The Aggression of Crown Magnetar! Vocal Analysis of Godkiller

[00:00:00]It is Thursday, my friends. And what are we doing today? We're talking about Crown Magnetar. Why? Cuz I want to. Cuz I want to. And I'm excited to because I think I think we've talked about Crown on the channel before. I'm not sure if we've done it a lot though. And they're a good band, right? They are good solid Death Core, right? You want to hear Death Core that sounds like getting your face kicked in. This is the band for you. And to anybody who has stumbled upon this this video who's maybe not a metal fan, they're like, "What are you talking about?" But that's a good thing.

[00:00:29]That's a compliment to anybody who's curious. Now, if you're new to the channel, my name is Mark. I'm an extreme metal vocal coach. I teach people how to go safely and efficiently. That's my full-time job six days a week, and I do vocal analysis here on the channel. So, I'm excited to talk about this because Dan's a great vocalist. I'm very excited to to talk about his tone, his texture, the color of his voice, the delivery of his voice. Highly aggressive. [snorts] Um, but let's go ahead. Let's check out Godkiller. Here we go.

[00:01:02]>> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:01:22]Your film of your skin is a river of skin.

[00:01:32]So, there are already a couple things that I want to point out. If this is your first time hearing Crown Magnetar, you see what I mean? [laughter] You see what I mean about just I love that riff, by the way. That's a really cool riff. Um, I'm not a guitarist, so that's all I'm going to say about that.

[00:01:47]So, there are a couple things I want you to notice about his voice, right?

[00:01:49]Oftentimes when we're thinking about a metal vocalist and we're thinking about their tone and you hear people that say, "Oh, I love that metal vocalist's tone."

[00:01:56]What they're talking about number one is the um the the texture of the grit. Now, this isn't to say that vocalists all have one unified texture across the board. Like, if you think of your favorite metal vocalist, I'm sure they're doing multiple things, but they have their main sound, right? They have their main sound. So, that's the first thing they're talking about, the texture of the grit. We'll talk about that in a second. The second thing they're talking about is that the way the voice resonates, right? The way the voice resonates.

[00:02:23]So, I I'm I'm going to talk a little bit more about it in uh further on, but just to kind of prime your ears for what to listen for or a lot of what I'll be listening for, the texture of Dan's uh grit is very smooth. Very smooth. And this is a strong implication or a strong implication indication um that what's happening is there's a good amount of activation there's a good amount of closure in the tissues above the vocal folds right these are called the superglottal tissues false folds areotic folds aritenoids um these tissues that close or can close uh over the vocal folds they do when we swallow they do when we brace and you can have loose activation [groaning] or Or you can have more of an active, more of a braced activation. [clears throat] [groaning] You can hear how the texture changes.

[00:03:16]And his is like strangely smooth sometimes. Now, when I say strangely smooth, I just mean like it's impressive how he sounds so gritty and so aggressive and yet it's very, very smooth. You're not going to get this by just squeezing super hard and pushing as hard as you can, right? This is going to come from a good balance of air flow and resistance to air flow. Right? So again, that's just a prime me. We're going to talk more about it later. The second thing is the way that his voice resonates. He has um in and on the chance on the chance that you watch this this good thing. Um he has what I kind of think of as like pouty toddler delivery. That's how I think of it anyways. And this is something that us vocal coaches do all the time. And we have like these little characters that we reference all the time. Um that we reference all the time uh when we're thinking about our voice. Right? So you've got like if I'm going to do like an Alex Ty like a version's crown sort of thing, I think about Scooby-Doo like you know [laughter] I SHALL NOT BE DENIED. OH, RIGHT. That sort of thing. With Dan, he's got what I think of as like um pouty toddler delivery. And it's because it sounds cool with metal vocals, but if we take the metal vocals away, now I'm going to do vocals differently because I activate my distortion differently, but the approach is going to be the the approach of the articulation or the uh the pronunciation is going to be similar.

[00:04:30]Right? If I take like um I don't know like you know uh [clears throat] I don't want to take the trash, right? If I take that delivery, I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to go to bed. Mom, no, I'm not washing my hands. Right now, that's not me saying he sounds like that while he's screaming, but one way that you can figure out one way that you can figure out different uh different sounds for your voice is to play around with goofy characters and put a voice or put your distortion on top of that.

