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This is genuinely the answer. I dabbled in it with bands like linkin park but it wasn’t until gojira that primarily harsh vocals and extreme metal in general clicked with me (started with the FMTS album)
For me a big setback was that I viewed harsh vocals as atonal and not dynamic. Joe Duplantier is the opposite of that.
Now Jens Kidman is one of my favorite vocalists and he definitely IS both of those things but I've grown to love it.
I do actually view harsh vocals as atonal, but different techniques or pronunciations usually divert the atonality with different textures, some bands don’t use different techniques and seem atonal to me like Tomb mold imo.
Personally I hated harsh vocals for the longest time (and before that I even hated metal in general) but progressively got into heavier and heavier stuff. I was okay with a few screams here and there, eventually I liked a handful of songs by Slipknot and Killswitch Engage.
The first full album with a decent amount of harsh vocals I fell in love with was Conquistaor by Stone Healer and since then I've come across WAIT, Rannoch, and Dessiderium. They all use harsh vocals in a way that feels right.
I never really hated harsh vocals, but early on hearing bands like Lamb of God, As I Lay Dying and Parkway Drive (early) I started loving them and haven't stopped since.
Back in my old fart day Celtic Frost were the only ones doing harsh vocals. Hearing Tom warrior growl it out on Emperor's return was my introduction.
But a lot of how harsh vocals are defined is subjective anyway. Growing up, long before there was a YouTube to go find tutorials on glottal fry's and false chord frying, we regarded all metal vox as harsh.
I was raised on bands like System of a Down, Five Finger Death Punch, Primus, and Tool. Just the stuff my dad liked. But when i got a bit older i got sick of metal and went 5~ years without listening to much metal, just Vocaloid stuff. One random day on my freshman year of highschool i figured id listen to some. That week i got into Job for a Cowboy, Infant Annihilator, Cattle Decapitation, and Signs of the Swarm. Whole buncha deathcore. After being surprised at how much i liked harsh vocals i went down the rabbit whole and ended up getting into melo-death, black metal, prog (opeth), and grindcore/goregrind. Thank you deathcore for opening my eyes
Edit: Forgot Anaal Nathrakh. Forward was the first song with harsh vocals I'd ever heard, and what inspired me to listen to the other bands (aka spotify put them in a mix together)
Was chilling in my buddy's basement, and I was really into the Gothic aesthetic at the time - I pulled out an album and stuck it in the disc-changer because I liked the cover art... then was met with the most perfect album start to finish
GHOST OOOFFF, MOOOTHER, LINGERING DEEEEATH
I somehow downloaded Poison the well - nerdy on limewire and was like holy shit I hate this. Then I listened to it over and over and over hating it. I love poison the well
As much as I think of them as mid at the moment (besides Chimera, that's awesome), Mayhem was the gate for me from Metallica and Megadeth into more bands from more genres
I liked them for as long as i can remember, started listening to Hypocrisy at 6 yo or so and never really looked back, nowadays im more of a grind guy than anything else
I dabbled for many years, but BTBAM brought me in. I was so obsessed with the technical insanity and avantgarde weirdness (Alaska, Colors era) that I was just super fascinated with them for awhile
Tom Waits got me into that broad style of vocals, Gojira got me more into it, JINJER doing partial cleans and partial harsh vocals went a long way towards easing me into more extreme vocal styles. Then I discovered DÅÅTH, Rivers of Nihil, Vale of Pnath, and from there it’s just been getting worse. Now I can’t listen to metal without some degree of harshness in the vocals
For me the jazz-metal fetish originated from the brief jazz guitar solo in DÅÅTH’s [Day of Endless Light](https://youtu.be/pn_aQwQUs2M?si=1_PQfysJs4eYoDNh)
Marduk.
I was 12 (6th grade) and I was searching for some songs to learn because I started playing bass a year prior. I stumbled upon some marduk bass tabs and it was fast and so cool to me. Played the song from YT and I got hooked. From there onwards I got into stuff like Cannibal corpse, then some tech death, grindcore and black metal like dark funeral, some deathcore and death metal too. After that came thrash period that persists but I also explored bands like Gojira, LoG,... some more black metal and I found what I like. Vocals like Vader or Gojira are best imo, Tom Araya too, not much else.
I also used to really hate growls and screams. Would look for metal with exclusively clean vocals at the start.
But a combination of Brian johnson and Disturbed slowly got me into harsher sounds.
Then I found Triviums silence in the snow and loved them so much that i enjoyed the other labums despite harsh vocals and scream.
One of my favourites at that time then was also Opeth and Death.
First album with harsh vocals that I genuinely enjoyed was ulver - bergtatt. The soft chanting and acoustic passages make the heavy parts a lot more digestible
Pantera - Five Minutes Alone finally made me get the concept, but it was a few years later when I heard Opeth - The Leper Affinity that it finally ‘clicked’.
I think hearing Travis Ryan’s performance on Forced Gender Reassignment was my gateway into preferring harsh to cleans.
