Who is the best heavy metal vocalist?
Note: While I have certainly contributed original ideas here of my own, I took a tremendous amount of this from commentary made by Zach Ansley. I wouldn't have been able to have even begun to undertake something like this without first listening to what he said very closely. If you're at all interested in learning more about singing, Zach Ansley is the man on YouTube who I have found to have the most credibility of any professional vocal coach I have come across. Most of the self-professed professional vocal coaches I have come across on YouTube have been rubbish but Zach Ansley is the real deal!
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Typically people begin these answers with: it's all subjective, so it is whoever you think is the best. If that is really what you would like to believe, then you won't like this one bit. Despite what you might like to believe, how good of a vocalist someone is isn’t entirely subjective. There are objective criteria by which one can evaluate a vocalist.
After all, anything that exists in reality can be objectively evaluated. Why would vocalists be any exception to that?
I’m telling you that leaving personal likes and dislikes out of this, looking at this from an objective standpoint, Ronnie James Dio is the greatest metal vocalist there has ever been. I doubt anyone will ever exceed or even meet the bar he set.
I’m primarily looking at four things: Pedigree, Skill, Showmanship and Consistency/Sustainability over the singer’s career. These are all objectively evaluable criteria.
First I’ll discuss pedigree:
Ronnie James Dio did not come from a musical family. His parents were not musicians and as such, they weren't able to provide him with much, if any musical education. Since they couldn't teach him, they had him start taking classical trumpet lessons at five years old. This would prove to be of great benefit to him in his future career as a heavy metal vocalist.
The degree of discipline required, the standards which one is required to meet in classical music are very high. There is a line of excellence one must meet. Dio clearly met and surpassed that line. By the time he graduated from high school, he received a scholarship from Juilliard. He ended up declining it, but still it shows how well developed he was as a musician and it also showed that he put forth the requisite work and diligence to develop the degree of discipline that it requires to be an excellent singer.
Not only did Dio have a great musical gift, he also had the discipline to go along with it. Those two factors combined give a good image of the type of performer/singer he was. He was extremely disciplined and he took care of himself so as to be able to meet a specific standard of excellence.
Going back to the concept of pedigree, Dio had talent that he nurtured. He had the discipline required to actualize his potential as a vocalist. Simply put, he had a tremendous natural talent and he made the most of it.
The second criterion I said I would analyze is skill:
My breakdown of Dio’s technique is going to be based completely on the three core fundamentals of singing which I believe are: breath support, tonal consistency and legato. I’ll go into this one at a time.
As I pointed out earlier, a lot of Dio’s approach to musicality and musicianship was built around his trumpet playing. He even said his breath support concepts were built upon him playing the trumpet. There some significant differences between breath control as a trumpet player and as a vocalist, but the most common thread I know of is that there has to be adequate diaphragmatic engagement from the beginning of a phrase until the end of the phrase or it just will not work.
Watch footage of Ronnie James Dio in concert and you will see that Dio takes low breaths and his shoulders do not raise. His chest expands a bit and you can tell by proxy that his diaphragm is expanding as well but his shoulders do not rise. Since the shoulders stay stationary, the lower core expands downwards. What this means is that the muscle groups responsible for inhalation along with the diaphragm are actively engaging and assisting in the process of bringing air into the body.
With the diaphragm fully expanded downwards, that also allows maximal control of the expulsion of air, or how it comes back out when singing. This alone shows you that Dio is setting himself up in a very favorable way for his singing.
Another important thing to point out is that when he has time, he takes slow breaths. If you look at the amount of duration he takes when he breathes in before a phrase, you’ll see that his breathing starts pretty early and he just slowly inhales.
Not only does it allow you to maximize the amount of air you take in and control how much you take in without over breathing, it also allows you to better manage the air and it also allows the body to relax. Slower breathing tends to release tension in the body, which is why when you exercise or do yoga, they always tell you to breathe in slowly and release slowly because it helps you release tension. It helps you to relax.
These characteristics combined show that Dio is basically using perfect breath support when he breathes, with very little room for criticism.
Second, I’m going to look at his tonal consistency.
Dio’s tonal consistency was just spectacular. There are examples of him using great tonal consistency just about anywhere you'd want to look.
Dio almost always sung with a low to neutral laryngeal position. In Italian opera, one of the most coveted singing traits is called the chiaroscuro, or the “light-dark.” It is a sound created by having a brightness and a darkness in the tone, and those tones come from the position of the larynx. Dio had this! I was elated to find out that I too have it, but we’re not discussing me right now.
When the larynx is lowered, the vocal tract expands and opens. The larynx pulls down, creating a concept called the laryngeal tilt. By that happening, the vibrations that come from the vocal folds then have more space to resonate. Since there is more space for it to resonate, ultimately what ends up happening is, there are sounds called harmonics that build up in specific places in the vocal tract.