[00:05:04]Right? So, again, you've got Scooby-Doo Shaggy. Whoa, Shaggy. That gets used some certain sounds. Uh you've got like you've got like uh this is a super common one like a goblin. H I'm a little goblin.

[00:05:19]I'M A little [groaning] right. [clears throat] You've got all these different things you do. And it's very important when you're first starting out to at least if that's not your full approach, make time for that approach. I have a free uh a free course, entirely free course in the description below, uh how to scream from zero that covers basically shows you how to be playful with your voice to feel what it's capable of, what's going to make the most sense. But I want you to think about these things with his voice.

[00:05:42]Number one, this very forward along with the [groaning] like he is even smoother than me. His distortion is is awesome. Let's keep going.

[00:06:05]Fire the black.

[00:06:12][music] [groaning] [groaning] >> Yeah. See right there? Do you hear that?

[00:06:31]like really tongue or so, right? What there's one thing he's doing, this is just a quick little call out. There's one thing that he I've never noticed this before. He's done it twice in this song. When he ends a word with C-K, [snorts] you know, um, back stack, black, hack, right? Whatever. He adds a little bit of aireriness to it and it sounds really cool. Like he doesn't just say like like I'm just going to use a basic like a false chord fundamental tone because it's it would be the easiest to just play around with this with. But he doesn't say like let's say I say the word um black. Okay. So hey [clears throat] whoa black.

[00:07:12]Black black. He gives a little a little puff of air. Black black.

[00:07:18]And it sounds really cool. I he'll probably do it again. I almost want to go back but I don't know if I'll be able to catch it. But this is one of the things that you know you can do. One criticism that gets thrown a lot at Death Core vocals. And I don't think it's entirely unwarranted um is that a lot of the vocalists sound the same, especially these days. But things like this are are what going to things like this are going to be what sets you apart. Little ways that you add different touches to your voice. A little bit of breathiness on uh if you like like this K this sound, right? Or the fact that he has a lot of chew on his onsets. A lot of his vocals, if you listen to him, it it really sounds like he's like starting a lot of his words with right and it sounds really neat. Go ahead and listen for those two things as well.

[00:08:05]Here we go.

[00:08:08]So the mouth [ __ ] Right.

[00:08:28][groaning] Hello.

[00:09:01]Okay, there's a lot. That was a big chunk. That was a big chunk of audio. My video is going to get taken down.

[00:09:06]Probably not. Okay. So, [clears throat] yeah, he's got a lot of really great, really smooth grit. And I want to talk about that a little bit because his his voice, we could say his screams are very compressed. I don't really like the word compressed used in that way. Um, and I think the reason for that is, uh, sometimes when we say compressed, oh, oh, add more compression to your screen, like what does that really mean, right?

[00:09:34]What does that mean? And, and I'll explain. So when we're talking about compression, right, what we're talking about is we're talking about what is happening to the air between whatever tissues are resisting the airflow and our activation of that airflow.

[00:09:50]Right? We're not pushing up with your diaphragm because your diaphragm can't push up, but we're bracing. We're using our abdominal muscles, our back muscles, our rib muscles to create pressure in the diaphragm that pushes the diaphragm up. That's right. The diaphragm itself is not pushing up because it's a muscle that can only contract and relax.

[00:10:07]Muscles don't push, they pull. Right?

[00:10:09]So, when we say compression, what we're talking about is we're talking about what's happening.

[00:10:14]Many times we're talking about what's happening to the air in our system, right? And so, when we say, "Oh, just add more compression." Much of the time in my experience, what people relate that to is, "Oh, just press really hard.

[00:10:27]Just squeeze even harder. Just keep squeezing. Keep squeezing." And this is something I run into with a lot of new students who come to me who have some sort of scream. They have a scream. It sounds excellent, but it's very uncomfortable. At some point, they got it in their head that the issue was to add more compression, which sure, the air in your body is likely to be more pressurized, but without context, without clarity on what adding more compression means, they interpret that as squeeze hard. And so again, they have this scream that maybe even sounds a lot like Dan, right?

