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GD's Top 10 Worst Vocalists In Metal

16/10/09 || Global Domination

Introduction by Daemonomania: Welcome back to another awesome Top 10 list here at GD – the only site that is to evil what big veiny dongs are to gay porn. Month after month we bring upon thee our infernal entertainment. As always we encourage and promise to promptly ignore any corrections, revisions, or criticisms you may dream up concerning these lists. If something about the selections or order bothers you, please follow this simple two step program:

1. Fuck off.
2. Die.

This month’s top ten runs down the worst singers in all of metaldom. We’ve got shitty growlers, shitty shriekers, and shitty clean vocalists. Sometimes all three at once. So much mouth-based feces awaits below that the musical toilet is backing up. Time to plunge and flush that fucker. May all of these no-talent two-bit pillowbiters take the hint and keep their yappers shut. Our ears would be quite grateful.

10. Tilemachos Moussas of Medieval Death

It seems unfair to put a singer from a demo-only, unsigned obscure Greek thrash band called Medieval Death into the top ten WORST of all time. Plenty of shitty vocalists have released atrocity after atrocity upon the metal public – the sheer frequency of their crimes outweighs anything Mr. Moussas (is that mouse ass?) could have done in four songs. Kinda like comparing Aleksandr Pichushkin and Pol Pot. But I encourage you to LISTEN to this idiot. Tell me he does not sound like “that bighaired fuckbag from the Cure” having a ouzu enema. His sad attempts at singing are so out-of-tune, so unstructured, so piss fucking poor that you’ll find yourself longing for the rest of Medieval Death’s lackluster musicians to play another vocal-free section. Tilemahos, you suck. And the sad thing is, you shoulda know better. Research has uncovered that this guy went to music school prior to his stint in MD, and these days he fronts a jazz quintet that plays in big music festivals, appears on soundtracks, and releases actual albums. Hopefully instrumental albums. Rarely will I say that modern jazz is good stuff, but in Mouseass’ case he made the right move. AWAY from metal. Back in 1990, however, his efforts were all that jizz indeed.

-Daemonomania

9. Burton C. Bell of Fear Factory

Truth be told, I really don’t think Burt here is that bad a metal singer (not enough to make a top 10 of them, anyway), especially when you consider Fear Factory’s particular style, but fuck it, he made the list and he needs a write-up, so here we are. His voice has changed a good deal over the years, but there’s lame vocalwork to be heard on almost every FF album; despite some cool, ethereal (but limited) clean vocalwork, on “Soul of a new machine” Bell basically sounded like a caveman, either grunting out lyrics in an inarticulate, wannabe br00tal death metal style, or sounding like he was puking as he sung. Then, on “Demanufacture” Burton laid off on the grunting, only to transition to poorly-controlled, still-inarticulate shouting, with plainer production for his clean vocals which only served to reveal how truly limited he was in that area. Bell stayed mostly clean on “Obsolete”, a mistake, on “Digimortal” Burton was even worse. “Archetype” Bell was an improvement on anything prior, but his clean singing was still weak, and the less said about any aspect of “Transgression”, the better. So again, I don’t hate Bell as a singer, but he is pretty weak at most of what he tries (you can listen to the links to judge for yourself), so there ya go. Sorry about the somewhat indifferent tone of this write-up, but that’s what happens after you’ve already written the write-up you wanted (which is coming up), and need to put in some filler to top things off. Whatever.

-Smalley

8. Blaze Bayley of Blaze/ex-Iron Maiden

Blaze Bayley is probably not related to Ayatollah Khomeni but one thing they have in common, they both suck. I know Mr. Shitbrainy isn’t alive anymore, thank fuck for that, so I think it is time for me to tell you why Blaze is one of the most famous shit vocalists ever. Iron Maiden is the sole reason for the fame, fuck them too, but the shittiness comes down to himself entirely. In no band he ever participated in, Mr. Bayley hooked onto the music and wrenched his guts out, this very fucker the undisputed master of the pancake flat approach. I hereby rename thee Mr. Prozac. Now fuck off and go find yourself a task you master already. Twat.

-Kampfar

7. Masato Henmarer Morimoto of Bathtub Shitter

I’d never heard of Bathtub Shitter before this list was made, but as soon as I heard them, I knew I should be claiming it. There’s things in life everyone should do at least once: jump out of a moving train, anal, and listen to Masato Henmarer Morimoto sing. Also, his name shall henceforth be Mori.

Stupefyingly enough, his growl isn’t all that terrible. It’s not good, but wouldn’t even land him a top 25 spot here, let alone top 10. It’s just nothing spectacular. His scream, for lack of a better description, is. Picture this: a random Looney Tunes cartoon. A wolf sneaks up on a henhouse. The hens are sleeping. With a mighty jump the wolf leaps inside. We see the henhouse shake about, various text symbols shoot out along with dust clouds, and then the pack of hens flees the scene. The sound those hens are making? You guessed it. Someone put some death/thrash metal beneath it and we have Bathtub Shitter.