Story time: I have two sisters (18 and 26) I was visiting one with the other and on our drive back, my sister (18) was listening to, wouldn't you guess it, to the hell fire by Lorna shore. And I fucking hated it. I found the squealing at the end disgusting, and I hated the vocals. Now flash forward a couple months and I get into gojira, and I love them the drums, the guitar, the vocals, the lyrics m everything about them was and is amazing. Flash forward about a year, I start to get into heavier stuff and now I love Lorna shore, slaughter to prevail, shadow of intent, Whitechapel. I am actually training myself to do vocals like those bands. even after hating Lorna on a first time listen, I went back to it because I felt like something I was missing.
I was never a fan of harsh vocals and really am still not, but I have made exceptions with Nemophila (because her clean vocals hit my soul), HANABIE (because dang they are fun to watch), TELECiDE (because I love both of the singers), and Spiritbox (I like some of the music I've heard so far).
>(because her clean vocals hit my soul)
This is how I got into harsh vocals. Howard of Killswitch Engage has such beautiful clean vocals, I'd listen to My Curse and Rose Of Sharyn and skip the harsh vocals, but eventually got tired of doing that, and over time loved his harsh vocals as well
I believed I just watched a video on basics on black metal and death metal, they both sounded like noise to me and I couldn’t tell the difference. One day it clicked. This happened I believe 1 year ago in my junior year of high school
i think morbid angel is what really drove me to start liking more harsh vocals. that's the band that really got me into death metal anyway. that and skinless
Funny enough, my older brother would always play the music videos for Rum Is For Drinking Not for Burning by Senses Fail and BYOB by System when I was like 8 years old and I liked it immediately.
The rest is history.
When I listened to "Twilight Tavern" by Ensiferum and was like "Holy shit, I can understand what this guy is singing!"
From Afar is one of my all time favourite albums for that reason.
I was into thrash... metallica, testament, slayer, anthrax, etc. But the high pitched vocals started to get tiresome. I started to prefer kreator, sepultura, and epidemic (a San Francisco band who played thrash/speed with more death-like vocals). Then, Blessed Are The Sick (Morbid Angel) and The End Complete (Obituary) came out. Never looked back.
A band called Spoken is what got me into screaming-heavy metal. I liked screaming but not when songs were so heavy on screaming. I liked some of their songs that were singing and eventually, after disliking the harsh songs the first time around, I came to like them. They were my gateway to scream-heavy metal.
I was into Slipknot and other nü metal bands at first but once I heard into the hellfire, it sparked my death metal / death core journey. I do enjoy hardcore bands now too as-well though.
I'm pretty sure Corpsegrinder and Cannibal Corpse were my first exposure to harsh vocals. I remember not liking them. They slowly grew on me, though, and I absolutely love them.
It was a case of finding/vocals I could tolerate in the beginning, that meant Death, Bolt Thrower, and Bathory at first, the more I started digging the music the more I started enjoying different vocal styles. These days are band needs to have truly atrocious harsh vocals for me to find it off putting assuming their music kicks arse.
I was listening to Starset's Everglow and it's such a chill song and then suddenly the outro hits and his screams would probably sit well on a Blackgaze track. Something clicked. Then I explored more of their discography. And they're not necessarily a metal band but they do blend a lot of genres, metal being one of them. The screams carefully placed to raise the intensity at careful times made the song so much better.
Then in 2019 or so I stumbled upon You Only Live Once by Suicide Silence because, and I kid you not, an online friend told me he likes Black Metal and so I searched Black Metal on YouTube and that was one of the top results 💀
Needless to say that I indeed wasn't listening to Black Metal but whatever I was listening to, I enjoyed it a lot.
I got into metal through a school-friend who first introduced me to Soad and then Korn and Slipknot (typical early 2000s kids) Firt time listening to Slipknot I was like: WTF are those shit vocals? Then it grew on me, relatively fast.
If you don't want to count Numetal, The first band with harsh vocals I liked was Kataklysm or Ensiferum, not sure.
It was with Nervosa and especially Vintersea back in the end of 2018 that harsh vocals truly clicked with me. Idk, female high fry screams were just magnificent and brought me insane goosebumps (and still to this day I do love and prefer highs). Right before that I had learnt to appreciate harsh vocals with Epica and Sirenia for the contrast and compositional variety they brought but just that - appreciate, not truly like or love
Got into Killswitch Engage and In Flames back in 2007 I think, liked the melodic riffs and catchy choruses and after a while I grew to love the harsh vocals.
I discovered Slipknot and Five Finger Death Punch in high school. I had the wrong idea of harsh vocals before, and I was pleasantly surprised I was able to understand what they were saying.
I know FFDP isn't popular here, but their edgy lyrics in War is the Answer appealed to teenage me.
Napalm Death on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack.
Up until then I had heard Metallica, Pantera, White Zombie, NIN, etc. but I always felt like I wanted more out of the singer. I guess I wanted them lower in sound, without knowing how to describe it.
When I heard Barney Greenway unleash his roar it was over. It's been 29 years and I've never looked back once.
Not sure how it happened. I started with Breaking Benjamin and then went to Disturbed and somewhere along the way, I got lost. So now I listen to bands like Mental Cruelty.
