Screamo vocals - for or against?

[MourningOblivion]

Hey all! So I thought I'd put this little question to you people : Screamo vocals or clean?

 

Personally I'm for screamed vocals, but I particularly enjoy it when it's mixed with clean.

For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suhuQlYZwtE

 

I find you can write with screamed vocals quite differently to clean, and it can add more complexity and passion to a song.

 

What'ya all think about them? 

 

[FatherAlabaster]

I've always liked bands that can nail the contrast between harsh and clean vocals - Opeth, Enslaved, My Dying Bride, Edge Of Sanity, Akercocke, Voices, Emperor, early Borknagar and Ulver, even early Fear Factory, all that stuff makes me really happy. Replacire's new album is a good example of well-integrated cleans. It's unfortunately easy to screw up IMO. I love early Dark Tranquillity, but I always thought their incorporation of clean vocals was awkward, sometimes painfully so, and I don't care for their musical direction after the late 90s. This song kind of turns me off.

As far as writing goes, I've always felt more free and inspired when I can make use of that harsh/clean dynamic, but for the past few years, I've been more interested in using clean voice as a backing instrument/sound effect than I have in writing melodic lead vocal lines. I have several sections on my latest recording with medieval-style chanting. Lyric writing has always felt like a different animal when I'm singing vs. screaming, and it's usually much easier for me to write lyrics with harsh vocals in mind.

A semantic note, to avoid confusion - "screamo" is a particular outgrowth of hardcore, not a catch-all term for harsh screamed vocals. Here's some screamo I enjoy:

 

[Requiem]

So when the word 'screamo' is used here, it's not the genre, it's just growled vocals? 

I'm with FatherAlabaster on this one, especially when it comes to really well executed combinations of cleans with growled. Bands like Amorphis, Moonspell, Rapture and Saturnus use cleans and growls to amazing effect, so the combination really suits dark/doom/gothic metal. I tend to like a lot of metal and dark rock bands that use all cleans as well. 

Growled vocals are so important though to my listen experience, but at times I can find bands, especially death metal bands, that use simply the same style of growl for a whole album a little tiring. This is part of the reason why I'm not a huge death metal fan, I don't find enough variety a lot of the time.

Also, singers like Satyr on the last few Satyricon albums is just too straight forward, locked into that same rasp. It's great in short doses but I would prefer more variety even within the growling scope. Vocalists like Thomas Vanaanen (ex Thyrfing) and Ville Sorvali (Moonsorrow) are much more to my taste, with that subtly and expressiveness. 

But yeah, some of my favourite vocalists are growled/screamed singers. It's a beautiful part of the metal landscape.