Describing Not-Sung Vocals

Are there standards for describing vocals that are growled/yelled/shrieked? I'm realizing that I'm often at a loss to describe the vocal style of bands.

A lot of options but no real "standards"

I usually say:

Black metal: shrieks 
Death metal: growls 
Core: screamed
Thrash: a mix, but a lot of thrash is either sung (Anthrax) or shouted (Slayer)

Pethead wrote:I usually say:

Black metal: shrieks 
Death metal: growls 
Core: screamed
Thrash: a mix, but a lot of thrash is either sung (Anthrax) or shouted (Slayer)

I think this is it.

You might encounter "pig squeels" as well, but no decent music uses that so it's hardly worth mentioning.

Temple of Blood wrote:

Pethead wrote:I usually say:

Black metal: shrieks 
Death metal: growls 
Core: screamed
Thrash: a mix, but a lot of thrash is either sung (Anthrax) or shouted (Slayer)

I think this is it.

You might encounter "pig squeels" as well, but no decent music uses that so it's hardly worth mentioning.

Pig squeals=me not taking the music seriously.

No real standards.  Now that I think about it, I will usually include the musical genre in the description, like "death metal growls."

Yeah, I was just listening to Sorrowstorm-Triune Eminince, and was trying to locate the genre b/c it had grows/shrieks and clean singing. So I searched the CMR for the thread on it, and saw that guys like Kerrick and Crimson were discussing how the clean vocals were a departure from the black metal genre, and most didn't care for it as much. So...if my understanding of everything is correct, I would describe that album as "black metal with some clean vocals".

There's cookie monster drinking battery acid or cookie monster swallowing razor blades and that's the standard.

There is more variety within these styles than the stereotypes, hence "no real standards," but this is how I think of them:

I think it is fine to say "shriek" for black metal but I usually refer to it as a "rasp" - something with more bite than death metal vocals. There are black metal vocalists who really do a lot of shrieking and I'm not a fan (classic example - the lead singer of Frost Like Ashes).

For death metal I will describe them as "growled" and I hear others use "grunt" or "guttural." As some mentioned above, some death metal vocals are "pig squeals" (sounds like you'd expect) or "toilet bowl" vocals (indecipherable gurgling) which I avoid like the shrieked black metal vocals I mentioned.
 

This track by Crowned in Sorrow features clean vocals, a more classic, brutal death metal growl, and in the middle from 3:48-4:29 features a classic higher pitched black metal vocal from guest vocalist DC Mills.



Azahel Frost from Frost Like Ashes using a "shrieking" style which I am not a fan of:

Black Rider wrote:There's cookie monster drinking battery acid or cookie monster swallowing razor blades and that's the standard.

Frozen Fire wrote:There is more variety within these styles than the stereotypes, hence "no real standards," but this is how I think of them:

I think it is fine to say "shriek" for black metal but I usually refer to it as a "rasp" - something with more bite than death metal vocals. There are black metal vocalists who really do a lot of shrieking and I'm not a fan (classic example - the lead singer of Frost Like Ashes).

For death metal I will describe them as "growled" and I hear others use "grunt" or "guttural." As some mentioned above, some death metal vocals are "pig squeals" (sounds like you'd expect) or "toilet bowl" vocals (indecipherable gurgling) which I avoid like the shrieked black metal vocals I mentioned.
 

This is good. Thanks. It gives me a few more adjectives to describe these vocals!

There's also what I would call "gruff talking" which is how I categorize the majority of the vocals in Mortification albums EnVision through Relentless (and perhaps beyond...haven't made it any farther yet). I'm getting pretty tired of it lol.