What Do You Do When You're An Evil Singer With A Broken Voice And No Magic, But Still Want To Be Adored? · 12:58am Nov 4th, 2016
Something shattering into lots of tiny glass fragments right next to your throat isn't good news, but it looks like you escaped physically unharmed, unless there were cuts too small to see. But you heard yourself try to sing, and it was horrible. Not just off-key, but hollow, as if all the resonance had been ripped out and left with only scratching noises at the high and low frequencies. Perhaps you could learn to sing again, the way non-magical humans do? Maybe your voice will heal naturally with time, or you could try to find a new form of magic to power it with? That would be nice. That would be a comparatively easy escape for you. But what if you didn't ever change, and you spent the rest of your life sounding as you did in that first post-shattering attempt to sing? If your magical voice is tied to a magical amulet, and said amulet is smashed, figures that your voice might be too. And there's no magic in the EQG world, other than what's come through from Equestria, so no new gems to be found.
So you can still dance, probably still compose music, and judging from that failed attempt to sing, still have a good sense of rhythm. You still look great, still have the outfits, and still yearn to be adored by screaming fans the world over. And also, while you still have charisma a dictator would envy, you still enjoy smirking and snapping at people, not to mention laughing malevolently, which you don't have hypnotic magic to brainwash people into overlooking anymore. If only there were some way you could still be a singer despite having butchered vocal cords. If only there were a style of music that celebrated open aggression rather than fleeing from it, and was fascinated with the darker side of human nature; a genre whose fans purposefully dressed to look intimidating, evil and sexy, and your own spikes and seductiveness would be welcomed, not to mention the phrygian modes and 7/4 rhythm of Welcome To The Show...
So, I reckon this is what Adagio would do next, if she couldn't get her old voice back (there's a pretentious film intro, skip to 0.50):
So, In This Moment were a group I heard about around five years ago, with a terrible, terrible song called The Gun Show. I really wouldn't recommend it, and I forget why I gave the next song of theirs that came up a chance, a couple of years later. Glad I did though, I think Whore is spectacular. Great groove, great melody, superbly dynamic vocal performance. A couple of weeks ago the siren comparison struck me. I forget why exactly, but I think it was the train of thought detailed above, that if the sirens couldn't sing 'delicately' anymore, what could they do instead?
I'd always wondered what would happen if the Dazzlings went in a more Metal direction; Welcome To The Show is mostly there anyway, it just needs some meatier production. There would be a few stumbling blocks: they'd need a live band, they'd be competing with guitars in the audio mix, and of course they'd lose about 90% of the audience. Would the remaining 10% adore them enough to make up for it? Quite possibly. To quote Rob Zombie, "No one says, 'I was into Slayer, one summer.' I've never met that guy. I've only met the guy who has 'Slayer' carved across his chest." And not many pop acts can compete with Iron Maiden's legacy, who, now aged about 60, after 41-year, 16-album career, are bigger than ever before. And seriously, the spikes! Headband, belt, calves, heels; Adagio's already got it all covered.
Anyway, there I was, thinking about whether the sirens could actually pull off Death Metal growling in a way that might be catchy enough to appeal to them, when I remembered Whore, and so rewatched the video. And, lo and behold, there we have Maria Brink, front and centre (who has anything but broken vocal cords, her voice goes from choir girl clean to magnificently destroyed). Thanks to Metal's love of corsets, she has a similar silhouette to Adagio, her hair amazingly isn't too far off either, and at one point she even has a faceless girl dancing on each side of her. And there she is, alternating between sultriness and raging at the world (I think it works better aimed at the world than a specific person, but that's me). Even in the quiet bits, her voice breaks, just as I think a siren's might with a mangled throat. So yeah, I like the song even more now, I might even see if I can get hold of the album for Christmas.
