Recommended Loud Rock Bands! - Vol. 1

Have you ever listened to this genre of music called loud rock?

When I was a student in junior high school, I listened to the band ONE OK ROCK and then I became hooked on this genre.

The genre of loud rock is difficult to define, but it is more melodic than hard rock or heavy metal.

Of course, it still has a heavy sound in the instrumental section and you can hear the vocal melody, so I think that loud rock is a genre that takes the good points of two music genres; the familiarity of pop music and the coolness of heavy metal.

The most attractive thing about loud rock is the wide range of vocal melodies! A certain high range and volume are required for clear vocals that stand out even with the heavy instrumental sound.

Also, some loud rock vocalists use death growls like it’s used in heavy metal. It seems that even for a vocalist who can sing pop songs well, loud rock is a difficult genre to perform well.

Since I’m a vocalist, I naturally focused more on the vocals, so I am excited to introduce to you some of my favorite loud rock bands with some amazing singers!

That’s all for the introduction. Let’s get it started!

I’m going to start with Linkin Park!

They are an American mega band that represents the 2000’s and they have fans all over the world. This band’s style of writing that includes a DJ established a new sound that had never been heard before. The reason for their popularity lies in Chester Bennington’s amazing vocals. His voice is thick and strong like no other.

There are several types of death growls, but Chester often used a type called fry screaming vocals. His outstanding vocals use high sound pressure and resonance. When other vocalists try to cover his songs, they’re not able to capture his style without sounding hackneyed. The long scream in the latter half of the famous song by Linkin Park “Given Up” is just overwhelming.

The long scream starting from 2:25-2:41 in this video uses the fry screaming technique.

Also, the lyrics written by Chester are quite difficult even for native English speakers to understand, and it is believed that his horrific experiences are hidden behind his complex lyrics. I chose not to include his lyrics here because it’s too heavy to write, but I think the mental sufferings he had had through all his life were so huge that he eventually chose to commit suicide in 2017. Even after his death, Linkin Park still has a strong influence on many new music genres. I hope you will take some time to get to know their music.

Next, I’m going to talk about ONE OK ROCK!

They are now Japan’s leading rock band, but the style of loud rock can be heard in their past albums. Taka, the vocalist, was inspired by Linkin Park when he was young which then inspired him to start a band, so their music has some things in common with loud rock in terms of musicality.

ONE OK ROCK started to create loud rock styles in their album Kanjō Effect, which was released in 2008. Until then, their genre was more punk and Taka’s melodic vocals were only within the midrange because he didn’t like his high-pitched voice. However, he dared to experiment with his higher range since KE. At that time, high-range vocals were becoming popular in Japanese music, so Taka’s higher pitched and edgy vocals attracted people.

(‘Edgy’ here means a so-called edgy voice, which is a rough sound that is made when the glottis is closed.)

“Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer” can be said to be the most well-known ONE OK ROCK song in Japan. This song is quite difficult for beginners and even intermediate vocalists to sing. The vocal range is quite wide, which starts from mid2A to hiE, and the melody jumps around a lot, so the singer has to change pitches quickly. However, the difficulty of this song shows how awesome Taka’s singing ability is.

Taka often mixes fry screaming into the song like Chester Bennington did. Taka’s vocalization seems to be so unique to those who only sing screaming. He uses a little more elements of his ground voice that is different from complete fry screaming. It can be said that his tone has a unique character.

Taka’s fry screaming has a strong high-range. I’ve been trying it out myself, but in order to make such a high pitch together with the edgy element, the falsetto and the glottis closure need to work together and be controlled perfectly in order for it to work. If you close your glottis a little too tightly, you will hurt your throat or your voice won’t come out. This vocalization is very difficult to achieve correctly.

The third band I am introducing today is Coldrain!

The frontman of Coldrain is Masato who is of American and Japanese descent. The heavy sound in their music is so cool. Masato’s clean and piercing voice makes it sound even more attractive. As a vocalist, I’m amazed by his lung capacity. He can switch his voice between a pure melody and then immediately going into his powerful screaming voices in one song. When I heard his vocals live, I wondered how he could do it without breathing that long. He also uses a screaming voice like the two vocalists I introduced earlier. His fry screaming sounds a little more in the midrange than like Chester and Taka’s voices that have a higher range in their screaming voices and stronger edges, which are a lot more rough and higher pitched.

The reason is that the high and low frequencies are mixed and well-balanced, and the fine edge makes the voice feel thicker overall (this is not about the thickness of the voice produced by vocal belting, but my opinion on the quality of the fry screaming voice).

For this article, I talked about three loud rock bands from the point of view of a vocalist. I’d like to talk more about my loud rock band recommendations in the next volume of this blog. I hope that you can compare multiple bands and find their different characteristics.
I also hope that next time I can focus on one band to help explain vocalization and how to practice, so stay tuned for more! See you next time!

⇨ List of headphones / earphones
⇨ List of dynamic microphones / vocal microphones