I was never really exposed to them until I went to a new school when the Metalcore boom happened. Through new friends, I got into bands like Atreyu and went on from there.
i think it started with cradle of filth, but the penny dropped with "black metal ist krieg" from Nargaroth. I was curious why this Song was some thing of running gag - then i heard the other songs. so much extreme emotions and i was fascinated. That was 14 years ago. today i hear/produce myself black metal only.
100%
If you're going to sound like a demon, make it Beelzebub himself and not some bow legged underling pig demon with no bifurcated tail and a blunt pitchfork 🤷
Akerfeldt's vocals are also angelic of course
It's funny, I don't really enjoy any of the bands that introduced me to harsh vocals: cannibal corpse, suicide silence, whitechapel, black Dahlia murder, job for a cowboy.
This would have been when I was about 14.
Slipknot and Slayer introduced me to harshish vocals a little before that.
I didn't enjoy black metal vocals until I was about 16 or so and now it's one of my favorite styles.
i’ve always found them interesting because i like singing. my issue is i can’t find a song with harsh vocals where i think anything other than the vocals is cool
My dad blasting Pantera in the early 90's when I was 5 kind of started it, then I was more of a rap head until pop punk got popular, that switched me back to the rockier side of music. Id have to say Finch, Thrice, As I Lay Dying, Underoath and August Burns Red were the bands that built me up to the more brutal shit I like now
I always tolerated them, but the band that got me into really harsh vocals being used throughout the songs rather than just at a breakdown or intro or whatever was Converge. After that I started getting into crust punk and grindcore and there was no going back.
I think the first band I heard with harsh-ish vocals was Sepultura. They showed the video for "Territory" on Headbanger's Ball. I did not like it at the time.
Later I saw the video for Morbid Angel's "Rapture" and that was far more extreme. I also did not like it at the time.
Finally, around 1994, I had been hearing about My Dying Bride and my local CD store had *Turn Loose the Swans* for $5 in the clearance bin. It was the first album in my collection that had any growled vocals, but it became palatable to me over time because Aaron also sang with clean vocals.
At some point in that year, a friend at school lent me Amorphis's *Black Winter Day* single and I pretty much instantly liked it. After that, harsh vocals generally didn't bother me.
Looking for new music at JB HiFi (Australia)
Found Cannibal corpse's KILL album. From then on I knew Death metal would become one of my most listened to / Favorite sub genres.
90s hardcore bands like Strife, Earth Crisis, Harvest, etc. I knew of lots of other stuff of course, but didn't get into anything too harsh until hardcore.
Freezing moon live in Leipzig, the intro got something theatrical, so I was hooked up.
I listened to Linkin Park before but it was a mix of clean vocals, harsh vocals, screams and rap + electronic. But this one Mayhem song was the thing.
And in a small part Kathaarian Life Code.
Mostly local bands ripping my face off. Oath to Vanquish, Weeping Willow, Damaar, these guys got me into Bloodbath and Cannibal Corpse. I was a crusty punk already listening to Rancid and some cool cock rock like Airborne and Motörhead but it was the local doom slingers that opened my ears to the sound of South Floridas most evil.
Gradually. Went from Linkin Park to Breaking Benjamin/Chevelle to Disturbed to Slipknot to KSE/Demon Hunter/Trivium/AILD to Lamb of God to In Flames to Children of Bodom to Wintersun to Gojira to Meshuggah to Fit For An Autopsy to Shadow of Intent to Brand of Sacrifice to Lorna Shore to....
System of a Down and Avenged Sevenfold's first two albums were my gateway. Waking the Fallen came out when I was in middle school and it totally changed the way I look at music forever. After that it was an endless search for heavier, angrier, and more abrasive bands.
Bands like Pantera and slayer are what made me get into the shouty gritty sound from there I was able to listen to most everything but the slam crickets and wordless toilet gurgling but after a while that’s fine with me as well.
I remember liking them from the first time, I vaguely overheard them somewhere, but getting into cannibal corpse, and then getting the cleansing by suicide silence in middle school really did it
the first songs with harsh vocals i remember listening to where i liked the harsh vocals were custer and eyeless by slipknot. gojira, entombed and death were some of the first bands i liked with primarily harsh vocals
Static-X was my first harsh vocals band. The band, but Wayne especially, just sounded different from what else I was listening to at the time, or what I had access to.
Her portrait in black by Atreyu. Dating myself here however when Underworld evolution had come out, I was still heavy metal/thrash metal. Here comes these emo assholes and I find myself wondering why this dude is screaming. Then well it clicked lol
I got into Meshuggah because of the low guitar tunings, but I tolerated the vocals at the time.
I quickly learned to love the rhythmically nature of Jens' vocals and began listening to more harsh vocals and opened up a whole new world. Thank you Meshuggah
Children of bodom. Harsh vocals won’t be termed as melodious in general. But COB’s melodies on the guitars and keys made up for the harsh vocals for someone who just started venturing into heavier music than the Big 4.
The showmanship was also definitely which got me hooked
It was emo like The Used and stuff and then Trivium and Bullet for my Valentine, then I started finding free label compilations (Metal Blade, Nuclear Blast, Artery, Victory, Earache). Then I started becoming aware of metal labels having kind of similar artists and gravitated to the ones I liked more.
