Anberlin Band • Page 186

No thanks

 

He clearly has appeal and talent to have been as successful as he is but I’m not a fan of that overly-produced-metalcore-clean-vocals sound. I don’t even know if that makes sense to anyone but me and I honestly don’t mean it as a criticism, it’s just not for me. That aside, his vocals just don’t fit with this band for me. Stephen’s such a unique vocalist.

 

I think the way Matty's voice is always produced has always been the biggest turn-off for me. The way that it is layered sounds almost robotic to me. It's over-produced to the point where I can't totally pinpoint what is his voice and what is the production if that makes sense. I'm not a fan of it in his genre, but I'm especially not a fan of it over an Anberlin track.

 

i was fine with NTFP, but this one sounds a little too generic and, as you said, over-produced.

 

It just sounds like that guy on YouTube who does those “what if Blink were a country band?” and “what if Taylor Swift was an emo band?” videos; just sort of barely interesting karaoke. Stephen has such a unique voice that you’d need to either find someone who sounds just like him (good luck!) or someone with an equally unique voice in a different direction. Put Matty’s voice on shuffle with a dozen other artists in that genre and I’d really struggle to tell you who’s who. I could pick Stephen out in a heartbeat. I get that they want to keep both the band and the brand going because without the brand the band might struggle to maintain their base and therefore their income, but if that’s the case then, well, there’s a problem here, right?

 

alluded to this in another post but so many of these metalcore clean vocalists really are indiscernible from each other. Idk much about production so I wasn’t sure if producers were really just converging everybody’s voices into a singular voice but it’s been a big drag on metalcore for me. They all sound *exactly* the same.

As someone else said above, anberlin either need to find someone who sounds like Stephen or someone who sounds totally unique. I’m trying to be fair to the rest of the band and not treat em as a Stephen monolith but this is such a bad vocal style for their discog.

 

"metallic" is a very good description of how his voice sounds, just so unnatural

 

My brother is a fan of these metalcore bands that are not catchy enough to be as popular as say, ADTR, and not heavy enough to get a pass on the lack of catchiness. Just the most boring, lifeless vocals.

 

Which ones?

 

Basically look at Our Last Night and look at associated bands

 

Memphis May Fire’s first EP was incredible. Couldn’t believe it was the same band that produced everything else. Though I also have no idea if they underwent member changes or whatnot.

 

Only the guitarist remains from that EP but he's always been the main songwriter anyway. They did get Matty Mullins after that EP. The original singer was whinier but also had more personality and fit their early southern influenced/He Is Legend adjacent style perfectly.

For that reason, this is a band that'll always remain a "what if", even if they ended up getting more success by going into a Rise-core/Chango-core (haven't used those words in yeeeears) direction after Sleepwalking.

The latter is solid but I still wonder what it would've sounded like with the original singer. It was initially recorded before his departure, and I remember watching some live footage of those songs with him back in the day.

 

16-17 year old me blasted that EP a ton, might throw it on for old time’s sake soon.

 

…what is changocore?

 

What Anberlin is becoming with this new singer

 

In the late 00s/early 10s, a certain type of post-hardcore/metalcore started popping up. One producer, Cameron Mizell, became the goto guy for that subgenre. Chango was the name of his studio, and became synonymous with that sound. I'm thinking of acts like Attack! Attack!, Woe Is Me, I See Stars, Dream On Dreamer, Crown The Empire, Sleeping With Sirens, Memphis May Fire and many others.

You could instantly tell they had recorded there due to the recognizable guitar tones, drum samples, etc. Overall it was very breakdown infused and mechanical sounding.

I remember people on ap.net calling it changocore and that stuck until the genre started decreasing in popularity in favor of the BMTH inspired alt metal that became the new template in the metalcore scene.

 

That's a rough list of bands

 

the Rise-core sound came up and blew up at a time where all my favorite bands growing up were making boring music that didn’t really have much appeal to people anymore. it seemed like 2008-2013 was just an era where so many flop albums dropped from all the early myspace bands that we all love. i’d take this sound over what it has evolved into in a heartbeat.

 

I always associated Joey Sturgis with that sound. Overly treble heavy and recording style that really grates after 4-5 songs.

 

Yeah he was the other big producer in the genre during that entire era. I was surprised when I looked up Cameron’s page because he produced so many more records that I used to attribute to Joey and vice versa. It’s easy to mistake one for another.

Hell I even made the mistake of writing Attack! Attack! on my earlier post, who actually recorded at Joey’s studio instead of Cameron.

 

Pretty heavy no thanks from me.

I tried. I hate this.

 

Is there a phrase for the uncanny valley of singing? It feels weird to watch him sing. His voice sounds fake lol.

 

Two voices are coming out of his mouth as he sings, I'm calling the cops.

 

More than two voices haha, that shit is layyyyyyered

 

I genuinely do not know what Matty even sounds like because of the 100 layers he has going at all times.