Well distortion and vocoder efx have been in industrial music for such a long time, do we want to remove them in order to have acts that all sound like pop artists, or worse, monotone vocals in futurepop, for the sake of clean vocal tracks.
Even the mighty Leeb still uses some distortionand efx on his vocal tracks.
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Personally I don't have a problem with distorted vocals. I mean, sure they might not fit every track but it's still better than futurepop. Now that's what I call boring and cliché.
Having said that some bands managed to use clean vocals successfully like Terrolokaust and to some extent Grendel.
If I wanted a good singer, like a tenor, or rock singer, or even a r&B, pop singer, I`d not look for it in industrial music, not everyone can be Trent Reznor, Lucia from KMFDM, or Britney from I:scintilla after all.
To me the arrangements, the programming, the synth work, if there is any and the production is more important then a trained, good singer in this style of music.
The heavy use of vocal efx in frontline assembly, for example, is what I love when industrial happens to not be an instrumental track. i like robotic vocoder efc, I like distortion, I like glitched, cut up vocal tracks.
If vocals were that important to me, clean vocals without efx and distrotion, then I wouldn`t be looking for it in industrial. Theres room for people who can actually sing and in the style of their music, it works, but the same can be said with people who use heavy ammounts of efx and distrotion.
Panocha Posse 4 life. Panocha Bandito. Love the camboyana puta. CHUPALO PUTA!!!!
I think the lame thing about distorted vocals is that they all use the same damn effect.
Having a vocal sound robotic or alien is awesome to me, I mean it's industrial, its appeal to me has always been the unconventional noises and just singing is boring as hell.
Just a tiny bit of some effect to make you sound weird or aggressive is gold. When it just sounds like garble, it just is garble though.
The best kind of distorted vocals are the ones that are still a great performance underneath the effects but clearly have an edge because of the added weirdness.
Trying to cover up a shitty perfomance with effects never make it sound better though.
Vocals should be important to everyone. Music needs identity, the human voice is the most versatile and unique instrument in existence. And people are content to just mask it with distortion and pitch effects and lose any character they ever had. That is the truly heartbreaking thing about all this. This music was supposed to be inventive and go against the grain. Now it has become just as homogenized as every other music genre. Only problem is that the people who listen to this music have their heads so far up their own asses they can't recognize it.
I think clean vocals are over done too. More than even distorted. So.
I think old tkk, old ministry, old puppy are great with lots of vocal fx including distortion. the way people do it today is crap, but the music is crap, and they are not good vocalists with or with out fx and i think this has to do with it more than anything. Bad vocalists, lyrics, melody etc. And this is more to blame than any of the fx.
I'd say it really depends on the music behind it. Certain songs require it more than others, but on an average song I feel only a little bit of distortion is required so that the vocals still remain audible and understandable. While other songs actually benifit from a really distorted mess of vocals, others do not. Often times I prefer a mix, harsh distorted verse's and then a nice clean chorus.
Also, this is the best example on what NOT to do when adding distortion to your voice: (lets see if you can figure out when they come in)
It also depends on the level of distortion and how it's distorted. For example, I personally can't stand Psyclon Nine because I think the high pitched distortion is terrible, but I can't imagine Ministry without at least some distortion. As long as you can still understand the lyrics, it's usually good. Besides, it's better than auto-tuning your voice like T-Pain.
How are clean vocals overdone? Singing without distortion doesn't mean singing like Celine Dion. Distortion is nothing more than a mask for bad technique. You can scream and growl and do all of that without burying it in walls of FX and have it sound GOOD. What people often forget when they mention Wumpscut or Skinny Puppy and their use of distortion, is that those bands have vocalists that use THEIR voice, and accent it with FX instead of using FX to define it. My personal taste says "don't ever use a blanket effect throughout an entire track" but in the end, when Ogre sings, you immediately know it's Ogre. When Rudy sings, you immediately know it's him. I can't tell the difference between half of these terrorbanna bands because their music and their voices all sound the same. I argue people need to actually work on their voice and their sound. Perfect your craft and make it your own. BE DIFFERENT!
Wasn't there like a short period some year ago when all the terrorbanana bands decided to go no FX for like a second?
