Arch Enemy... DECEIVER DECEIVER | Vocal Coach Reaction/Analysis 

The descending sound you were referring to at the beginning is the guitars being palm muted! It's a pretty common technique in metal guitars

Julia and Alissa .....2 women that always have amazing hair! :)

Love how Angela hand picked Alyssa to replace her. Love both vocalists. Would love to have Julia react to Trivium. Matt's vocals are epic, and good variety in songs like Phalanx, and World Goes Cold, or even a favorite of mine Strife. :)

You'd really enjoy their other new single House of Mirrors. Yes those lows are all heard. Saw them live before Covid hit. She's an amazing vocalist in an amazing band.

You should also check out Alissa in her previous band The Agonist, she really shows off her clean vocal capabilities

Small recommendation: Powerwolf recorded a version of their song "Demons are a girl's best friend" with Alyssa as guest vocalist instead of Atila (though I'd recommend also checking out regular Powerwolf songs)

I just love that you are open for every genre of music. Many people just never give harder metal a chance and say its just loud noises. I really enjoy seeing you discovering and enjoying harder metal music.

the layers for her voice is a record of her voice over what sounds like 3 seperate recordings with 3 different tones combined into the final recording.

The sound you're looking for is made by playing semi muted notes descending down the neck on one of the bass strings of the guitar. It's a fairly classic technique in metal. You will hear it here and there, now that you've recognized it. And the encompassing vocal sound during the chorus is achieved by overdubbing and harmonizing tracks, there's also a cocktail of room effects, stereo widening and probably a bit of chorus or similar modulation effects. The spiraling sound during the guitar solo is called a whammy bar flutter, and it's made by quickly hitting and instantly releasing the whammy bar and just let the springs and strings do their thing. As far as I know it was Steve Vai who came up with it. First time I heard it was on his album Passion and Warfare from 1990.

Vowel modification is the big difference in how the same technique can sound different from one vocalist to another. When Angela does lows, she tends to keep her mouth shape fairly open and neutral, whereas it sounds like Alyssa is rounding her mouth more and maybe pointing the tip of her tongue up to get that sort of wind tunnel effect that makes everything sound like it has an R in it.

What I really love ab out Alissa is that she sings cleans very well too. Her previous band or Kamelot's "Liar liar" are great showcases of that.

Arch Enemy live at Wacken 2016 with their song "Nemesis".

I have to say you’re probably the only person, at least in recent years like the past year or so, who can get me to listen to a harsh vocals reaction Word for Word and pay attention to the details of the process. That hasn’t happened to me in a long time.

Please do Handshake with Hell. Awesome clean vocals from Alyssa! Also another great song with Angela would be My Apocalypse.

She (and Arch Enemy as a whole) are FANTASTIC live. Easily a Top Ten show.

Am I the only one that wants her and Tatiana (Jinjer) to do a duet?

You have to do “Reason to Believe”. You’ll find more ranges in Alyssa’s voice.

I had been waiting for this to clear….. awesome reaction

Thank you for a great reaction Julia. If you want to hear Alissa live, the Wacken 2016 performance of "War Eternal" or "Nemesis" are awesome! =)

The "burpy" sound is OOOO, deep in the throat and the high stuff is AAAA or EEEE, more pinched and higher in the throat. That's about the best I can explain it. This trick works similarly with inhaled pig snorts, fry, false folds...every false-pitch sound I've managed.

Oh so much ❤️. Contemporary singers turning into true metal fans. What more can you wish for Christmas 🥰

Yeah, I was able to make out most of the lyrics too. There's a lot of precision in her timbre choices. Great new vocalist for this ultra-tight band. As always, insightful and entertaining commentary from you, Julia! Merry Christmas to all!

Hail to the queen Alissa.

She has an awesome clean vocal as well - I really love how well she can enunciate through the growl.

"Burpy quality" - I just love that description 🎯 Again another very interesting and educational reaction by Julia. Thanks so much !

And i believe Alissa can hit the highest notes on the scales when she sings with her regular voice.🎶🎵 And you are a cool Lady😉 Have a nice Winter Solstice and Happy New Year🙃

JINJER - Judgement (& Punishment) - Tatiana Shmayluk - One Take Vocal Performance

Seems like Julia's starting to feel the music in her head - does this mean that there may be headbanging some time in the future? ^^

I think what you're asking about the "sprialling feeling" thing for the solo is a whammy bar flutter. It's specifically done on a Floyd Rose style floating bridge where the strings can be both loosened and tightened with the whammy bar. The bridge sits on two pegs and the strings pull it away from the guitar body and springs pull it towards the body equaling out the tension.

