Growlers Choir is an ensemble of metal vocalists, gathered to chart the outer edges of what the human voice can be. Out of raw vocal recordings, it forges a most primal music, an arcane alloy of metal, electronic and experimental music that seems to belong to something older and stranger than genre tags. As if speaking in an almost alien tongue. Growlers Choir mines the voice for its full power: sensual yet monstrous, ceremonial but feral.

The performances, designed to keep listeners on the edge of their seats, are a ritual that conjures visions of the apocalypse. They have been described by the public as “powerful, fascinating and memorable”.

 

The project's first studio album, VOICES OF THE VOID, tells of ancient cosmic bards traveling through time and space. Warriors and prophets of the throat, they arrive on a ravaged Earth, five hundred years hence, and voice the terrors that now inhabit the wreckage of the world we once called home.

 

Growlers Choir was founded in 2018 by Montreal-based composer Pierre-Luc Senécal. To the arsenal of voice he wields, he weds field recordings according to the story they can carry.
“The story guides the sounds and the voices,” he says. “They become its embodiment. In GORGREGUT, sounds are chopped and slashed like flesh under an ogre’s blade. In PAR LA VOLONTÉ, distorted field recordings evoke an irradiated landscape. In BLOODY REMNANTS, the groan of a metal vessel echoes the broken shell of a cyborg's skull.”

 

Beyond the album, Growlers Choir expands what an "extreme vocal ensemble" can accomplish. Whether as a fourteen-singer spectacle or a lean growlers quartet, in large-scale works like the BASILEUS oratorio or the LA SUSPENDIDA opera, Growlers Choir regularly collaborates, scores for film and video games, and receives commissions from artists of international recognition.