10 Greatest Screams In Rock Music History

Every high pitched metal vocalist that has come and gone in rock and roll is normally just reading from the handbook that Rob Halford already wrote. While there were screamers before Halford rose to fame with Judas Priest, no one could match how clean he sounded on songs like Breaking the Law or Bloodstone, from the gutteral sounds of his low register to sounding like a banshee from Hell. Each song gave us a different layer of his voice, but Painkiller may as well be heavy metal opera singing.

Wanting to reinvent their sound one more time for the '90s metal scene, the title track off of Painkiller has Rob screaming at the top of his lungs throughout the entire track, almost sounding like a heavy metal version of the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz at some points. Describing the fallout that comes with a mechanized monster coming to destroy the world, Rob matches the intensity of every other instrument note for note, especially in the bridge where he sings one long scream after another, only to add an even higher melody on top of it before the solos kick in.

As the song rushes through its 6 minute runtime though, everything comes to a halt at the end, as Rob hits his last note and holds it out for what seems like eternity, as the drums crash around him and the entire band fall out behind him. Most metal musicians like to pride themselves on how much intensity that can get out of their voice, but this is the kind of vocal performance Pavarotti would have turned in if he decided to get on the metal train instead of classical music.