Of their other songs, sadly 'Sex Metal Barbie' isn't as good as the title might suggest, but this is the most Adagio one I found besides Whore, although it's not as good and it does have some clean vocals, which she presumably wouldn't be able to do with no necklace:
Where are the other two, though? Metal's come on along way in the last couple of decades with frontwomen, but groups with multiple non-instrumentalist female singers in harmony aren't nearly as common, so while I'm loathe to have stories split the sirens up, I think they'd have to each go at it separately. So what of Blue and Purple? Listening to Aria's vocal lines on their own, it's pretty obvious that she's by far the most competent singer of the bunch (that's not to say that Shylo Sharity is necessarily a better singer than Madeline Merlo or Kazumi Evans, but going just on what we see in the movie, Adagio performs the lead perfectly, but Aria's harmonies dance in circles around her technically). So, I think if any of them would have the ability and determination to whip their vocal cords into shape enough to manage clean, clear, belted tones, it'd be her. Her voice might still distort when pushed, but if she became familiar enough with the effects, she could learn to make it sound incredible. This is Vicky Psarakis, and she's the closest match to how I'd picture post-shattering Aria after a lot of hard work. It's her first couple of lines that are the best, especially the word 'shadows.'
And the last one? If you've heard of one female Death Metal singer, it's almost certainly Angela Gossow. She is both incredible and terrifying. This is her:
She rose to fame with a group called Arch Enemy, whom she parted ways with in 2012. Her replacement, Alissa White-Gluz, it turns out may be even more impressive (incidentally, Alissa was replaced in her previous band by Vicky Psarakis, above, which is how I heard of her). I figure Sonata lacked the technical skill to try to wrestle melody from her altered voice, and was easily-led enough that someone pretty quickly told her just to go for it growling while the band worked around her to highlight the melodies with guitars (I'm not saying that's what Alissa does, but one could willfully interpret it that way listening to it and doing no background research). And so, a band manager or stylist suggests some more aggressive makeup and moves for Sonata, picks out some edgier clothes and lets her hair loose, she writes out some very angry-teenage-Sonata lyrics, gets up on stage with the band, and this is the result:
Ah, right down to the blue hair! This next one is better for atonal-sounding growled vocals while the guitars carry the melody, prominently in the chorus. Featuring a very bored and boring drummer, and a cheesy key change, no less.
I thought all this might make a lot more sense as a blog post than as a story. I might touch on it in a story sometime, but I think Youtube links break the flow while reading, and it doesn't really work if you can't hear it. That said, if anyone wants to have a decent stab at recording Dazzling Metal covers, I'd love to hear it.
And while the whole point of all this was that there's still singing they could do with distorted vocals, when trying to think of Metal groups with multiple female singers I remembered Babymetal. There are three of them, doing coordinated dance moves, it could be Dazzled if your imaginations are up to it. What if the sirens were on the other side of the planet when Sunset Shimmer was defeated? What if they'd already made it big in a more... Japanese way?
So if you can cross this video with the picture at the top (created by Mauroz, whose work I'm quite impressed with), I think you might get Japanese Trance Metal Dazzlings. Which could actually be pretty cool!
Woah...
I think I misspelled woah
Whoah?
Who?
Woa?
Wo?
Whatever, Whoah. Just, whoah man.
4284162 Oddly enough I googled that very matter a few weeks ago for a proofreading task, it's whoa.
A word without which Under Our Spell would only be half as long...
4284170 huh.
Good to know.
o.o
This entire fucking theory is fucking great!
As a metal fan I love everything about it and your theories about how they would deal with their voices fit them to a T.
GAH! I WANT STORIES FEATURING THIS STUFF. My dreams will do me just fine XD
Damn. Imagine if they did start their own bands and in some freak situation ended up in a music festival or something with their japanese counterparts there as well. Man that'd be some headfuckery. X3
Anyway. Just wanna say again, wonderful, amazing theories and shiz. Love it.
Also,
FUCK YEAH METAL.
That is all.
Have a wonderful day ^~^
Edit: I just noticed the Metalocalypse bit in the tags XD
Wonderful.
4405274 Thanks very much! I really like the idea, although ideally I think it would be happiest if they learned to sing again fully.
Though I could easily see them going the Metal route in the meantime while relearning, and then once their skills are up to scratch again keeping the heaviness but going more melodic, more Simone Simons than Angela Gossow. But still with access to huge loads of grit when they want it, like Vicky Psarakis as in the Clairvoyant cover video.
