Top Ten Languages That Are Best for Singing Death Metal
Languages have many different sounds, and some of them seem to lend themselves perfectly to death metal!The Top Ten
Oh god, this combination has "menacing" written all over it.
Listen to Rammstein for proof of this.
I agree, German takes the cake.
It would be good especially for melodic death metal because it's a melodic language but it’s not high-pitched (vowel/vocal harmony is available in this language).
Check out this metal song in Turkish and be convinced (it’s metal but not death metal):
Mezarkabul - Bu Alemi Gören Sensin
(Mezarkabul aka Pentagram)
Dutch is composed of equal portions English and German, so it may work out.
In addition, Dutch has guttural sounds, which is good for death metal.
I visited Holland 2 times and English helped a lot:
Vind de beste parkeerplek = Find the best parking place.
See? - simple, close to EN and German.
Should be at #2 after German, if not #1.
It's from the German language group but with lots of very deep, guttural sounds. Even Danes think their own language sounds like a throat disease (so you have a natural voice distortion).
At an airport a Danish family was sitting next to us for several hours and I thought it was the ugliest version of German. But I think it would be great for death metal.
Side note:
Danes are one of the coolest people in the world.
Yay, Denmark! We've acomplished something!
I don't think it's a good idea. Norwegian makes voices sound high-pitched, which is good for black metal shrieks but not for death metal growls (growls are low-pitched).
Also, Norwegian and Swedish are melodic, as if people sing a song.
I think German, Danish, Turkish and Finnish are perfect for death metal. Also Asian languages - Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
No wonder Norway is the black metal capital of the world!
It's very subjective but Chinese sounds rough to me - as if people are angry all the time. Same for Japanese and Korean.
But this is good for death metal.
I don't know, I'm not sure.
I guess it's difficult to sing in this language in general - vowels are too scarce and you may have 3-4 consonants back-to-back...
Try the word/name 'Krzysztof'
Russian is too soft for death metal - it's one of the softest languages in the world. It doesn't have hard and harsh sounds.
Russians find it difficult to pronounce hard sounds and words like 'urgent', 'bird', 'liar', even 'all' and 'wallpaper'. Their 'L' is very soft and when they say 'all', it's the softest 'L' you've ever heard. You can hear this soft 'L' also in Swedish.
The strong Rs and Ы sound are perfect for metal.
The Contenders
Close to Czech and Polish. Same problems.
English to me is so awesome in death metal!
What I wrote about Polish, goes here, too.
Look at those 5 consonants back-to-back in this word - Umbrtka (it's a metal band name).
Remember Psy? Korean can sound quite brutal.
It sounds similar to Finnish.
Talk about religious controversy.
Take a look at Opeth. Mikael's vocals are in English, but the members are all swedish. Well, unless you count Steven Wilson.
It may work for melodic death metal only because it's melodic and sweet. It’s a Germanic language but doesn't have the German harshness. Swedish is like German spoken under water.