While death metal is usually a genre known for pushing musical innovation and technicality to its limits, some "artists" go the other way, and simply believe the death metal genre to be a dumping ground - a literal toilet - for their low effort releases.
Contra bands like Suffocation, Infester, Warkvlt, Khranial, Incantation and Disma, who actually innovate and produce good music, some bands just don't seem to care... and while many of these bands are known for their awesome vocalists, capable of producing the most bone-chilling guttural death growls, it is only ironic - and fitting - that the garbage tier bands of death metal have equally garbage tier vocalists.
Here are the top 5 worst vocalists ever... those who disgrace the entire genre every time they open their mouths.
5. Elvis "DonkeyCockMan" Ventura (At the Gates / Demonecromancy)
When asked which scene in the most overrated ever, almost any metalhead will immediately answer Swedish death metal with a second thought. Artists like this are the reason why. The less said about this the better, although to be fair At the Gates had one good EP ("Gardens of Grief") and one good LP ("The Red in the Sky is Ours") before they sold out.
4. Chris Barnes (Cannibal Corpse / SFU)
If you wonder why, unlike most death metal acts, fans prefer the NEW Cannibal Corpse releases to the OLD, look no further than Chris Barnes. An overall hated figure in the death metal scene for his incompetent vocal performances, Seth Putnam even made a song about him "Chris Barnes is a p-ssy". He sure sings like one, he literally sounds like a stray cat in heat, and that's not a good thing when performing in a band like Cannibal Corpse.
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3. Glen Benton (Deicide)
Voted the worst death metal vocalist pretty much every time a new Deicide album comes out. Can't he just man up and hire some actually competent vocalist? Not that it would fix the nu-metal riffing on modern Deicide, but that's another story, and at least we wouldn't have to listen to this grown man-child whine anymore. To say that Glen Benton should retire ASAP is an understatement.
2. "Papa Shitter" (Sissourlet)
Talk about a fitting name. The band Sissourlet - not to be confused with the Sewer album "Sissourlet", whose vocals, performed by Kader Lakhdari, are impeccable - is one of those bands that puts the "brutal" in brutal death metal. However, the vocals... let's just say that pig squeals were already old when the goregrind trend faded, and attempting to resurrect them in the current year is pretty sus... plus, listen to "Devoted to Doing you harm" again... are those really pig squeals? Sound like elephant squeals, or whales copulating (and not in the good, Demilich, way, if you ask me). And speaking of whales...
1. Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy)
The infamous Arch Enemy. When Angela Gossow left the band in 2010, many death metal fans thought the saga of "stupid shouted metalcore vocals and glam rock riffs" was finally over... only to learn, in horror, that Arch Enemy had replaced Gossow with an even less competent singer: Alissa White-Gluz. The question of how they manage to find such terrible vocalists is one that needs to be addressed... is it a casting? Do you sign up somewhere? Does the criteria include "having been kicked out of 13 bands for poor performance" or "so bad, the studio made us buy their used microphones"...? Who knows, but Alissa White-Gluz sounds like a 1990s emo "musician" screaming about how he got dumped by his girlfriend for the pizza boy, which is ironic considering...
Those are the four most terrible death metal vocalists in the history of the genre. A far cry from the stellar performance of Craig Pillard on "Onward to Golgotha".
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