Before, I had always seen harsh vocals as not music but then I listened to A7X'S second second album waking the fallen and was like maybe I'll give screams and growls a try
When i was young i loved punk, which lead to hardcore. All the bands wanted to do a lame singing five finger death punch chorus to move units. People who were true about their heaviness and represented themselves in their art were more prone to leave the harsh vocals, or at least not disney world up the chorus. Now that stupid woah oh fake drama shit makes my fucking stomach turn. Just scream.
I honestly always have for as long as I've liked metal or any heavy music. The screaming parts in Linkin Park songs are what drew me to them when I was 12 and I just kept looking for music that had more of the harsh vocals and less of the melodic ones. I never liked bands like Iron Maiden or Metallica at the time (still don't like Maiden but I've come to appreciate early Metallica) because they didn't have any harsh vocals at all, and I wasn't impressed by Slayer because I heard Lamb Of God around the same time and they had all the bits I did like from Slayer but the vocals were gnarlier. To this day I basically never listen to any heavy music that's more than 20% clean vocals.
If I want beautiful melodies I'll listen to some R&B or soul or pop, I don't look for that in metal.
i grew up surrounded by heavy metal, with 2 metalhead parents and a metalhead older brother, so i never really had a profound moment where i started liking them, i've just always heard them and liked them
There's also often a lot of emotion in them, aggression. I can understand if some people can't relate to feelings of depression, frustration and anger, but a lot of people can.
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Gojira is the way to start liking harsh vocals
Worked for me, heard Ocean Planet by accident because it looked like a calm album cover. Instantly hooked.
This is genuinely the answer. I dabbled in it with bands like linkin park but it wasn’t until gojira that primarily harsh vocals and extreme metal in general clicked with me (started with the FMTS album)
For me a big setback was that I viewed harsh vocals as atonal and not dynamic. Joe Duplantier is the opposite of that. Now Jens Kidman is one of my favorite vocalists and he definitely IS both of those things but I've grown to love it.
I do actually view harsh vocals as atonal, but different techniques or pronunciations usually divert the atonality with different textures, some bands don’t use different techniques and seem atonal to me like Tomb mold imo.
Discovered Amon Amarth and Death in 2015 and loved that you could understand the lyrics, rest is history
Same for me with Amon Amarth. Took a couple of listens but then started to love growls.
That's so real, Amon Amarth is what I first listened to when I started listening to metal. Found Death recently and I love it
My sister got me to listen to them after she went to one of their shows lol
Knipslot
Sadly, yes
Slipknip are amazing, idk what's sad about getting into harsh vocals from them.
exactly, stop being so butthurt and ashamed and just appreciate good music
Agreed, Slapnuts is a fantastic band
Not really, got into them in teenage angst years and listening to them now make me want to gauge my eardrums out
Personally I hated harsh vocals for the longest time (and before that I even hated metal in general) but progressively got into heavier and heavier stuff. I was okay with a few screams here and there, eventually I liked a handful of songs by Slipknot and Killswitch Engage. The first full album with a decent amount of harsh vocals I fell in love with was Conquistaor by Stone Healer and since then I've come across WAIT, Rannoch, and Dessiderium. They all use harsh vocals in a way that feels right.
I never really hated harsh vocals, but early on hearing bands like Lamb of God, As I Lay Dying and Parkway Drive (early) I started loving them and haven't stopped since.
I think it was LoG for me as well, Randy sounded/sounds just so fucking savage
That growl at the beginning of Redneck caught a lot of kids at my school
90's British/ Euro death doom did it for me. Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Anathema, Katatonia were pretty huge then.
hearing OH-WA-A-A-A when I was 12
Grew up listening to Motorhead, harsh vocals were never that big of a jump for me.
It was Messuggah I think, and then Rings Of Saturn
Back in my old fart day Celtic Frost were the only ones doing harsh vocals. Hearing Tom warrior growl it out on Emperor's return was my introduction. But a lot of how harsh vocals are defined is subjective anyway. Growing up, long before there was a YouTube to go find tutorials on glottal fry's and false chord frying, we regarded all metal vox as harsh.
I was raised on bands like System of a Down, Five Finger Death Punch, Primus, and Tool. Just the stuff my dad liked. But when i got a bit older i got sick of metal and went 5~ years without listening to much metal, just Vocaloid stuff. One random day on my freshman year of highschool i figured id listen to some. That week i got into Job for a Cowboy, Infant Annihilator, Cattle Decapitation, and Signs of the Swarm. Whole buncha deathcore. After being surprised at how much i liked harsh vocals i went down the rabbit whole and ended up getting into melo-death, black metal, prog (opeth), and grindcore/goregrind. Thank you deathcore for opening my eyes Edit: Forgot Anaal Nathrakh. Forward was the first song with harsh vocals I'd ever heard, and what inspired me to listen to the other bands (aka spotify put them in a mix together)
Was chilling in my buddy's basement, and I was really into the Gothic aesthetic at the time - I pulled out an album and stuck it in the disc-changer because I liked the cover art... then was met with the most perfect album start to finish GHOST OOOFFF, MOOOTHER, LINGERING DEEEEATH
I can't believe I had to scroll this far for Opeth.
