The use in music of vocals that are... well, harsh. Typically this refers to vocals that are growled, in attempt to make the music sound more "evil." This is commonly associated with extreme metal, but shows up in other genres as well. See Soprano and Gravel for when this is paired up with cleaner, usually female, vocals. Compare Metal Scream, when the singer makes their vocals sound more intense by, well, screaming, and Smoky Voice.
Please note that Harsh Vocals are not the same as Screamo, which is another genre of music entirely. Most metalheads will be rather upset if you refer to them as such.
Examples
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Folk/Country
- Not quite what's meant here, but Leonard Cohen did say, "Only in Canada could somebody with a voice like mine win Vocalist of the Year" when accepting the Juno Award for Best Male Vocalist in 1992.
- In recent years, Bob Dylan has started veering into this territory when he sings. His trademark nasal groan is still present, but age has added a gruffness that may even rival that of Tom Waits.
- Country Music singer Tyler Farr is known for having an incredibly raspy and guttural voice.
- Albert Kuvezin's singing is all like this. This is a result of him being a VERY accomplished throat singer. Here's an example.
- Nicolas Reyes of the famous Gipsy Kings is notable for putting on a very coarse voice when he sings.
- Tom Waits gargles whiskey and broken glass.
Industrial
- Very common in Industrial and related styles, pioneered by Skinny Puppy back in the 80s.
- Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman mainly alternates between harsh vocals and a much smoother, crooning style - sometimes both get used within the same song for the sake of contrast. For a few musically Lighter and Softer albums in the mid-80's, he dropped the growling almost entirely.
- Das Ich is a good example of this trope's use in darkwave.
- Project Pitchfork prominently began using this vocal style in the early-mid 2000s. There are a few exceptions, such as "Timekiller", where the singer uses a relatively normal baritone voice.
Metal
- All Death Metal singers (The Other Wiki even refers to this vocal style as a "Death Growl"). In the early years of the genre, "Cookie Monster" vocals were basically the only thing that separated it from just dirty, fast thrash. (in fact, a lot of Allmusic reviews of the genre use the words "Cookie Monster") Bands who go beyond strict use of deep growls (and perhaps occasional high-pitched screams) are often accused of being sellouts and posers unless the band in question has Progressive Metal leanings or otherwise has segments where cleans could actually fit the song, like in Melodic Death Metal.
- Cannibal Corpse Singer George Fisher has been growling so long that he can switch this voice on and off. While off, he sounds like he's been smoking eight packs a day.
- Many Thrash Metal singers, get pretty close to death metal vocals, like Mille Petrozza, and Randy Rampage.
- And to show how "harsh" it is, Cookie Monster creator Frank Oz stated that the guttural voice "blew my pipes out" the first time he tried, and once performing it for a whole day, "my normal voice would be a half an octave lower."
- Melodic Death Metal bands generally use higher-pitched screaming, but there are examples of bands using the traditional growling style such as Johan Hegg from Amon Amarth
- Andrew and Grant of Unleash the Archers provide these.
- Pantera's Phil Anselmo, one of the most influential vocalists in Heavy Metal during the 1990s, combined both machismo and sociopathy to create a sound much more terrifying than your usual, run-of-the-mill "scary" voice. You can even hear some of it as far back as Power Metal, his debut with the band during their later-disowned "glam phase". Granted, the tone itself was mostly copy-pasted from Kyle Thomas of fellow Texas Thrash Metal band Exhorder, though he would later take certain... liberties with it.
- Masha Arhipova from Arkona, one of the few female vocalists to pull off the Death Metal growl.
- Michael Bohn of Issues, who contrasts his vocals with the smooth, poppy, R&B vocals of fellow vocalist Tyler Carter.
- The grindcore band Caninus affectionately parody the use of this vocal style in metal by having two pitbulls trade off on lead vocals.
- Max Cavalera of Sepultura and Soulfly. ROOTS! BLOODY ROOOOOOOTS!
- The lead singer of Skillet, John Cooper. Not only does he sing like this, it's his normal speaking voice.
- For a full-on "Cookie Monster" female, Adrienne Cowan of Seven Spires, a Dimmu Borgir fan who in a few songs growls like her idols (and has downright covered them).
