A music article in the most unlikely of places is always a pleasant surprise, so reading "That's Good Enough for Me: Cookie Monsters of death-metal music" in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) was like a vacation from normal music writing. If published by a metal magazine, the article wouldn't have had the same journalistic curiosity.

Jim Fusilli wrote about Cookie Monster singing in death metal music, the style of growling that characterizes a particularly morbid and punishing music. The nonprofit behind Sesame Street claims not to know of the term, and original Cookie Monster voice Frank Oz said he's never heard of it. Fusilli captured the essense of the vocal style in this paragraph:

"The term is considered derogatory by some metal fans, but it's an apt description. Issued like machine-gun fire, death-metal vocals are low, guttural and aggressive, with no subtlety, no melody and very little modulation. But unlike the garbled sound emanating from the lovable and occasionally frenetic Cookie Monster, death-metal vocals seem to come from a dark spot in a troubled soul, as if they were the narrator's voice on a tour of Dante's seventh circle of hell."

Monte Conner of Roadrunner Records had good advice on how to attain the Cookie Monster style. "It's got to be really, really guttural. It should sound like they're gargling glass." But Angela Gussow of Arch Enemy (pictured) insists the sound originates in the abdomen. "If you use the right abdomen muscles, you get a lot of power."

A few years ago Will York wrote a piece about Cookie Monster vocals for the SF Bay Guardian. He explains the genres that use the style of singing (only death metal and grindcore) and that the type of growl is a good indication of the subgenre. As for why so many bands use the style he wrote, "For most, it's a mixture of several factors: habit, time-honored tradition, unoriginality, and necessity, in varying degrees."