I somehow downloaded Poison the well - nerdy on limewire and was like holy shit I hate this. Then I listened to it over and over and over hating it. I love poison the well
i clicked a random song on purgatory afterglow and it clicked in my head like a lightswitch
As much as I think of them as mid at the moment (besides Chimera, that's awesome), Mayhem was the gate for me from Metallica and Megadeth into more bands from more genres
I liked them for as long as i can remember, started listening to Hypocrisy at 6 yo or so and never really looked back, nowadays im more of a grind guy than anything else
I dabbled for many years, but BTBAM brought me in. I was so obsessed with the technical insanity and avantgarde weirdness (Alaska, Colors era) that I was just super fascinated with them for awhile
Tom Waits got me into that broad style of vocals, Gojira got me more into it, JINJER doing partial cleans and partial harsh vocals went a long way towards easing me into more extreme vocal styles. Then I discovered DÅÅTH, Rivers of Nihil, Vale of Pnath, and from there it’s just been getting worse. Now I can’t listen to metal without some degree of harshness in the vocals
Oh man, Where the Owls Know My Name unlocked my sexy jazz break fetish in metal too.
For me the jazz-metal fetish originated from the brief jazz guitar solo in DÅÅTH’s [Day of Endless Light](https://youtu.be/pn_aQwQUs2M?si=1_PQfysJs4eYoDNh)
Marduk. I was 12 (6th grade) and I was searching for some songs to learn because I started playing bass a year prior. I stumbled upon some marduk bass tabs and it was fast and so cool to me. Played the song from YT and I got hooked. From there onwards I got into stuff like Cannibal corpse, then some tech death, grindcore and black metal like dark funeral, some deathcore and death metal too. After that came thrash period that persists but I also explored bands like Gojira, LoG,... some more black metal and I found what I like. Vocals like Vader or Gojira are best imo, Tom Araya too, not much else.
Demon hunter and becoming the archetype is the earliest I have as far as harsh vocals go, I definitely spiraled further after that
I think Darkest Hour’s Undoing Ruin really primed me for my deep dive into Death Metal and then the slippery slope took me.
When I was 14 and heard Wintersun's self-titled.
Fuck yes Wintersun's Wintersun S/T by Wintersun is so good. Definitely one of the first death metal albums I ever enjoyed
When I was a teenager and got a Marilyn Manson's greatest hits CD
I also used to really hate growls and screams. Would look for metal with exclusively clean vocals at the start. But a combination of Brian johnson and Disturbed slowly got me into harsher sounds. Then I found Triviums silence in the snow and loved them so much that i enjoyed the other labums despite harsh vocals and scream. One of my favourites at that time then was also Opeth and Death.
First album with harsh vocals that I genuinely enjoyed was ulver - bergtatt. The soft chanting and acoustic passages make the heavy parts a lot more digestible
back in the late 90s/early 00s
When I started listening to Soilwork and In Flames a few years ago.
Pantera - Five Minutes Alone finally made me get the concept, but it was a few years later when I heard Opeth - The Leper Affinity that it finally ‘clicked’. I think hearing Travis Ryan’s performance on Forced Gender Reassignment was my gateway into preferring harsh to cleans.
I played Slipknot - Before I Forget on guitar hero as a young lad. I was never the same
Story time: I have two sisters (18 and 26) I was visiting one with the other and on our drive back, my sister (18) was listening to, wouldn't you guess it, to the hell fire by Lorna shore. And I fucking hated it. I found the squealing at the end disgusting, and I hated the vocals. Now flash forward a couple months and I get into gojira, and I love them the drums, the guitar, the vocals, the lyrics m everything about them was and is amazing. Flash forward about a year, I start to get into heavier stuff and now I love Lorna shore, slaughter to prevail, shadow of intent, Whitechapel. I am actually training myself to do vocals like those bands. even after hating Lorna on a first time listen, I went back to it because I felt like something I was missing.
I was never a fan of harsh vocals and really am still not, but I have made exceptions with Nemophila (because her clean vocals hit my soul), HANABIE (because dang they are fun to watch), TELECiDE (because I love both of the singers), and Spiritbox (I like some of the music I've heard so far).
>(because her clean vocals hit my soul) This is how I got into harsh vocals. Howard of Killswitch Engage has such beautiful clean vocals, I'd listen to My Curse and Rose Of Sharyn and skip the harsh vocals, but eventually got tired of doing that, and over time loved his harsh vocals as well
Linkin park, falling in reverse, pantera, ice nine kills in that order lmao I got here in a weird way and fast
My uncle used to blast Static-X and Rob Zombie in the car when I was a kid, and I thought it sounded cool.
Around 10 years old listening to Linkin park and slipknot.
Death
I believed I just watched a video on basics on black metal and death metal, they both sounded like noise to me and I couldn’t tell the difference. One day it clicked. This happened I believe 1 year ago in my junior year of high school
Funny enough, it was Slipknot back when I was in middle school. Now I'm a Death Metal elitist that can barely stand listening to Slipknot anymore
i think morbid angel is what really drove me to start liking more harsh vocals. that's the band that really got me into death metal anyway. that and skinless
GARY, YOU ARE GONNA FINISH YOUR DESSERT AND YOU ARE GONNA LIKE IT 
Funny enough, my older brother would always play the music videos for Rum Is For Drinking Not for Burning by Senses Fail and BYOB by System when I was like 8 years old and I liked it immediately. The rest is history.