- Detonator, vocalist of the Brazilian comedy Metal band Massacration. The In-Universe explanation is that the God of Metal ordered him to cut off his nuts to make his voice more Metal. Yeah, it's THAT kind of band.
- Early in her career, Floor Jansen would perform in Soprano and Gravel duets opposite a male growler. She still does, but she added death growls of her own to her repertoire on ReVamp's second and final album Wild Card, and also growls on a few Nightwish songs, most prominently "Yours Is an Empty Hope".
- Epica's and After Forever's Mark Jansen.
- Kamijo of Versailles doesn't do this very often, but there's still a few examples of this, such as in "The Red Carpet Day".
- Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister was one of the first people to sing exclusively with a throat full of gravel.
- One of his fans, Metallica's James Hetfield, employs lots of this. To the point one day his voice blew out, forcing him to take some vocal therapy.
- NWOBHM/Black Metal band Venom took Lemmy's vocal approach and cranked up the aggression. Their style was hugely influential on both black metal and death metal.
- Dream Theater's James LaBrie normally did melodic vocals but has done occasionally employed harsher vocals, notable on Black Clouds and Silver Linings. The song ''A Nightmare to Remember" is also the only time the band has used the death growl technique, though that wasn't done by LaBrie.
- Laura of Dalriada does this at times, though a majority of her singing is clean.
- While not being actual growling, Magali Luyten's both singing and talking voice are very raspy.
- Marilyn Manson varies depending on the song, but when a song with harsh vocals is done live, oftentimes, it will become even harsher.
- Hacktivist has emcee Ben Marvin, who does this combined with rapping in contrast to fellow emcee Jermaine "J" Hurley, who uses clean vocal raps.
- Minoru Niihara of Loudness.
- Buzz Osborne of The Melvins' primary vocal style can be described as this. As with Captain Beefheart, his speaking voice is quite different.
- A Pale Horse Named Death use harsh vocals very sparingly, such as on "Devil Came with a Smile".
- Mike Patton sometimes uses this type of vocal style in his music. But that's because he uses almost every vocal style in his music. His performance as The Darkness in the videogame of the same name essentially is Nightmare Fueled death metal vocals.
- Simone Pluijmers from the Netherlands, another female vocalist.
- Psychostick takes it to the logical conclusion and has the vocals for Six Pounds of Terror performed by a small dog.
- Quorthon, the man behind Bathory, codified the phlegmy, sinister rasp associated with Black Metal.
- The Dark Element's "Dead to Me" has guest vocalist Niilo Sevänen providing a deep-pitched roar at several points.
- Otep's Otep Shamaya does a lot of this, and is also another rare female example.
- The Halo Effect's Mikael Stanne uses a mid-register snarl almost exclusively, bar singing cleans on the choruses of "In Broken Trust" and "A Truth Worth Lying For".
- Infamously to anyone who's played Rock Band 2, Mallika Sundaramurthy from Abnormality (as in "Visions"), who is also a rare female example.
- Another female example would be Angela Gossow and her hand-picked successor, Alissa White-Gluz.
- Yet another female example is Jyou of exist†trace, although she's cut down on it in later releases.
- Much like fellow metal virtuoso vocalist Mike Patton, Devin Townsend uses almost every vocal style under the sun, and is very good at implenting harsh vocals into his music.
- Vocaloid producer Yuyoyuppe has a good chunk of songs using this vocal style, done in the voices of Hatsune Miku and Megurine Luka of all people. Some notable examples are "[S]" and "For a Sick Boy".
Punk
- This is a common feature of Folk Punk— musicians such as Pat the Bunny or Sean Bonette of AJJ have gravelly voices that add to the punk nature of the music.
- GG Allin sang with a rasp that became more pronounced as time went on, owing to his alcoholism and substance abuse. It reached Narm levels on Brutality & Bloodshed For All where it sounds like he's doing his best impression of Animal from The Muppets.
- Dicky Barrett from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones!
- Darby Crash of The Germs used this as more or less his entire singing style.
- New York Dolls lead singer David Johansen didn't really exhibit this in his work with the Dolls, but he really leaned into it in his lounge-singer Buster Poindexter persona. His best-known song, "Hot Hot Hot", was performed as Poindexter.
Rock
- Captain Beefheart used this voice, among many others, quite often. However, unlike Tom Waits, it was nowhere near his natural voice.
