Michael Poulsen (10,086 views)

[Henny Macc]

Michael Schøn Poulsen (April 1, 1975 - )
Years active: 1991-present
Country of origin: Denmark
Recorded vocal range: C♯2-B4 (D♭2-B4) - 2⅚ octaves

Band history:

• 1991-2000 - Dominus (lead vocals, rhythm guitar)
• 2000-present - Volbeat (lead vocals, rhythm guitar)

Recorded high notes:
B4: "Don't Tread on Me", "Fallen", "Heaven's Descent", "Killed by Death" live Oshawa 2012, "Lola Montez", "Marie Laveau", "Maybe I Believe", "Mindlock", "Pelvis on Fire", "Return to None", "Seal the Deal", "The Bliss", "The Nameless One", "The Sinner Is You"
A♯4/B♭4: "A Moment Forever", "Another Day, Another Way", "A Warrior's Call", "Becoming", "Dagen Før", "Danny & Lucy (11 PM)", "Hallelujah Goat", "Healing Subconsciously", "Killed by Death" live Oshawa 2012, "Light a Way", "Lonesome Rider" live Stuttgart 2019, "Our Loved Ones", "Pelvis on Fire", "Rebound", "Return to None", "Rewind the Exit", "River Queen", "Say Your Number", "Something Else Or...", "The Gates of Babylon", "The Hangman's Body Count", "The Passenger", "The Sacred Stones", "Wait a Minute My Girl"
A4: "A Better Believer", "Always, Wu", "A Moment Forever", "Angelfuck", "Another Day, Another Way", "A Warrior's Call", "Becoming", "Black Bart", "Black Rose", "Boa (JDM)", "B.S.E.", "Caroline Leaving", "Caroline #1", "Cheapside Sloggers", "Cloud 9", "Come to the Sabbath" live Sölvesborg 2012, "Dagen Før", "Danny & Lucy (11 PM)", "Dead but Rising", "Die to Live", "Don't Tread on Me", "Ecotone", "Enter Sandman" live Parken 2017, "Everything's Still Fine", "Find That Soul", "Fire Song", "Ghosts at War", "Goodbye Forever", "Hallelujah Goat", "Heaven's Descent", "Highwayman", "Immortal but Indestructible", "I Want to Break Free" live Oberhausen 2011, "Lasse's Birgitta", "Last Day Under the Sun", "Let It Burn", "Leviathan", "Lola Montez", "Marie Laveau", "Mary Jane Kelly", "Maybe I Believe", "Maybellene i Hofteholder", "Mindlock", "Mr. & Mrs. Ness", "My Body", "Parasite", "Rebel Angel", "Return to None", "Sad Man's Tongue", "Say No More", "Say Your Number", "7 Shots", "7:24", "Shotgun Blues", "16 Dollars", "Something Else Or...", "Still Counting", "Thanks", "The Awakening of Bonnie Parker", "The Devil's Bleeding Crown", "The Garden's Tale", "The Gates of Babylon", "The Human Instrument", "The Loa's Crossroad", "The Nameless One", "The Passenger", "The Sacred Stones", "Under the Influence", "Wait a Minute My Girl", "When We Were Kids", "When Words Taste of Lies", "Who They Are", "Wild Rover of Hell", "You Will Know"
G♯4/A♭4: "A Broken Man and the Dawn", "Battleship Chains", "Being 1", "Black Rose", "Cheapside Sloggers", "Die to Live", "Enter Sandman" live Parken 2017, "Find That Soul", "Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood", "Healing Subconsciously", "Heaven nor Hell", "Immortal but Indestructible", "I Want to Break Free" live Oberhausen 2011, "Killed by Death" live Oshawa 2012, "Last Day Under the Sun", "Leviathan", "Lonesome Rider", "Mary Jane Kelly", "Pool of Booze, Booze, Booza", "Rebound", "Rewind the Exit", "Room 24", "Soulweeper", "Soulweeper #2", "Under the Influence", "Wait a Minute My Girl", "We", "When We Were Kids", "Where To", "You Will Know"
G4: "A Better Believer", "Always, Wu", "A New Day", "Another Day, Another Way", "Black Bart", "Boa (JDM)", "Breaking the Law" live Rock am Ring 2013, "B.S.E.", "Burner" live at The Roxy 2016, "Cape of Our Hero", "Caroline Leaving", "Caroline #1", "Cloud 9", "Come to the Sabbath" live Sölvesborg 2012, "Devil or the Blue Cat's Song", "Ecotone", "Enter Sandman" live Parken 2017, "Everything's Still Fine", "Fallen", "Find That Soul", "For Evigt", "Ghosts at War", "Goodbye Forever", "Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood", "Healing Subconsciously", "Heaven nor Hell", "Highwayman", "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "I Only Wanna Be with You", "Lasse's Birgitta", "Let It Burn", "Light a Way", "Lola Montez", "Magic Zone", "Making Believe", "Marie Laveau", "Mary Ann's Place", "Maybe I Believe", "Misery/Company", "Mr. & Mrs. Ness", "Our Loved Ones", "Pearl Hart", "Pelvis on Fire", "Rebel Monster", "Rewind the Exit", "Say No More", "Say Your Number", "Seal the Deal", "7 Shots", "7:24", "16 Dollars", "Something Else Or...", "Sorry Sack of Bones", "Soulweeper", "Soulweeper #2", "Step into Light", "Still Counting", "Temple of Ekur", "Thanks", "The Awakening of Bonnie Parker", "The Bliss", "The Devil Rages On", "The Devil's Bleeding Crown", "The Everlasting", "The Garden's Tale", "The Gates of Babylon", "The Hangman's Body Count", "The Human Instrument", "The Loa's Crossroad", "The Mirror and the Ripper", "The Nameless One", "The Quest", "The Sinner Is You", "Until the Light Came", "We", "When Words Taste of Lies", "Who They Are", "You or Them"
F♯4/G♭4: "A Broken Man and the Dawn", "Angelfuck", "Being 1", "Caroline Leaving", "Cloud 9", "Don't Be Cruel" live 2006, "Enter Sandman" live Parken 2017, "Evelyn", "Fallen", "For Evigt", "Goodbye Forever", "Highwayman", "I Only Wanna Be with You", "Lola Montez", "Marie Laveau", "Maybe I Believe", "Parasite", "Pearl Hart", "Radio Queen", "Rebound", "River Queen", "Sad Man's Tongue", "Seal the Deal", "The Awakening of Bonnie Parker", "The Bliss", "The Devil's Bleeding Crown", "The Nameless One", "The Sinner Is You", "Watching Over Me" live Copenhagen 2011