Because as I remember it they still all sounded the same. The only difference was that sounded slightly more like Combichrist instead of Tactical Sekt.
That said, of course you gotta find your own voice. Hell, find several. Just having one single signature sound for your vocals, effects or not is kind of lame if you ask me.
Though if you already have a unique voice, then what's wrong with making it that tiny bit more unique by adding a couple of effects?
What these terrorbanana bands misunderstand about effects is that they're not the easy way out. Just a slight bit too much chorus and you're completely incomprehensible, too much distortion and it's white noise, using effects live can give annoying feedback issues and so on.
And treating it like the easy way out is to their detriment. It's really easy to ruin a quite decent performance with heaps of shitty pitch-shift effects (which I swear is the worst fucking effect you can use, especially the cheap kind).
Also, you kind of have to adapt to whatever effect you're using when you're doing a performance. Some styles (singing, for example) sound totally shitty under anything that's more than just a tad distortion, others sound kinda meh without but totally awesome with effects and some are cool either way.
It's really up to what sounds good at one particular moment in one particular song.
Well whatever the C-lekktor boys used on the new album should be imitated even more. Delightfull!
Leeb to me has allways been a wizard with efx and filters, he`s not going to win awards for his voice, but he can sing, whisper and yell, so he mixes it up.
Panocha Posse 4 life. Panocha Bandito. Love the camboyana puta. CHUPALO PUTA!!!!
We have a few efc/filter haters here, I suspect they hate glitchy vocal tracks too.
Alright then smarty pants haters, take 2011`s Grendel ep single chemicals and circuitry, thats a pretty clean vocal track right ?
Now then, listen to 2012`s version of Chemicals and Circuitry, comeplte with efx and goodies.
2012 version with efx sound fucking WAY better! Put that in your pipe and smoke you hate pack of rowdy Rodney hatersmiths!!!
Besides, Industrial when electronic should often(IMO, allways) be futurisitc, if you`re not doing instrumentals, add some cool robo vocoder, some glitchness with edits in your vocal tracks, shove some distortion, a twinkle of reverb etc etc What the fuck is wrong with sounding like a cyborg anyway eh ?
Panocha Posse 4 life. Panocha Bandito. Love the camboyana puta. CHUPALO PUTA!!!!
I agree completely with that, but the problem is, most new bands don't do it well. That's like saying if you're gonna play metal, play fast. It's obvious, but it doesn't take skill into account :P
Maybe it should die to be frank. I mean end of the day how many repetitions of the SAME thing can ANYONE stand. Speaking for myself. Not that many. Sorry.
Terror EBM will never die, not with such smashing efforts from Amduscia last year and C-lekktor`s awe inspiring, jaw dropping new album this year....to make it even worse for the fairy pop crowd, who spit bile at the mighty sons and daughters of Terror EBM...they must now deal with the new Suicide Commando, the godfather of terra nanna is still unleashing hell upon the audio concensus and well recieved it is. Face it, terror ebm, the might sons and daughters of futuristic hell, are unstoppable, no label`s dropping the hot shots and top guns any time soon. Only a matter of time before the other big dogs in the pound chamber another round and a new Hocico album beats the shit out of everything once more. Lets face it, C-lekktor did more then emulate with the new album, they raised the bar and its time for everyone to follow suite., or run after the big dogs playing catch up.
To be fair, vocoder efx when used badly can end up sounding like something akin to a r&B song, some clean vocal tracks still sound menacing and agry, guttral, light distortion is often more of an desired effect then heavy use of distortion. But at the end of the day, its how you use the efx and filters, just how talented you are, if you want to make your futuristic music sound even more futuristic by fucking around with vocal tracks, then so be it, if you feel you want to distrort things to go hand in hand with the compositions and arrangements, go for gold, you wan`t to keep it raw, with less fuck arsing around with a vocal recording, then so be that as well. Depends on what someone want`s to do with a track in regards to vocal tracks, theres room for everything.
Panocha Posse 4 life. Panocha Bandito. Love the camboyana puta. CHUPALO PUTA!!!!
I don't think it should die, just perhaps go in a nother direction. Maybe cut the fx's in half and only use a little bit and bring in some other influences instead of taking from the same things.