- In his case it was more like a transparent imitation of Howlin' Wolf.
- Joe Cocker can easily be considered one of the first rock artists that popularized a very gritty, raw style of singing.
- Former KISS drummer Peter Criss was known for his very rough and raspy voice that he used to great effect when he sang. Most notably on "Black Diamond"
- Nils Frydakahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.
- PJ Harvey's song "Joy" from Is This Desire?.
- Nickelback's Chad Kroeger combines this with Yarling for his signature voice.
- Little Richard.
- Yet another female example would be Courtney Love.
- Dan McCafferty of Nazareth. His gravelly style is rather similar to that of Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, although both (especially Gillan) are capable of more melodic styles.
- Carl McCoy of Fields of the Nephilim.
- Frances Quinlan of Hop Along pairs this with country-inflected crooning to make some damn interesting indie rock. See here.
- Terje Winterstø Røthing from Kaizers Orchestra when he's singing for his project, Skambankt.
- AC/DC's Bon Scott had a pretty gravely rasp on the Highway to Hell album, whether this was due to his substance abuse or a stylistic choice we'll never know, since he died shortly after the album's release.
- Screamin' Jay Hawkins. When he isn't, y'know, screamin'.
- Bruce Springsteen probably has the roughest voice ever to grace the Billboard Top 10.
- Rod Stewart is noted for his distinctive raspy voice which can sound harsh at times. It is often attributed to a nasal injury when playing football aged 19.
- Kelly Jones of Stereophonics has a harsh raspy singing voice which has been described as "whiskey" by an Australian music critic.
- Will Wood often uses this technique in his songs. For the “(Vampire) Culture” segment of “Suburbia Overture”, he even ate hot peppers before recording to make his voice sound extra harsh.
- Paolo Nutini has a noticeable harsh rasp on songs where he uses his voice well like "Iron Sky" and "10/10".
Pop/Other
- Traditional throat singing from Mongolia can sound pretty harsh for Western ears that are used to more mainstream pop music.
- Louis Armstrong.
- Legendary voice actor Candy Candido was very well known for being able to sing from a high pitched falsetto all the way to a bass baritone. He was also doing the whole "gruff singing" thing as far back as the early thirties, as this clip shows. The best example of his harsh vocals is probably his rendition of "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man".
- Marianne Faithfull, since the 1970s, when her voice developed a distinctive rasp.
- Falco was deeply into this, given that most of his material was rapped in Austrian German (with the occasional English phrase thrown in), which doesn't exactly lend itself to smooth rapping.
- Harvey Fierstein, despite very much being a Camp Gay, has a very gravelly voice that you really wouldn't expect to hear in the show tunes he usually sings.
- Diamanda Galás: Who made shrieking an art.
- BABYMETAL, the group that kick-started the pop-harsh fusion trend in Japan, did not have this originally – all screams were either guest artists or heavily processed playback. That changed in 2023 when "new" member Momoko Okazaki (finally elevated to full-member after 3½ years of being nameless backup in place of the retired Yui Mizuno) showed she could growl. While she only does some screams live as of 2025, they can be heard on her birthday version of "Headbanger!!", the live cut of "METALI!", "RATATATA", and most prominently "Song 3". She also provides the screams for the 15th Anniversary cut of "Headbanger!!"
- Japanese Idol-fusion Girl Group PassCode has this as a core part of its sound, and three members have shown themselves to be competent harsh vocalists.
- Originally, the group's screamer was Yuna Imada, an adorable 4'10" young lady whose death-screams (which sound nothing like her real voice) punctuate 90% of the group's songs.
- Following Yuna's retirement in 2021, the group recruited Emily Arima, formerly of LADYBABY (see below), which was on hiatus at the time.
- Kaede Takashima, who joined at the same time as Yuna, also screams in a couple of songs and, to her credit, improved noticeably between 2015 and 2019+.
- Another female example is Christine "99" Kowalski, the guest vocalist on Front 242's 05:22:09:12 Off album.
- LADYBABY, another Idol-fusion group, has this on the majority of their songs as a stark clash with the other girls singing upbeat J-pop. Due to its history as a Revolving Door Band, who actually DOES the screams has changed many times since the group's debut in 2015.
