir, despite being a single vocalist. This wall-of-sound effect transforms the vocalist into, in this context, not a monster but rather an Other and Higher, which is why Dimmu Borgir for instance uses the harsh growled vocals to present an infernal Majesty, while Extol on their song Undeceived used deep booming growling to enact the Majesty of the voice of God.

The Maniacal: lastly, we have the Maniacal, which we could also call the Breakdown; growling is extremely handy when it comes to playing with moods and mental stability through its in-your-face intensity: a song dealing with philosophical conundrums or the agony of loss can benefit from the addition of precision-growl-strikes that keep the listener on edge. Likewise the Maniacal feel again ties in with the downplay of the Human, but while the Monstrous deals with tapping into the primal urges and the Majestic handles transcendental issues, the Maniacal instead uses the growl as a form of regression, almost as the dark side of the Monstrous; indeed, the Maniacal is what ties the Monstrous and the Majestic together into the three M’s; the Majestic becomes Maniacal in its detachment and turns into the Monstrous, for instance. The Maniacal is also an excellent way to throw the listener directly into the mouth of the madness, the growl presenting the emotions of our “narrator” seamlessly:  Prince Hamlet’s soliloquy could for instance start of off normally, working up steam as it goes, before turning first into shouting or intense mumbling before regressing into fury-choked growled lines without anyone batting an eye (unless growling in itself is offensive for them). The same goes for sorrow once it gets to the point of the character no longer wanting to feel; you kill off the human shell and release pure emotion, regardless if those are anger, sorrow, despair or even bittersweet gratefulness; as long as the emotions have a stain of darkness in them, the Maniacal can work its charms.

The simplified theory of the three M’s as presented above should be seen as a good guideline over how to use growling as a seasoning to your vocal performance; breaking the boundaries set up here is not recommended unless you’re completely sure of what you’re doing, or if you simply do not give a rat’s ass about letting the vocals dance with the lyrics and music on equal terms. The reason for this is simply because the three M’s are what messages are sent through growling, and creating a balance between all the aspects of a song is often crucial for the aesthetic appeal of it; the times growling is used successfully out of such contexts is in comedy, where the contrast in itself fuels the humor of the work. Unless the song is comedic, the result is always sub-par, for the same reason that you do not want bombastic opera-vocals in your quiet guitar-based ballad or a punk rock singer only rocking the falsetto: it simply does not fit. I’m not saying this to downplay creativity and originality, neither am I saying this with the authority of a rock legend, but instead as a person who enjoys twisting concepts about, because no matter what, if you stick brutal growled parts in situations where they do not fit, you’re not avant-garde, you’re not a pioneer, you’re not even making a postmodern statement about how music is like clay – you’re just making terrible or at least sub-par music. Original and creative artists are successful not because they have the guts to mix everything in a big bowl and see what comes out; they’re successful because they have the eyes and ears to pick out what piece could fit where, even in contexts not obvious; growling is a great tool for accentuating a word, a phrase, a song or even an entire album, but like all tools, it has its own inherent limits, and as you don’t use a hammer to cut boards or a drill to weld, you should not use growling unless the song benefits from it.

/Sam

Hi friends and welcome back!

Enter freely, and leave some of the happiness you bring. I write to you in this dire time to inform and engulf you in the news of Circus Of Lamia, news about in the studio videos and finally a release date for the upcoming freshly glazed EP.

I start with the incredibly important knowledge that we at this moment would be working our asses of... if we had any asses left to work. We are working everyday to make this release and all future events as perfect as possible.  First of all, you will get some videos from the studio with some band footage. At the end of the week the first offspring will see the glorious light of the modern world, we just need to give the videos some subtitles for all of our English speaking friends.

Hear ye folks, the story isn’t over by a long shot. We have talked a lot about the upcoming release, about the logo, songs and artwork. But when will you guys be able to hear it? That´s a good question and I´m going to answer it right now.

Remember remember the 16^th September
Our sanity will be dissolved
By music and words
A dark symphony
That welcome thee
To the Circus Of Lamia

Translation: The physical release of the EP will be the 16^th September, this date we will also release a limited amount of exclusive Welcome Madness posters.
On the other hand the Digital release will be the 30^th September, so keep your eyes peered and ears on alert for a new chapter in your lifes!

Bye my friends and family-
Martin

Hello Fellow Freaks!

The dust from this intense weekend has finally started to settle, A weekend full of laughs, music and photographing. The reason for this insane escapade?

Well first we had our pre photo shoot meeting, more info and some nice picture will come later on this blog part. The day after we had our photo shoot as Jade mentioned on an earlier entry, but the day wasn´t over there! The photo shoot was followed by a rehearsal filled with half naked dudes running around and playing music (picture will follow in the next entry).

Oh well, enough with this blabbering about the photos and the half naked dudes (I know you want to see them but not right now). In this entry we´ll focus on our meeting before the photos. The plan was to get there, fix the make up quickly and then move on, everything went according to plan expect one thing. Our two, very dear and very pretty female members (both on vocals for some reason) took literally ages to make themselves ready. I give some break to Jade for all her massive amount of clothes to choose from (as earlier mentioned she would probably need a bus to transport them all), but our there old Matt is another question. She fixed her makeup and clothes for an eternity (Yes, “she”. Look at her nails on the picture below and you will understand).

Don´t they look pretty together?


At the same time me and my beloved string bender Alex relaxed in the sofa knowing that we were done long before the others.


But as you all know, a band is not complete without a drummer with a pseudo smile painted on his face and a frantic look in his eyes. Our dear Saint Samuel went from peaceful and calm to fearsome and wild in a matter of minutes, but we love him dearly even if he is a little bit…special.
Oh! Enough with the japing about how he looks when we can show him in action eye fucking the mirror.

But as you all knows a band isn´t a band without with the classical band picture. As usual we couldn´t be serious on a meeting so we went ahead posing as there was no tomorrow, it all ended with our final picture of the day. Some megalomaniacal mind thought we would be able to pull of the so called “Death Metal” pose, did it work out or did we rape the pose? You be the judge of that!

That´s all for today folks, stay safe, don´t drink and drive, don’t run in circles naked and scream Circus of Lamia I love thee on the top of your lungs (even if you want to) and for all in this world don´t stop reading our blog now when I have infested it.

Thank You All, Sleep well and don´t inhale Jod!
- Martin