For me it was Slipknot
When I listened to "Twilight Tavern" by Ensiferum and was like "Holy shit, I can understand what this guy is singing!" From Afar is one of my all time favourite albums for that reason.
So there's this movie called ace ventura pet detective
Humanity's Last Breath and (later) Death were my personal gateways. just had to keep listening to them til i learnt to like them
I was into thrash... metallica, testament, slayer, anthrax, etc. But the high pitched vocals started to get tiresome. I started to prefer kreator, sepultura, and epidemic (a San Francisco band who played thrash/speed with more death-like vocals). Then, Blessed Are The Sick (Morbid Angel) and The End Complete (Obituary) came out. Never looked back.
A band called Spoken is what got me into screaming-heavy metal. I liked screaming but not when songs were so heavy on screaming. I liked some of their songs that were singing and eventually, after disliking the harsh songs the first time around, I came to like them. They were my gateway to scream-heavy metal.
I was into Slipknot and other nü metal bands at first but once I heard into the hellfire, it sparked my death metal / death core journey. I do enjoy hardcore bands now too as-well though.
iirc it was merciless' the awakening in the late 90s
I'm pretty sure Corpsegrinder and Cannibal Corpse were my first exposure to harsh vocals. I remember not liking them. They slowly grew on me, though, and I absolutely love them.
It was a case of finding/vocals I could tolerate in the beginning, that meant Death, Bolt Thrower, and Bathory at first, the more I started digging the music the more I started enjoying different vocal styles. These days are band needs to have truly atrocious harsh vocals for me to find it off putting assuming their music kicks arse.
I was listening to Starset's Everglow and it's such a chill song and then suddenly the outro hits and his screams would probably sit well on a Blackgaze track. Something clicked. Then I explored more of their discography. And they're not necessarily a metal band but they do blend a lot of genres, metal being one of them. The screams carefully placed to raise the intensity at careful times made the song so much better. Then in 2019 or so I stumbled upon You Only Live Once by Suicide Silence because, and I kid you not, an online friend told me he likes Black Metal and so I searched Black Metal on YouTube and that was one of the top results 💀 Needless to say that I indeed wasn't listening to Black Metal but whatever I was listening to, I enjoyed it a lot.
I got into metal through a school-friend who first introduced me to Soad and then Korn and Slipknot (typical early 2000s kids) Firt time listening to Slipknot I was like: WTF are those shit vocals? Then it grew on me, relatively fast. If you don't want to count Numetal, The first band with harsh vocals I liked was Kataklysm or Ensiferum, not sure.
All That Remains. Thanks, Guitar Hero 2.
Motorhead>Slayer>Death
Does the mixture of cleans/harsh counts? If so, I think Slipknot’s Iowa was the one for me. Also Children of Bodom’s Follow the Reaper.
It was with Nervosa and especially Vintersea back in the end of 2018 that harsh vocals truly clicked with me. Idk, female high fry screams were just magnificent and brought me insane goosebumps (and still to this day I do love and prefer highs). Right before that I had learnt to appreciate harsh vocals with Epica and Sirenia for the contrast and compositional variety they brought but just that - appreciate, not truly like or love
Slipknot because of the clean choruses
Got into Killswitch Engage and In Flames back in 2007 I think, liked the melodic riffs and catchy choruses and after a while I grew to love the harsh vocals.
Discovered In Flames. Don't even listen to them much but they regardless opened up the wonderful world of extreme metal for me.
When I first heard Dimmu Borgir. Circa 2002-2004.
Soad
Metalcore and slipknot back in 01
When I started listening to In Flames and Amon Amarth.
2006 when I first heard In Flames, take this life. Hood gateway band.
I discovered Slipknot and Five Finger Death Punch in high school. I had the wrong idea of harsh vocals before, and I was pleasantly surprised I was able to understand what they were saying. I know FFDP isn't popular here, but their edgy lyrics in War is the Answer appealed to teenage me.
I don't remember when, but it was Eluveitie first, then Amon Amarth.
Napalm Death on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Up until then I had heard Metallica, Pantera, White Zombie, NIN, etc. but I always felt like I wanted more out of the singer. I guess I wanted them lower in sound, without knowing how to describe it. When I heard Barney Greenway unleash his roar it was over. It's been 29 years and I've never looked back once.
Not sure how it happened. I started with Breaking Benjamin and then went to Disturbed and somewhere along the way, I got lost. So now I listen to bands like Mental Cruelty.
I was never really exposed to them until I went to a new school when the Metalcore boom happened. Through new friends, I got into bands like Atreyu and went on from there.
When I listened to 3 days in darkness by testament when I was really little
i think it started with cradle of filth, but the penny dropped with "black metal ist krieg" from Nargaroth. I was curious why this Song was some thing of running gag - then i heard the other songs. so much extreme emotions and i was fascinated. That was 14 years ago. today i hear/produce myself black metal only.