Recorded low notes:
D3: "Doc Holliday", "Don't Be Cruel" live 2006, "Fallen", "Heaven's Descent", "I Disappear" live Glasgow 2013, "Sad Man's Tongue", "7 Shots", "Something Else Or...", "The Devil Rages On", Volbeat doing impressions of Elvis and Johnny Cash live Cadott 2017
C♯3/D♭3: "Black Rose" live Paso Robles 2021, "Don't Be Cruel" live 2006, "Fallen", "Immortal but Indestructible", "Ring of Fire" live Eindhoven 2017
C3: "All Shook Up" live Colorado Springs 2012, "Something Else Or...", "We", "Where To"
B2: "Black Rose" live Hershey 2022, "Immortal but Indestructible", "When We Were Kids"
A2: "Cape of Our Hero", "Sad Man's Tongue", Volbeat doing impressions of Elvis and Johnny Cash live Cadott 2017
G♯2/A♭2: "When We Were Kids"
F♯2/G♭2: "The Awakening of Bonnie Parker"
F2: "7 Shots"
D2: "Sad Man's Tongue"
C♯2/D♭2: "Ring of Fire" live Eindhoven 2017

.......................................................
*Italics marks non-melodic notes.
*Underlines marks notes sung in backing vocals or otherwise obscured/muffled in the mix.

The vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Volbeat, Michael Poulsen has a very unique vocal style - a combination of a James Hetfield/M. Shadows type of metal approach and an Elvis Presley/Johnny Cash type of crooning approach. The result is his own type of "country metal" sound that works perfectly for the type of music that Volbeat writes. He is also a true example of someone who literally never surpasses his comfortable range in any of his songs. His current recorded range is just a little under three octaves, but every bit of it is strong, very usable, and shows margin for more on both ends. Though he is very obviously a baritone with a rather heavy voice, actual low singing is surprisingly rare from him - only a very select few Volbeat songs feature any second octave notes whatsoever, and even lower third octave notes are fairly uncommon. On the other hand, his fourth octave is very robust and resonant, and A4 seems to be a particular favorite note of his to write vocal melodies up to, as he seems to use it in almost every song. His tone seems to be a "love it or hate it" one for a lot of people from what I've observed, but personally I enjoy it a lot and look forward to hearing what else he puts out.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Best displays of vocal range}
"Sad Man's Tongue" (D2-A4)
"7 Shots" (F2-A4)
"The Awakening of Bonnie Parker" (F♯2-A4)
"When We Were Kids" (G♯2-B2-A4)
"Cape of Our Hero" (A2-G4)
"Immortal but Indestructible" (B2-A4)

As it stands now, I currently have checked all of his material with Volbeat, but haven't done any notewatching for his first band Dominus yet, so that may be a future project that I'll be looking into.