[00:11:04]Awesome. But it's causing them issues.

[00:11:06]It's causing them pain, right? This is something that's important. You know, if if anybody's watched this channel for a while, you know that some terms I'm more than happy to be a little loose with.

[00:11:17]This is not one of them. Uh and also pushing with the diaphragm is not one of them. Although I've definitely said that by I've definitely, you know, I've never been perfect. I've definitely said push your diaphragm before, but I'll toss I'll save the diaphragm thing for another video. But okay, Mark, cool. So, you just told us not to do that, but what do you have to help? Right. It's really easy to say don't do that, but it's even better to replace it with something. So, you know, eventually I started playing around with more pressurized screams, right? [snorts] My apologies. Um, eventually I started playing around with uh more pressurized screams and early on in my career that caused me a lot of muscular discomfort.

[00:11:59]I didn't really have issues with the edges of the vocal cords themselves, but I would just get really tired. So, here's a way, one way that you can play with adding a little bit of a little bit of um more of that concise, more of that tight, smooth grit to your voice without overdoing it. What you're going to do is tiny little pulses, quiet little pulses, and you're going to you one thing you can do is you can play around with voices that feel a little bit more squeezed, right? Feel a bit a little bit more squeezed above the vocal folds. One of the most common ones, one that I use all the time is like this, hello kind of Kermit the frog sound. Right now, you can have a Kermit the Frog that's darker. Hi, hello.

[00:12:46]You can have a Kermit the Frog that's a little brighter. Hi. Hello. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:50]Yeah. Whoa. Whoa. See how it gives you different textures? Hey. Versus.

[00:12:58]Right. So, you just play around. Right.

[00:13:01]You're here. Hey, Kermit the Frog.

[00:13:04]Now, I'm just going to try to do a little bit of a grunt. I'm not going to get too hung up on, well, is this epiglottal? Is this aritenoidal? Is this false corridor? My main thing is, is it comfortable? That's my main goal here.

[00:13:16]Is it comfortable? Okay. Hey. Hi.

[00:13:20]Now, at this point, if I'm learning vocals, I've I've gotten to a decent place where I kind of have an understanding of of decent breath support. I I know basically how to breathe in. So, I'm going to just give it a little bit of gas. Hey. Hi. Hey, hey, hey.

[00:13:37]Now, you see how I'm getting some grit there, but you don't hear any like in my body. You don't hear my vocal cords going, right? You don't see my head turning bright red and veins popping out. You don't see me like struggling, right? It actually feels and sounds pretty gentle. Hey, hey, hey.

[00:14:03]And then as you play around with it, you'll find little areas just like you heard with me where your voice cracks and you're like, maybe not there. you you'll find areas where you're like, "Oh, that's more concise." That's going to be a really good way for you to get into sounds that are more smooth, more more [snorts] TV static grit versus uh versus chunky grit, right? Will you sound exactly like Dan? The dice may fall that way, right? But you'll have a sound that's comfortable and that sounds interesting. So again, you can do it with a lot of a lot of different things, right? says, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey."

[00:14:38][groaning] [clears throat] Anyways, let's keep going.

[00:14:59]>> [laughter] >> Give power.

[00:15:05][music] [groaning] [music] Wars are your file.

[00:15:50]by your side [groaning] of your life.

[00:16:04]They are [groaning] my See, now in the end here, he's a little bit chunkier. Here. Let's go back to about 3 minutes. That means we're going to It's okay. It's a sick It's a That means we're I'm going to replay it for about a minute, but it's a sick outro, so who cares?

[00:16:30]How about that timing being perfect?

[00:16:33]That was nuts. Okay, so you're going to notice he's a little bit chunkier here, right? I also want you to think about I also want [clears throat] you to think about the tongue, right? A lot of the way that we get this depth in our voice, you know, oftentimes, uh, new vocalists, what they want to do is they want to take their vocalist, not just new vocalists, experienced vocalist, they want to take their larynx and they want to just shove it down as far as they can, right?

[00:16:59]Not a very good idea. It's very tiring.

[00:17:02]Even, you know, sometimes sometimes I'll have you might say, "Oh, well, it doesn't tire me out." Well, hell yeah.