Mori sounds a lot like the higher ranked Nattram from Silencer, but where Nattram sounds more like Strongbad on cocaine, Mori has the fleeing cartoon chicken sound down to an art. It’s terrible as a way of singing, but it’s also utterly hilarious and sure to brighten up any day. So if you’re feeling down, just put on some Bathtub Shitter. Hell, just mix it in with that Spartacus playlist for darker days. It’s a perfect fit.

-GardensTale

6. Dani Filth of Cradle Of Filth

Yes, black metal can often be campy, excessive, and downright ridiculous, and that extends to BM vocals as well, but even when taken in the context of all that craziness, there’s just no getting around the fact that Dani Filth is a fucken annoying singer. When he’s doing the harsh vox, his voice almost sounds like it never finished puberty, giving a snotty, constricted, irritating rasp (a small dog yipping is the image that comes to mind for me), and those shrill, high-pitched shrieks he likes to belt out makes it sound like he just got done with a castration session. He sucks at everything he does vocally, and just sounds silly when he’s doing those wannabe evil, low tones (the gradual transitions he does from the low-to-high tones are wonderful opportunities to lol), and… look, just listen to this and you’ll understand everything I’m talking about. But, I actually did like one Cradle Of Filth song that had a guest sharing the vocal duties (“Nymphetamine”), so I guess the rest of CoF could make worthwhile music if they only had a decent singer fronting the band, but alas, they do not. For the most part, Cradle’s only good for me for the rare listen to laugh at Dani, but I eventually just get pissed off at him, and my work here is done, so…

(goes back to not listening to Cradle Of Filth)

-Smalley

5. Niels Adams of Prostitute Disfigurement

Dude from Prostitute Disfigurement whose name need be known by no one… no, really. Don’t even look him up on Metal Archives. This guy has gone out of his way to make himself completely worthless to metal. How how how? Well, bros and broettes, here is the lameass’s lameass career: BREEE EHEEE EEBREEEEE BREEEEEEEEE EEEEEEYONNNNK!

Fast forward some number of years or albums or whatever: WELP, time to switch over to an utterly generic death growl.

That means even HE realized he was full of shit. And now that the layer of BREEE is gone, the music is revealed to be nothing special, either. Nothing that a million basement bands aren’t already doing; modern br00tal sorta tech death metal. It turns out the shitty vocals were the only thing making their old shit sound good, and then only because it was juxtaposed with the vocals. Which is pretty much the opposite of how music works. Is there any reason that this guy should be on the list as opposed to any other shitty pig-squealer cum boring growler? Not really. But to ridicule one of them is to ridicule the lot. They do not deserve special attention. Forget you read this and go do something else.

-Lumberjack (ex-staffer and current secessionist)

4. Joe Caper of Righteous Pigs

The fascinating thing with these bad singers is, you would be inclined to think that there’s a couple of other people around them, aka the bands, that try and keep in touch with reality. If necessary, that involves facing the fact your singer sounds like fucken shit and kicking him out. Doesn’t happen. Attention, here’s a look at the real world (yep, that’s where the pizza delivery dude lives). Take the Fiat Multipla, or the Pontiac Aztek. It’s not that somebody has a bad day, designs an abomination, builds up a factory, assembles the car all by himself and unleashes it on the public with a massive ad campaign. Nope, there’s a shitload of people involved that have to nod their heads, approve of and sign stuff and allow their product to be a pile of four-wheeled excrement. It’s these people that are the really disturbing part. Well, in our case, these people are the Righteous Pigs. Never heard them? Go figure. There’s a reason why this band stayed underground as if Nevada was awaiting post-nuclear fallout any day. There was no such thing as a quality standard in the Pigs’ territory, so you’re in for something with their very own Joe Caper.

Vocal technique? Overrated. Let’s just fucken scream all over the place. You can always revert to your gruff talking voice when you feel like it. Or growl for the odd syllable or two, why not a whole song? Who cares, man, go for some annoying stuttering if stuff gets to fast. Even Brett Hoffmann used to do it! Talent? It’s enough if one guy in the band takes care of that. Not Joe. Holding the pace? Okay, easy on Joe here, there is no such thing as a discernible pace in many of their songs. If the instruments manage to hold it for a bar or two though, he’ll make sure to fuck it up. Who said you couldn’t catch your breath in the middle of a long-ass line in the first place? Fuck you and your rules, man. Vocal line length has nothing to do with the length of the underlying riff. Just add pauses or longer screams wherever you like. By the way, how d’ya spell rythm? Bottom line: I hope you die in a hotel fire!