[cmen]

You forgot the backing B4 here youtu.be/TAhyZegVkhw?t=71

[newdasher]

Bolding two low notes from the same performance of the same song only one semitone apart seems rather excessive to me. I'd pick one of the two.

[Henny Macc]

Apr 24, 2020 22:21:11 GMT cmen said:

You forgot the backing B4 here youtu.be/TAhyZegVkhw?t=71

I left that out in case it was the guest singer doing them. In the English version, "The Bliss", though, Poulsen handles all the vocals, so I credited him for the B4s in that version.

Apr 24, 2020 22:56:48 GMT newdasher said:

Bolding two low notes from the same performance of the same song only one semitone apart seems rather excessive to me. I'd pick one of the two.

Fair enough, I unbolded the C♯2 since that's a much shorter note anyway.

[Batfleck]

G4s, A4s and a B4 (at the 2:50 mark) in the cover of Metallica's "Don't Tread on Me"

[Henny Macc]

Wow, that's gotta be his best B4 to date! One of these days we'll get a C5 or something out of him... :time:

Quite a solid cover overall though - it has a nice balance of being faithful to the original while also offering some interesting changeups that work well for it.

This also reminded me to check out the new Volbeat song that they dropped earlier this month:

More of Poulsen's standard G♯4s and A4s on the verses and choruses of this one, then towards the end there's a key change that has him doing entire lines on A♯4! Made sure to give those a bold in the thread. Kind of a meh song overall though apart from the vocals - I'm not as big on Volbeat's simpler, poppy songs like this. I guess we'll see what else they put out if they are going to continue releasing new material or an album soon.

[Henny Macc]

New Volbeat song out! The vocals are almost nothing but A4s from beginning to end lol

[Henny Macc]

More new Volbeat, probably the last new single until the album release next month. I dig it instrumentally, but once again the vocals are pretty much just straight A4s and B♭4s per usual.

[Henny Macc]

Notewatched the new Volbeat album, Servant of the Mind today. Good album overall, but it's gotta be one of Poulsen's worst for lows to date lol, as it bottoms at freaking D3 and only even gets that low in two songs at that. He's definitely continuing to get more confident in his upper fourth octave though, as there were numerous songs that featured really clean, well-supported B4s, so he's VERY gradually inching his way up there into higher notes. I was hoping maybe this would finally be the album where he went all out and gave us a nice strong clean C5 or something, but unfortunately the best we got were some rather unimpressive notes in this really vocally weird Roy Orbison cover. I don't know the original so I'm not sure if that delivery was a nod to how Orbison sang it or something, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of it regardless.

In this last chorus here I think I'm hearing a couple of short falsetto notes in the C♯5/D5 range? There's also a kinda shitty C5 at 1:05 that I'm not quite sure what to do with either. Overall quite a weird/difficult song to notewatch, which is particularly annoying because Poulsen is someone who's usually pretty straightforward to notewatch lol, and doesn't tend to leave us with much in the ways of confusing or questionable notes.

[clem]

I'm not feeling the C5 for inclusion. Those falsettos in the last chorus are a little better, but Holsety's law of the harder it is to pitch a brief note, the less countable it usually is, may apply here.

[Henny Macc]

I don't think the falsetto notes are that hard to pitch; I was mainly referring to some of the very "jumpy" notes in other parts of the song, which I heard getting up to somewhere around A4ish I think. Those aren't super essential to the thread though, since he has dozens of A4s that are much better than these ones anyway.

As far as the falsetto notes go, I think I hear a D5 at 2:31 and an E♭5 at 2:40? Also sounds like the laugh at 2:19 gets down to B2, which may be countable, and if so would be the only second octave note on this album.

[Osmosis]

Casually so, I only know this guy because of Lola Montez. Do you have any recommendations for someone looking to get into his discography?

[Henny Macc]

Oh for sure! My favorite album by Volbeat is Seal the Deal & Let's Boogie, which is a super solid album all the way through except for maybe "Rebound". Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies is also great, and I really dug their most recent album Servant of the Mind. They're definitely a band that got better as they went along, and I usually don't listen to much off their first two albums for that reason - they were clearly still finding their sound on those two. Anything from Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood onward is generally a safe bet, though, as that's the album that I consider the turning point as to where they really started to grow into their own.

If you were looking for song recommendations, "Sad Man's Tongue" and "Heaven nor Hell" were the first two songs I heard by them, which made for a pretty good introduction. "Seal the Deal", "Black Rose", "The Devil's Bleeding Crown", "Lonesome Rider", and "A Warrior's Call" are some fairly to moderately well known songs by them that I would also recommend.