Harmonics create an almost overtone type sound, a very bright, high pitch that carries over the top of the singing sound. When the larynx lowers, another by-product of that is, since there is more space, the sound becomes darker, richer, more robust and more resonant.
You take the harmonic sound that comes from the lowered larynx and then you take the space from the lowered larynx. You get the bright from the harmonic and you get the dark from the openness and you have the chiaroscuro!
Dio was amazing at this, especially for a metal singer! I don’t think I've ever heard a metal singer who does this as well.
The third characteristic of his skill I’m going to evaluate is legato:
Legato is the core of a technically sound singer. It allows for phrases to be sung gracefully and smoothly. Legato is desirable in singing because the voice is an extremely communicative instrument. Use of this technique allows for listeners to hear the phrases sung in a linear fashion. Legato can both be used to add intensity in a phrase and it can also be used to make a phrase sound elegant and beautiful. Dio has many excellent examples of using legato well.
One in Rainbow In The Dark where he sings “you know it always brings me down.” If you pay attention to his delivery of the phrase, you’ll notice that basically all the vowels have a sense of connectedness between them. It is a constant sound; there is nothing that splits the sound up. That is the essence of what it means to sing in legato style. This vowel-heavy approach actually allows for the voice to be a little more agile, which is how he does that melisma at the end - that is, the notes are all connected on one singular vowel. This approach being so consistent with Dio is a testament to how solid his technique was.
Breath support, tonal consistency and legato combine together in Dio’s approach to show a prototypically technically sound singer. Dio absolutely excels in all three of these categories. I have covered the criterion of skill.
The third criterion I’m going to analyze is his showmanship:
Granted, showmanship isn’t entirely objectively evaluable as there is certainly some room for the subjective or the optional. What one person might describe as an example of being the essence of cool onstage, another person might say he found it somewhat contrived. Nevertheless, Dio was an absolutely incredible showman. That you can find person after person who will testify to Dio’s extraordinary abilities as a showman cannot just be subjective.
If it were all simply subjective and there were no objectively evaluable critic to showmanship, then why wouldn’t you find just as many or more people who would say that Geoff Tate is the better showman of the two? Tate is a phenomenal talent as a vocalist! However, he is not Dio’s equal in the aspect of showmanship. If it were all merely subjective, you'd expect to find it just as easy to find people who say Tate is the better showman of the two and that’s just not there case! Tate’s a good showman but Dio was an exceptional showman.
What are some examples of Dio’s greatness as a showman? He always moved onstage, he always engaged himself with his audience from shaking hands with them to pointing at them, to rocking out in front of them right at the edge of the stage. Dio was always engaging his audience. The most remarkable thing about this is that he still managed to maintain all these technical elements that I mentioned before, while he was being this great showman.
When I was watching Dio there was never a moment that his presence did not command the stage! Him being on the stage is what made the show what it was. he brought the concert to life. His facial expressions, his hand movements and movement around the stage along with his engagement of the audience were all indicative of a consummate showman.
The fourth and final characteristic of Dio’s singing I told you I would analyze is sustainability/consistency:
Dio had thirty years of his career where there was virtually no vocal decay or decline whatsoever. I find it absolutely remarkable how consistent he was from the mid-70s through the 80s, the 90s and into the 2000s! I cannot begin to say I know the physiological reason for this because so many of the things that he did defy what we know of, academically and physiologically, as being sustainable for the voice. Dio was a one-of-a-kind talent. There are many multitudes of singers who attempted to do what he did and failed miserably, even among the professional ranks.
I can only guess at the reasons why it was so sustainable. I know his vocal hygiene was excellent. He took care of himself as much as he could. He didn’t do things that were too out of his comfort zone with his voice, meaning he kept his voice within bounds that he thought were good for him. He didn’t indulge in the vices that a lot of metal singers have gotten into.
It’s just absolutely remarkable that he performed in as many shows as he did with the type of consistency he did. You don’t even see opera singers having this consistent of a career over a 30 year long period of time.
His final performance ever was in 2009 and you can hear that he is having some slight little issues with pitch consistency every now and then, but all the other elements - the breath support, tonal consistency, legato and showmanship were all still there! That is just phenomenal.
When any vocal professional considers all these aforementioned variables, one gets a very clear, objective representation of the greatness of a singer. I have yet to find another metal singer who encompasses all these critical elements of singing in the way that Dio does.
There is no doubt in my mind that Ronnie James Dio is the greatest metal singer that there has ever been. I’m not sure that the bar he set will ever be met or surpassed by anyone else. The fact that he performed literally thousands of shows in his life with his style and his degree of consistency is staggering. Opera singers don’t perform that much.
You just don’t see performers doing as much as he did for as long as he did as consistently as he did. It is a remarkable thing and I truly hope that Ronnie James Dio and his singing style will be analyzed by voice professors and voice scientists in the future to try to better figure out how he did what he did for as consistently as he did for as long as he did.