Julia, please watch Kamelot's Liar Liar. You get 3 great vocalists in one. Tommy, Allisa and Elize.

Would you believe me if I said that she's actually holding back here? Live she goes even a bit more nuts. Sounds good to me! Listen to this link for about 10s. (in a reply)

That lower vocal on the chorus sounds like the guitarist, (one with the blood splatter finish) he does backup screams and vocals live

The sound in the beginning is just the guitarist Palm-Muting, basically where he puts his hand on the bridge of the guitar so it dampens the vibrations of the strings so they sound really staccato and tight because they aren’t ringing out. That combined with really insanely fast triplets and low tunings gives that sound.

@Julia you were talking about the layers. if you go back and look at the video, you can see Michael Amott singing there as well. in general, metal bands love adding the guitarists to the vocal track when they wanna emphasize the sound.

Love Alyssa! She's an awesome singer and awesome person, with great ethical views! Great reaction video. I'd love to see one on my favorite metal band ever - Savatage. Only problem, footage is very rare. Very underrated band! "Where the crows are gone" has a nicely produced official video. Remarkable lyrics and songwriting!

The three things I love the most of Alissa: Voice, hair and... belly. :-)

I'm a growler my self, and we put multiple layers on the chorus to get more depth and a heavier tone. Both higher pitch and lower. This gives you the "demonic" sound!

The "Spiralling" feeling is the guitar technique called a "Whammy Flutter" where you kind of like whip the whammy bar

Alessa white gluz your voice and strength 💪 and power 🔋 for a lot of metal and rock songs 🎵 🙌 out there how whant to sing like you do so focus on your music and heart ❤ so in time this virus can come to an end quickly music 🎶 is the energy that gives the audience and the world to see it all

Quarternote triplets are awsome, no mather which genre of music you are playing. It gives a feeling of a half-time while just keeping the tempo, well placed these always come as a surprise and give some dynamic to the music. So I agree, triplets are the best!

If you want to be really impressed by her. Look up her acapella cover of Swan Lake she did. She sings every layer of it.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oqvUIyoDgXU.html This link should be the one.

see them 3 times allready and cant wait for next one!...awesome bend..top 5 for me eazy ! \m/

Your reviews are amazing ...cheers from Switzerland

Your intro always lifts my spirits and makes me smile!

Julia, please explore more AE. Reason to Believe has clean vocal. I saw a short interview where Alyssa said that her technique was not "typical" and she, herself was still learning how she achieved it. As always appreciate your knowledge and content. Merry Christmas

Michael Ammot the lead guitarist does some backing vocals. I can recommend Reason to believe to hear some of Alyssa’s clean vocals

Yep. That de ending sound is indeed the bass guitar

I've followed Alissa's music career for a while now and you should def check out her work in The Agonist. Its almost a completley different style than from how she sings in Arch Enemy (she was taught by Angela herself which is how she was able to be her replacement vocalist) and I can't wait until she releases her individual album where she can sing like that again.

The vocal slides with the ability to apply compression and still articulate well is freaking awesome 😎 the layering between Michael on Alissa on the words deceiver deceiver is absolutely awesome and leads to great harmonies. Also I could be wrong but at the start the bass is playing with octaves so at a pitch level is on point with the palm muted guitars just gives this unusually epic vibe of uncertainty yet total bad assery 👌cheers Julia - your favourite Aussie 💪

There's a clip with Alissa teaching someone how she does her harsh vocals and if I remember rightly she says its like starting with a whisper and pushing more volume through it. My explanation probably sucks but it is on youtube somewhere

And her clean voice is amazing too. A recommendation if you wanna hear her switch between clean and harsh is the song "Reason to Believe" it also has a good message if you suffer from depression.

Alissa is a fantastic singer and Arch Enemy is one of the best live bands today. They have plenty of videos with her both live and musicvideos. She also did a lot of music with her first band Agonist and has made plenty of guest apperances with other groups.

Hi, Julia, you are one of my favorite vocal coaches, and without a doubt the most beautiful. I do not sing, but I am learning a lot, congrats on your metal journey, rock on!

