i was listening to some slayer the other day, and it kinda sounded like the vocals were distorted. was this my imagination, or is this actaully something people do?

and if it is, do you just run the vocals through a regular distortion unit for a guitar or something?

Ha, I wonder what it would sound like if I ran my voice through DOD's Death Metal Distortion A lot of bands do it. For example, It is my safe bet to say that Galder used vocal effects on the album of Ill Natured.

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an old band of mine... the singer did it, he used a boss bass overdrive pedal with a dbx compressor/gate to control dynamics and feedback... pretty cool i think.
he tried using an ibanez ds7,dod grundge, and a dod death metal. but they were to high pitched and noisey as fuck... they couldnt handle lows, the grunge and death metal didn't have controls for the gain... so i suggested a bass overdrive pedal because they seem to have a larger range more in the vocal area imo...
then another thing, he liked to go from a quite wisperlike talking voice to an in your face scream/growl so the compressor did worlds of help there(kept him from blowing out speakers) and the built on gate eliminated the feedback problems when he had the od pedal on.

so it is possible, i suggest a bass overdrive or an actual vocal fx processor, an a gate of some sort is also reccomended.

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boss ODB3's work fine, I've seen a band use it live too, its just your basic bass distortion.

Alexi Laiho started to use distortion more and more, guess it's the time that he started to lose his voice

Seriously though, it smoothes out growls, so you don't hear the gutteral sound as much, this is good for black, heavy, or any kind of metal realy.

I use some distortion, but I'm thinking of getting that boss bass overdrive, by the accounts it's supposed to be one of the best for vocals, like xdislexicx said. But yea, compressor is needed if you go with a bit of distortion.

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a compressor is nice for vocals period... i'd say a noise gate is more important for use with distortion.

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Disavowed (NL) - Perceptive Deception is an album with kickass distorted vox.

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well, as far as i know, slayer doesnt distort their vox, tom does all his vocals naturally, and i can get a damn good growl on my own without distortion, it just takes practice, after about 2-3 years of doing it, i can do low pitched death metal growls, in the vein of opeth, to higher growls similar to the vox on dimmu's new album, and quite a bit in between.

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i normally sing like exhumed, high raspy vox, but i can get it to sound like tony from blood duster, and plenty lower as well, and i wouldn't DREAM of using distortion. (i wouldn't mind some reverb or delay but that's another matter.)

tom doesn't actually play bass you know, there's a little midget at the side of the stage doing it for him....
and no he doesn't distort

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ahaha i didnt know taht

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neither did i

Tom uses a bit of distortion on God Hates Us All, but their older stuff doesn't use any effects.

I did it on both Sparkle Motion albums. I enjoy sounding like a Wolverine.

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cup the mike like youre holding water in it..makes for a stronger base...hard to hear words though...moshed together sorta...

it seems okay to resurrect this thread... because there has been nothing said in the vocal forum for a good week now.

I saw satyricon live a while back, and Satyr, the vocalist had more pedals than the guitarists. I think he had a 4 or 6 pedal multi-effects box... and i know one of them were distortion... i cant really describe what it did... but it was coooooooool

added:
ministry does something crazy to their vocals too...

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Does Pig Destroyer use vocal distortion on Terrifyer?

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yes they do


and yeah, satyr LOVES the distortion

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k... question about them. Are his vocals his natural voice, or are they always distorted? When i saw them live i just noticed tiny little changes when he pushed his pedals.

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its a combination. anybody can get some gain on their voice by king of, roughing it up. its hard to describe, but its not that hard to do. but its a lot easier to have distortion on. from what ive heard his vocals are awlays distorted. his pedals were probably for stuff like echo and flanger, and his distortion was probably always on

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i use a SM58 and a Boss tube distortion...but you need a feedback supressor aswell...all for guitar though

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