Growlers Choir

Born in Montreal, Growlers Choir takes the form of a choir made up entirely of metal singers practicing growl and other guttural vocal techniques, situated between extreme metal, contemporary music and acoustic vocal experimentation. The project was developed by composer Pierre‑Luc Senécal in the late 2010s and drew attention with its first public performance in 2019, The Dayking, a piece constructed around a text by Fortner Anderson, a figure of Montreal’s spoken‑word scene. Since then, Growlers Choir has progressed mainly through stage creations, treating the voice as choral, noise‑based and narrative material, without instrumental accompaniment in the foreground. Growlers Choir has performed in contexts linked to contemporary and experimental music, notably at the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville in 2021, and has also engaged with the choral repertoire through Extrêmes Vocaux, a concert shared that same year with the classical ensemble Temps Fort. In 2022, Growlers Choir broadened its visibility with an appearance on America’s Got Talent—where the choir notably revisited Britney Spears’ "Toxic"—and later with a performance at the Festival de musique émergente en Abitibi. Across these formats, Growlers Choir explores a dense collective writing based on low‑end textures, vocal masses and contrasts between brutality, breath and resonance.