I think I've recommended it before, but please give The Agonist a listen too! Alissa is in that band as well, before she joined Arch Enemy, but she uses very clear vocals there with a great range! "The Agonist - Thank You Pain" is a great example!

YEEEEEES! So excited! Quality content!!!

Alissa can go incredible low when growling and yet amazingly high when singing.

if you wanna hear "Alissa making noises", one of my absolute favorites is from The Agonist - “…And Their Eulogies Sang Me To Sleep”. especially that grunt or whatever at the start. i've been in love with her ever since.

I dont know what it is but to me Alissa has one of the best "scream" male and female period. It sounds bad ass and i can still understand the lyrics. ^^

Got an extra "like" for that weird "is that you?" looking around at the end of your clip XD

Stunning with demon voice.. Whats not to love about that :)

New Arch Enemy video is out called Handshake with Hell

Thank you for your reaction ...Angela and Alyssa

You should chekt out her previous band, 'the agonist' when she mixes clean vocals with growls, mixed up with belts and mixed up belts...just beautifull

Saw these guys live a few days ago for the first time, and Alissa really sounds excellent live. Amazing show.

Alissa is from the Toronto area (Ontario, Canada). She appeared on a reality show once (I do not know the show's name; my memory is shot and this was somewhere around 2015, I think). During that episode, she helped a very shy girl learn how to scream like that for a high school metal band (figures, I also do not remember the girl's name... I feel stupid even bringing this up. :P ). Something like three weeks after Alissa started coaching the girl, the high school metal band went to a concert where the girl vocalized on stage. They were playing during the intermission for some other bigger non-school-related touring metal bands. She actually did rather well. I brought this up because while teaching the girl to scream, Alissa started with a whisper and then just got louder in steps, literally walking the girl through the process. I thought it was a really cool method. If I could remember how to find that video, I would put the link in here. Otherwise, maybe somebody else can remember details that I don't remember and can supply the information. :)

Alissa features a lot in Kamelot's work. Their song "Liar, Liar" is great and there's a great live video of it, along with "Sacrimony" and the live version of "March of Mephisto" all of which are from the "I Am The Empire" live show. Plus you get a chance to listen to Tommy Karevik who is a great vocalist in his own right.

she sounds so much better live

great as always ;) I think you would really enjoy live version of their song Reason to Believe, it shows different types of her singing

Listen to "...And Their Eulogies Sang Me To Sleep". It will answer one of your questions.

Guitarist here As a few others have mentioned, the descending line in the beginning is a guitar. A distortion effect on the guitar sound while utilizing palm muting - putting the palm of your picking hand on the strings at the bridge - is what gives it that "dulled" sound, and from there it's just a matter of walking the notes down the fretboard. The reason you're finding layers in that part is because there's two guitars at play here, one playing a rhythm of the same, low note through the whole part, while the other plays the lead with the descending line. Palm muting is VERY common in metal music. It's what creates the "chugging" in pretty much every metal song you can think of. The "spiraling" sound during the solo is a funny little technique you can do if your guitar has a whammy bar built into it. It basically lets you stretch or compress the strings on the guitar with a pull or push as you play. There's a bunch of ways to use it and in this case - in very rough terms - you slap it a little. The quick push and release creates a quick rise and fall in pitch, and combine it with some other sound effects like a wah pedal, and you can get some very interesting sounds. If you watch the music video to DragonForce's Through the Fire and the Flames, you'll see them have a LOT of fun with whammy bars. Finally, the reason it sounds so encompassing mostly comes down to exceptional music writing and pure harmony. They're a melodic death metal band for a reason. Every instrument comes together perfectly, every note a perfect match. Not to take away from the studio production, of course, the balance especially in the chorus is almost unreal. But the writing for each instrument as they wrote the song is absolutely phenomenal and full of harmonies. Hope that helps you learn a little more! Great reaction, even greater analysis of the vocals! You're completely right about Alyssa using fry screams. I'd recommend checking out "Reason to Believe" - currently the only (as far as I'm aware) Arch Enemy song where Alyssa sings both clean and harsh

One of most interesting drummers

I recommend "Handshake with Hell", because there she also presents us with her clean vocals which - once heard - cannot be ignored.

You should checkout "Reason to believe" because there you can see how Alissa change her voice from clean to growl.

Arch Enemy has never let her use her full vocal range like she did in The Agonist....check out Thank you Pain and others off the 1st 2 The Agonist albums to hear her at her best.