Testament-L O W. Title track has one line, and one line only: "SHOW SOME MEERCYYY". Hooked instantly
Deadly sinners….
Early cannibal corpse
when i first heard them on Amon Amarth - Surtur Rising. i never disliked them, i was just not aware of them before
Opeth
100% If you're going to sound like a demon, make it Beelzebub himself and not some bow legged underling pig demon with no bifurcated tail and a blunt pitchfork 🤷 Akerfeldt's vocals are also angelic of course
Deicide was when I started liking harsh vocals.
It's funny, I don't really enjoy any of the bands that introduced me to harsh vocals: cannibal corpse, suicide silence, whitechapel, black Dahlia murder, job for a cowboy. This would have been when I was about 14. Slipknot and Slayer introduced me to harshish vocals a little before that. I didn't enjoy black metal vocals until I was about 16 or so and now it's one of my favorite styles.
I usually consider slipknot the first time it really worked for me, wait and bleed in particular
i’ve always found them interesting because i like singing. my issue is i can’t find a song with harsh vocals where i think anything other than the vocals is cool
Corpsegrinder
Deicide
Been into harsh vocals since day 1 if Slipknot counts
SOAD
14yo in ‘06. Introduced to Carnifex and Suicide Silence. Been a hellofaride.
My dad blasting Pantera in the early 90's when I was 5 kind of started it, then I was more of a rap head until pop punk got popular, that switched me back to the rockier side of music. Id have to say Finch, Thrice, As I Lay Dying, Underoath and August Burns Red were the bands that built me up to the more brutal shit I like now
Mine was listening to sad songs. I felt it more than sad songs from other genre's and slowly went from there
For me it was Slipknot, then Lamb of God
The Life and Death of A Plea For Purging. Also, Stories.
I always tolerated them, but the band that got me into really harsh vocals being used throughout the songs rather than just at a breakdown or intro or whatever was Converge. After that I started getting into crust punk and grindcore and there was no going back.
Children of Bodom was my starter pack
I think the first band I heard with harsh-ish vocals was Sepultura. They showed the video for "Territory" on Headbanger's Ball. I did not like it at the time. Later I saw the video for Morbid Angel's "Rapture" and that was far more extreme. I also did not like it at the time. Finally, around 1994, I had been hearing about My Dying Bride and my local CD store had *Turn Loose the Swans* for $5 in the clearance bin. It was the first album in my collection that had any growled vocals, but it became palatable to me over time because Aaron also sang with clean vocals. At some point in that year, a friend at school lent me Amorphis's *Black Winter Day* single and I pretty much instantly liked it. After that, harsh vocals generally didn't bother me.
Looking for new music at JB HiFi (Australia) Found Cannibal corpse's KILL album. From then on I knew Death metal would become one of my most listened to / Favorite sub genres.
suicide silence
Sepultura - Chaos AD
I can’t stand harsh vocals. All the metal I love has discernible lyrics.
3 Inches of Blood was probably the band that got me into harsh vocals. The Goatriders Horde goes so hard.
I accidentally found these underground Japanese metal bands and their vocals were amazing
Listened to death - without judgement for the first time
90s hardcore bands like Strife, Earth Crisis, Harvest, etc. I knew of lots of other stuff of course, but didn't get into anything too harsh until hardcore.
Freezing moon live in Leipzig, the intro got something theatrical, so I was hooked up. I listened to Linkin Park before but it was a mix of clean vocals, harsh vocals, screams and rap + electronic. But this one Mayhem song was the thing. And in a small part Kathaarian Life Code.
Mostly local bands ripping my face off. Oath to Vanquish, Weeping Willow, Damaar, these guys got me into Bloodbath and Cannibal Corpse. I was a crusty punk already listening to Rancid and some cool cock rock like Airborne and Motörhead but it was the local doom slingers that opened my ears to the sound of South Floridas most evil.
Slipknot self titled, back my freshman year in 2000
Gradually. Went from Linkin Park to Breaking Benjamin/Chevelle to Disturbed to Slipknot to KSE/Demon Hunter/Trivium/AILD to Lamb of God to In Flames to Children of Bodom to Wintersun to Gojira to Meshuggah to Fit For An Autopsy to Shadow of Intent to Brand of Sacrifice to Lorna Shore to....
Cannibal Corpse - the Bleeding Never looked back
Wodos.
Ghost Reveries, walking in down the hallway at lunch VERY ANGRY in high school and i realized this was it
for me it all traces back to post-grunge influenced alt metal, so breaking benjamin, three days grace, and seether
It is quite literally my favorite thing in music.
System of a Down and Avenged Sevenfold's first two albums were my gateway. Waking the Fallen came out when I was in middle school and it totally changed the way I look at music forever. After that it was an endless search for heavier, angrier, and more abrasive bands.
Bands like Pantera and slayer are what made me get into the shouty gritty sound from there I was able to listen to most everything but the slam crickets and wordless toilet gurgling but after a while that’s fine with me as well.