[00:17:08]Good on you, right? But it e at best what it does is it makes it very difficult to move back up to uh into a high or a mid. It makes it more work.

[00:17:18]Right now, inevitably whenever I say this, there are people who are like, "Oh, I shove my larynx down as far as I can and I have no problems." Well, hell yeah, brother. You've spent a lot of time making that work for you. There's probably a way to do it to sound exactly the same for less work, right? It's kind of like when somebody says to you like, "Oh, I never I never drink water and I feel fine." And it's like, well, you think you feel fine, but imagine how much better you felt. You would feel if you did drink water, right? So, anyway, that being said, the reason I'm taking time to clarify that is because your your larynx can move, right? It's okay for your larynx to move. But a lot of this depth we get by manipulating the sound waves in the mouth before they leave, curling back the tongue.

[00:18:01]Now, sometimes people will say, "Well, where where should I curl the tongue?"

[00:18:04]Wherever it sounds cool. Wherever it sounds cool, right? We're going to talk about where he sounds like he's putting his tongue mostly. Right? But wherever sounds cool. And and I can show you, right? So, if I take like a lot of my lowest a lot of my lowest nastiest vocals, right? [clears throat] E3, right? [clears throat and groaning] If I take away all the manipulation, you're going to hear that it's not that deep, right?

[00:18:33]I was going to say look at my larynx, but my beard's a little in the way. So, don't look at it. Don't look at my larynx. Or you can try. I don't know.

[00:18:40]I'll turn it sideways, too.

[00:18:42][clears throat] [groaning] [groaning] Am am I going to tell you that there's nothing happening my larynx? No. There's a little bit of movement, but the vast majority of what's happening is in the mouth, right? So, let's listen to this again. A because it's awesome. And B, because we can talk about where his tongue is sitting. Let's keep going.

[00:19:27]forever.

[00:19:38]The blood of your life.

[00:19:42][groaning] Oh, that's cool. Ending on that like big It's not a splash, but that's what I want to call it. Um, it sounds like a lot of the time his tongue's like hovering in the middle, right? Uh, [groaning] you can connect the tongue, you can disconnect the tongue. Um, but yeah, I I think that that that's some of the main things I take away. Number one, mo most of the time, much of the time, there's this really smooth, really nice, really concise grit. Number two, there's a lot of like barky, puffiness to his vocals, but not in a way that makes them sound breathy. Right? He starts and ends his offsets with, you know, what's interesting, these are not like hardcore vocals. They're not hardcore vocals like you know um you would think of like Kublan, right? Um but the way he starts and ends a lot of his phrases sound like it they borrow some some vibes from it, right? The way that it almost sounds like he's shouting into the vocal, but it doesn't have that voicy shout that YOU KNOW WHOA WHOA WHOA THE [ __ ] THAT WE ASSOCIATE with uh hardcore screams, right? And then finally the tongue sort of hovering in the middle. [groaning] That's a sound bite for you to create these these deep uh wide tones. Right? So with that being said, what if you are a new metal vocalist and you're wanting to start off with these highly compressed sounds, right? Um, and that again that's not to say across the whole song he was using the same technique the whole time, but you want to have a sound that's more like, you know, versus [groaning] right. Again, think about activating at the lowest pos possible effort in a way that feels up. Right? Activate with the lowest possible effort in a way that feels up. This isn't going to sound like a super cool final scream, but it will sound like something that can work, right? This is this is a similar situation with how I teach people certain types of high vocals, right?

[00:22:10]Instead of going being like, "Okay, just scream, right? We do."

[00:22:19]That's highly narrowed, right? That's highly uh highly uh the air flow is very very very narrowed, right?

[00:22:28]Little bit of gas.

[00:22:32]It feels like I'm trying to cough up here.

[00:22:40]Right. So, these are different things that you can think about. Go ahead and focus on that. Excellent single uh by the homies in Crown Magnetar. I guess this is a short shorter video today because it's kind of a shorter song. So, thank you for watching. Greatly appreciate it. If you're brand new to your metal vocal journey and you want to get started, check out my entirely free course, How to Scream From Zero, in the comments below. Many thanks. Much love.