I think you got the vocal quality differences very good. Yeah, the arrangement and instrumental skills they use are always top notch in the genre. They are great entertainers. Thanks for the reaction, really enjoyable.

You should also do a video on Arch enemy's Reason to Believe, thats a great one.

I recommend an old song called 'And Their Eulogies Sang Me To Sleep' from Alyssa's old band The Agonist. She goes super low and she also sings in their old stuff!

I wish I cold listen to this track for the first time again. It is unique

The “spiraling” you’re hearing on the guitar at 14:13 is a combination of techniques. First Jeff is fretting the first note, then quickly striking the whammy bar in the downward direction (rather than slowly pushing it). This creates a chaotic sound as the tension of the strings is fighting with the tension of the springs in the floating bridge, and they try to balance each other out. He does this again with the second note (descending), then finishes this part with a normal pre-bend and release of the third note starting a whole step up, or a “traditional” dive of the whammy bar on that third note. Side note to this: Jeff Loomis is considered a guitar god, and some of the stuff he does would probably blow your mind. Shame his solo is so short, but it is still good.

I love how you refer to that as demon voice. that's so cool. In such a Divergence from your voice which is so sweet and melodic.

Avalanche live Wacken so cool song and Allisa killing it!

I love both vocalist so much. They each brought something to the table. Both are still part of the band. The other is Arch Enemys manger now.

I would love to hear you listen to her LIVE!!

You know which channel I think is super underrated? Metal Piano Music. The guy spends weeks composing classic metal songs into classical/relaxing piano pieces and he hardly gets any views. I love his arrangement of Painkiller by Judas Priest. That dude deserves millions of followers 🤘🏻

Great reaction you did Nemesis live with Angela you should check out Alissa doing Nemesis live at Wacken just for even a better comparison.

Love the red hair ❣️You are drop-dead gorgeous ❤️!

My favorite vocalist, i love alissa, and this song its a great bomb, thanks for this analysis.

Vocal wise. Michael Amott. The guy on the bloody guitar have some vocals. Just a few sentences. The prrt prrt prrt sound is from Jeff Loomis. That is done with his tremolo. A small barr that bends the strings to make that sound. Alissa her previous band The agonist and especially pan phobia. Has some incredible low and clean vocals. They also have a new singer. I enjoyed this one. Thanks and happy Hollidays from the netherlands

Also AE uses the instrumental to create almost like another song happening at the same time as Alissa singing the current song, melodic death metal in a nutshell. Makes for a very cool listening experience and they work soooo well with each other, love this band.

Would love to see Alissa and Tatiana do a duet.

I saw you react to Kamelot with Alissa. You were so blown away by her clean vocals. Then you have to react to the Arch Enemy's Handshake with Hell. There she sings with clean vocals 👍

Btw, she once was a art teacher in elementary school. Who would not wish to get a teacher like this.

More Angela! ARCH ENEMY - I Am Legend/Out for Blood (live) cheers!

Btw the “spirally“ sound in the solo has no explicit name, it is done by playing a note and then hitting the Floyd Rose Tremolo (technically a vibrato) bar and letting it vibrate freely.

The "spiraling" feeling or effect in the guitar solo is called "flutter" or "whammy bar flutter"

Those different layers you are enjoying are done as a melody using different notes and mild technique changes to give it more body

Hey Julia, you asked about that underlying line of this song ,that is cost by the second guitar, Jeff Loomis. By the way i like this review of Arch Enemy. Another video you must check out is Charlotte Wessels with Alissa white-Gluz is called "Lizzie".its a down tempo song. Charlotte is a dutch singer with a beautiful voice. And maybe also check-out "The Wolf you feed" a song from Nita Strauss & Alissa. Hope you can give me a reaction on this mail. Greetings Raymond from the Netherlands.

btw Julia, have you ever considered approaching some of these artists for an interview ? I'm sure that the majority would be more than happy to talk. And you can take the opportunity to delve into their technique. Alyssa is great and I've seen her interviewed several times. Just something to consider. Have a great Christmas.

Arch enemy released - handshake with hell....it gives her cleans for the first time in arch enemy....she did in her previous band"the agonist" pure fire. Arch enemy-handshake with hell

That decsending sound is due to high speed, heavy staccato and counteracting rhythms coming from all instruments(muted strings). Quite common in metal.