-Habakuk

3. Sean Killian of Vio-Lence

They are not beautiful. They are not very pleasant. They are not pleasant at all actually. They are not always completely in tune either. They are not something you’d wanna give yer loved one on his/her birthday. They are nothing you’d wanna trade your car for. They are not one of the 7 wonders of the world. They are not Sarah Brightman’s close family. They are…

Sean Killian’s muthafucken vocal chords.

The world should be afraid. Very, very afraid. What’s even more scary than the actual sound those vocal chords make is the fact they, for some absolutely incomprehensible reason, actually work with Vio-Lence’s thrash metal created back in the day. It hurts to admit it, yes, but it works. Then again – imagine, just imagine how fucken awesome a band Vio-Lence could have been with someone else fronting them. Someone with a pair of lungs that would actually bring forth the potential of the band to the fullest. Sean Killian was definitely Vio-Lence’s weakest point and the one fact they would never, fucken ever, make it big. His actual tone is more frightening than The Amityville Horror was to you when you were an 8 year old kid. His nasal abomination of a voice is to the universal vocal coach what fear was to the Japanese people after the first A-bomb. Sean Killian could have been a brand new best selling freak-attraction at a circus were we only living in those days…

Advice: do not look for Sean Killian to teach you anything about vocal technique, and do not turn to him for inspiration if you are a vocalist. Want proof?

Pavarotti is exploding in his grave.

Oh, after Vio-lence broke up he did some guest vocals for said band’s offspring Torque at a gig in 1997. Lemme just say that the disbanding of Vio-Lence obviously didn’t improve his voice. Does he sound different today? No one knows, and for the love of all things we hold dear – let’s hope we never find out.

Kids, beware of Sean Killian. He’ll most likely give you eternal nightmare(s)…

ZING!!!

-Lord K Philipson

2. Nattramn of Silencer

Hahahahaha…

I can’t even start writing this without laughing somewhat loudly to myself. You see, what we have here is an example of vocals gone horribly wrong. The music of Silencer surrounding this goes from semi-decent to a decent in a kvlt kindergarten way, and when the very first “NYEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! EEAAAAHHHHHHHH“ hits your ears it brings tears. Tears of anguish and laughter. Then he gets into some cat moans and some other indecipherable shit. That’s all I can fucken hear when I think about it: “NEYYEEEEEAAHHHHHHhhhhhhhh…… NYEYEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOHHHHHH“. Take the dildo out of your ass and the needles out of your urethra. Holy. Fucken. Shit.

He does some eventual growls that are passable, but probably because he’s lowered the bar so much by then anything but a high pitched feline wail sounds like Roy Orbison in his prime. Not to be outdone by the vocals themselves, the lyrics that are managed to be penned are Kindergarten as any. A very disturbed Kindergarten, might I add. The times you hear the real words, Nattramn decides to go with a mix of Yoda and the Wicked Witch of the West. Bad fucken combo.

Does being legally insane put his vocals into perspective? Yes and NYYEEEEAAA!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!! There’s a certain little finite point that one can easily cross when trying to sound truly desperate and painful that makes you sound really fake, and well, like this. Nattramn didn’t just teeter over the edge, he leap, leap, leaped as far as he possibly could in the wrong direction. He’s this far on the list because he completely fucks the music (former staffer Tiago Bonamigo reviewed Nattramn’s only recorded performance here. Not like Sean Killian, nor other bad vocalists who still got some recognition (cough*Dani*cough) with their respective bands, he may very well have hurt this band’s chance at some success. Ok, maybe not.

-Trauma

1. Spartacus of Skull And Bones

Not the great slave liberator from Roman days, not Kirk Douglas who played said liberator in the 60’s Stanley Kubrick film based on the Howard Fast novel, but some dude from the smelly armpit of Brazil who sounds like a cross between the Scorpions singer, Andi Deris, Rainbow-era Dio, and a geriatric Udo Dickschnitzel. You think this is an awful combination? Lord K did. He “loved” the album Skull and Bones released a year ago. Seriously now, this He-Man’s vocals are sooo repugnant, it’s a cumstain on the face of power metal. (Yeah, Skull and Bones ARE power metal, how ghey is that?) Curious are you? Visit his band’s GaySpace and dig the tunes yerself. Promise, you’re gonna get diarrhea (spelling?) from laughing at the brand of no-holds-barred heavy metal Skull and Bones regurgitate. Even better, the production values are so friggin’ substandard, their tunes sounds as if they were recorded in the 70’s… INSIDE a toilet bowl, thereby lending a distinct vintage feel to it.

HailandKill believes GD has actually done the band a wonderful service. By topping this beautiful list, Mr. Spartacus gets a stab at immortality. May the man live forever. Besides, when all the shit’s said and done, this dude could very well be
belting out some national anthem or other for the 2016 Olympics in Rio… or guest on Avantasia.

Strength. Vitality. Power. Freedom. Spartacus. Penis.

-HailandKill

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