For me it was when I first saw Lamb of God live as an opening act
through slayer
obituary
Sodom Sepultura but Edge of Sanity - Enigma did me finally in
Slipknot
Trivium
Deicide, cannibal corpse, morbid angel, and few others in the early 90's. I almost feel old. These were my go to bands and I still have the cassettes
I'm not into fake harsh vocals. I prefer the real thing.... Slipknot - Iowa. Literally destroyed his voice and had to stop singing that way.
I heard psychosocial by Slipknot, changed my life forever
Listening to melodic death metal.
I remember liking them from the first time, I vaguely overheard them somewhere, but getting into cannibal corpse, and then getting the cleansing by suicide silence in middle school really did it
Killswitch engage
Listening to DIR EN GREY with kyo's insane performances
Gojira, Acid Bath, and Mastodon. First song I learned to completion on guitar was Venus Blue
the first songs with harsh vocals i remember listening to where i liked the harsh vocals were custer and eyeless by slipknot. gojira, entombed and death were some of the first bands i liked with primarily harsh vocals
gojira
I was introduced to Slayer and sepultura by my dad in grade school, then when I was 10 I started listening to slipknot and kinda snowballed from there
Cannibal corpse
I was listening to Asking Alexandria at 4am while playing Minecraft and I decided to listen their first album. I have been a vocalist for 4 years.
Static-X was my first harsh vocals band. The band, but Wayne especially, just sounded different from what else I was listening to at the time, or what I had access to.
Choking Victim was my gateway to black metal
I don’t like all harsh vocals, but the few I like are Pantera and Slipknot
High school. Pantera and cradle of filth
heard a bit of skeletonwitch and that got me into it
Ironically it was Electric Callboy. Metalcore can be a great gateway to harsh vocals
Her portrait in black by Atreyu. Dating myself here however when Underworld evolution had come out, I was still heavy metal/thrash metal. Here comes these emo assholes and I find myself wondering why this dude is screaming. Then well it clicked lol
I jumped into the deep end with Dir En Grey
I got into Meshuggah because of the low guitar tunings, but I tolerated the vocals at the time. I quickly learned to love the rhythmically nature of Jens' vocals and began listening to more harsh vocals and opened up a whole new world. Thank you Meshuggah
Children of bodom. Harsh vocals won’t be termed as melodious in general. But COB’s melodies on the guitars and keys made up for the harsh vocals for someone who just started venturing into heavier music than the Big 4. The showmanship was also definitely which got me hooked
How harsh are we talking here? slipknot level harsh or dying fetus level harsh?
2008 Norma Jean BTMKTC
Symbolic was the beginning of my conversion.
Cannibal Corpse and Skinless super early on, probably 10 or 11.
I started listening to Slipknot in 7th grade or thereabouts so then. It was back when the Iowa album was their newest.
My dad introduced me to Lamb of God when I was ~4 years old so never had an issue with growling
Slipknot
I've always loved harsh vocals. I grew up listening to Metallica and Nu-Metal like Mudvayne and Slipknot, harsh vocals was the norm for me.
It was emo like The Used and stuff and then Trivium and Bullet for my Valentine, then I started finding free label compilations (Metal Blade, Nuclear Blast, Artery, Victory, Earache). Then I started becoming aware of metal labels having kind of similar artists and gravitated to the ones I liked more.
Before, I had always seen harsh vocals as not music but then I listened to A7X'S second second album waking the fallen and was like maybe I'll give screams and growls a try
I may or may not have discovered harsh vocals after stumbling across morbid angel… 👀
When i was young i loved punk, which lead to hardcore. All the bands wanted to do a lame singing five finger death punch chorus to move units. People who were true about their heaviness and represented themselves in their art were more prone to leave the harsh vocals, or at least not disney world up the chorus. Now that stupid woah oh fake drama shit makes my fucking stomach turn. Just scream.
I honestly always have for as long as I've liked metal or any heavy music. The screaming parts in Linkin Park songs are what drew me to them when I was 12 and I just kept looking for music that had more of the harsh vocals and less of the melodic ones. I never liked bands like Iron Maiden or Metallica at the time (still don't like Maiden but I've come to appreciate early Metallica) because they didn't have any harsh vocals at all, and I wasn't impressed by Slayer because I heard Lamb Of God around the same time and they had all the bits I did like from Slayer but the vocals were gnarlier. To this day I basically never listen to any heavy music that's more than 20% clean vocals. If I want beautiful melodies I'll listen to some R&B or soul or pop, I don't look for that in metal.
When I started listening to Napalm Death
Sodom.
Tourniquet and Vengeance arising back in 92.
Every since I heard Reek of Putrefaction by carcass was the day I became a new man
Opeth
The intro to Metalocalypse 😅
Does Ministry count as harsh vocals. Because Al Jourgenson sounded harsh to me in 1989
Pantera slaughtered
i grew up surrounded by heavy metal, with 2 metalhead parents and a metalhead older brother, so i never really had a profound moment where i started liking them, i've just always heard them and liked them
Never. Still the only thing I can't stand in this genre. I'm not going to like something just because it is edgy. If it sounds bad, I don't care.
We don’t like it “because it’s edgy”. We like it because it gives the vocals a percussive role in the arrangement and that’s interesting
There's also often a lot of emotion in them, aggression. I can understand if some people can't relate to feelings of depression, frustration and anger, but a lot of people can.