Exclusive: We Don’t Talk About Diaphragms Enough – Here’s Archspire’s Oliver Rae Aleron on Vocal Technique

When it rains it pours, huh? I threw it out there to some bands that “hey, I don’t know if a vocal playthrough would even work but fuck it, let’s try.” And back to back, in the span of 24 hours, even though it’s been over a month since I put the word out, I got vocal videos from Torrential Downpour and Archspire.

What’s cool though is that both bands approached the vocal playthrough concept from a different angle. Torrential Downpour’s vocalist PrKr triggers synths and samples as he sings, so he focused on the pure performance of that. Since Archspire’s Oliver Rae Aleron is a pure mic-gripping frontman, he augmented the video with some discussion of vocal technique. A few minutes into the song in the video below, Oliver goes over his breathing method, overall approach, how he counts time in his band’s wacko song structures, and more.

The song “Lucid Collective Somnambulation,” which we’ve already covered from a drum and guitar perspective, can be found on Archspire’s most recent LP, The Lucid Collective. You can stream it on the band’s Bandcamp, of which the music player is embedded below, or pick up the album here in North America or here worldwide, via Season of Mist.

You can follow Archspire by way of the band’s Facebook page.