My main problem for going forwards with the idea is the format, though. I don't like just saying in a story that they're playing a song, and then listing the lyrics, that's like 5% of the information the audience needs to actually appreciate the song. And one could embed links to recordings on Youtube, but that kind of breaks the flow. Not to mention, alas, I don't sound much like them, so couldn't really record it convincingly...
That's why I made this a blog post rather than a story
Since writing it, I picked up quite a few of the albums mentioned for Christmas. The two Babymetal albums are bizarre, veering back and forth between really good and really bad. Megitsune remains an awesome song though, and I need to listen to the rest of them a few more times. The Arch Enemy album, War Eternal, isn't bad, Avalanche in particular is a really good song. On the whole it reminds me of Sonata a bit, and some of the lyrics really are quite teenaged-angsty.
Haven't listened to the second of the In This Moment albums I got yet, but the first, Blood, is very very good. Who thought Nu Metal had anything left to say in the 2010s?! It's got one or two painfully cheesy Nu Metal singalong tracks, but they can be ignored, as can the two to four tracks of ambient filler. But the rest of it is really solid, shows some great songwriting, and somehow hangs together despite some very disjointed song structures.
Most importantly, though, I can't not think of Adagio Dazzle when listening to it. If, left without magic, she turned to Metal and fought to regain some control of her voice, this is the album she would make. The aforementioned Whore is still the highlight (and I am giving some thought as to how that might become a story on here), but Adrenalize is a strong contender as well, it drips Adagio-as-a-rock-star from every pore ('Make me feel like a god: music, love and sex'), and Commanche has some great moments of her raging at the world.
I wonder how one goes about contacting voice actresses from the show, besides IMDB Pro...
4405290 yeah, i thought of the same thing after reading it. Not to mention, who to focus on the most? Should they have their own individual one shots? Should they all be in the same story? If it was what would be the end goal of the story?
There's a lot of things that i took into thought age reading this and wanting a story of it that i just had to sigh and admit it was probably out of my own writing zone.
Personally i love rise of the tyrant when it comes to AE. The caligula movie quote sets the right image right away if you've seen the movie. Cause fuck yeah he was a tyrant.
And yeah, the image and style does invoke adagio very easily.
As for babymetal, that does seem pretty par for the course for them. Some great tracks and some less than good.
I think this really does suit the Dazzlings well :) Only thing I would've done differently was tie Aria to Alissa White-Gluz, mainly because of her attitude but I can see why you chose Sonata
4405514 I agree completely.
War Eternal is my first AE album, I've listened to various singles they've released over the years (My Apocalypse being one I remember) but never really been taken with them enough to buy an album before.
Listened to the more recent In This Moment album for the first time today, Black Widow, I don't think it's nearly as good.
4407315 I know what you mean. Aria's a funny one. She seems fairly one-dimensional as a vessel of moodiness and not much else, and we tend to think of her as being the most hands-on confrontational. And yet, watching the movie, it's Adagio that grabs Aria by the front of her hoodie outside the cafe at the beginning, rather than the other way around, and it's Sonata who's first to respond physically in her exchange with Aria regarding the fruit punch. Aria's mostly just disdainful a lot.
Anyway, point is, THEN you hear her sing. If you haven't heard them before, I suggest looking up the Aria one of Under Our Spell with separate vocals on Youtube. Her voice is so soft and gentle, but it's exactly what the song needs. For all her talk of 'or my lead...,' she never once tries to outshine Adagio, but perfectly supports, weaving in and out of the main melody to add harmonies above and below with pinpoint precision.
Hence my suggestion that she'd be the one with both the technical ability and the dedication to whip her broken voice into shape until it was almost good as new, and also her refusal to accept the loss of delicacy.
Whereas Alissa doesn't use anything like the range and variety that Maria Brink does, at least not with Arch Enemy, it's just grit confined to a narrow pitch range, which I think is the sort of thing Sonata would do as a musical compromise. Also, I think it comes across that Michael Amott is the main songwriter in Arch Enemy, and Sonata I think would be the most easily led into going along with that. Also, some of the lyrics on that album, especially You Will Know My Name, are ridiculously teenage angsty; and while that might fit with Aria's eternal facepalm, I think she'd be slightly more self-aware and a bit embarrassed to have written them.