- The original screamer was Ladybeard, a six-foot-tall fully-bearded crossdressing Australian pro-wrestler whose shtick was that he was in fact a five-year-old girl.
- After he left, they had no live screamer until early 2018, when final remaining original member Rie recruited Emily Arima, who can growl lower than plenty of men but is praised for her mid-range screams.
- The so-called "Fourth Generation", which began in late-2023 following a nearly four-year hiatus during which all previous members moved on to other projects, has had two, both trained by Emily:
- Fourth-Gen's original screamer was Sakura Tsubaki until family issues forced her to quit the group (and public life generally) after just five months.
- After 18 months without an official screamer, they finally recruited veteran Idol Kino Ochi, who debuted with the group in October 2025.
- Ei Tsukimachi, the youngest and tallest girl (she's only four inches shorter than Ladybeard), picked up the technique and screams in a couple of songs produced between Sakura's departure and Kino's debut, notably 2024's "Japasummer".
- Ladybeard's subsequent projects – Deadlift Lolita and Babybeard – naturally have him performing the same role.
- Yoko Ono is notorious for her One-Woman Wail. Not only on her own records, but also on John Lennon's first two albums. Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins and Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions.
- And a less famous female example in the form of Porcelain Black.
- The futurepop band Pride and Fall uses these in "Turn The Lights On", which is somewhat of an Out-of-Genre Experience for them.
- Hurricane Smith, best known for "Oh Babe What Would You Say".
- In the French Hip-Hop band Suprême NTM, there's JoeyStarr's trademark raspy and gravelly voice, which gives a more hardcore vibe to the band's songs if the lyrics weren't enough.
- No humans or any other living creatures on Earth hold a candle to the sound of a whale, as evidenced on the album Songs of the Humpback Whale, which showcases nothing but these sounds. The singing is very loud, for it can be heard from quite a distance around. Yet "vocals" is not really the correct term here as whales have no vocal cords and generate sound by forcing air out of their nasal cavities. And what we call singing is merely a series of grunts, squeals, cries and rumbles.
- Bonnie Tyler got her raspy singing voice after she accidentally screamed after vocal cord surgery. It can often sound harsh.
Fictional Examples
- Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica has EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION ~ ee wassa sos yehar, with its infamous "kowarero" refrain.
- Nidhöggr in Bleeding Edge is all about his Death/Black Metal theme, complete with his Death Growl super that damages and silences enemies in a large radius.
- Depending on the outcome of a skill check in Disco Elysium, singing Karaoke in-game can lead to a performance of "The Smallest Church in Saint-Saëns" in a very growly voice. Fail said check, and, well...
- The Sardaukar from Dune: Part One prepare for war on Salusa Secundus with a preacher chanting something in loud throat singing to masses of them in their Black Speech-like language (which was conceived by David J. Peterson). One of the phrases, "Dreams are Messages from the Deep", opens the film. Another one meaning "Power over Spice is power over all" opens Dune: Part Two.
- And then the inevitable parody with the "hamburger cheeseburger big mac whopper" clip.
- And then the inevitable parody
- The web series "The Female Vocalists of Extreme Music" showcases... pretty much exactly what the title says: women who do growls, screams, etc., usually in Heavy Metal, but other genres slip through sometimes. To date, it's covered hundreds of bands and vocalists—far too many to list on one page.
- Most characters in Friday Night Funkin' have pretty normal voice grunts to represent their singing/rapping, but Pico is about the only exception to the rule. His voice grunts are represented as scratchy and deep, and they only get deeper during his third song "Blammed". The fact that he explicitly hates Boyfriend and was sent to kill him in Week 3 doesn't help matters. His friend and fellow mercenary Darnell is even deeper.
- Villains Black Shadow, Blood Falcon and Deathborn all have the same sinister, distorted guttural vocals in all their Leitmotifs in F-Zero GX (while Deathborn's adds Ominous Latin Chanting and an Ominous Pipe Organ.) Bio Rex's theme isn't as sinister, but still uses lots of harsh growling and the occasional Metal Scream.
- Parodied on Homestar Runner, where Strong Bad describes Death Metal as being sung from "the bowels of your lungs", as opposed to "the top of your lungs".
- Nathan Explosion of Dethklok/Metalocalypse. It's his normal voice.
- 'Macho Man' Randy Savage had this as his normal speaking voice.