James McClellan Dorton, the vocalist and voice actor known for his vocal range and dynamic delivery, spanning from guttural growls to very clean passages. In Ne Obliviscaris, his vocal prowess adds another layer to the band’s progressive and atmospheric sound, blending extreme metal with sweeping orchestral and classical influences. With Replacire, Dorton explores the complex realms of technical death metal, weaving intricate lyrical themes into the band's relentlessly precise and aggressive compositions. As a voice actor, Dorton brings an additional dimension to his craft, utilizing his voice in diverse ways beyond the stage. In this interview, we dive into Dorton’s journey as a vocalist and also explore his work as a voice actor and how these distinct roles complement his identity as an artist with appearances in games like Doom Eternal, Dead by Daylight, and Metal Hellsinger.
INTERVIEW
OBNUBIL: Hi James! Thank you so much for the opportunity to ask you some questions! First of all, can you please share a bit about your musical background? What led you to start singing?
JAMES: Of course, it’s my pleasure. And I thank you for your time. I was doing various voice things since I was a little guy. When I was young, I’d sing in church choirs and that kind of thing, and I loved trying to figure out how to make dinosaur and Godzilla noises. At some point, those two things came together. Some friends introduced me to death metal when I was in middle school, and I joined my first band, Scarred Horizon, in high school (which now has members of the band Dischordia). After that, I kept going playing in local bands and never really stopped.
OBNUBIL: You are not only a singer, but also a voice actor. Singing guttural you are a beast, but I have also heard you melodic, what an amazing voice! And your voices bringing life to a text or character are tremendous too! What type of voices or singing style draw your attention the most? Have you had any references that have motivated you in your beginnings?
JAMES: Thank you for saying so! I draw inspiration from a variety of places. For harsh vocals, growing up, I was mainly influenced by Shagrath from Dimmu Borgir, Glen Benton from Deicide, Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth, Jens Kidman from Meshuggah, among others, all of which you can probably hear to some extent in my work. As I got older, I took speech and voiceover classes, and started to approach it in a different way. I mostly stopped looking at other vocalists for inspiration - now I look to less conventional sources for that, and use the enunciative skills I learned as a voice actor to create different sounds. Otherwise, performance has become a transformative and spiritual endeavor for me, for lack of a better word. So much of what you hear is that transformation, transformed into sound, however that comes out and evolves with time. When it comes to cleaner styles of singing, I’m still developing and exploring that - we’ll see what I have to say about that in time.
OBNUBIL: Let’s start talking about Ne Obliviscaris. You began to be part of Ne Obliviscaris doing the harsh vocals from last year 2023, replacing Marc "Xenoyr" Campbell due to issues with his health and well-being that took priority at that time. A year has passed and you are still in the band, I understand that it is no longer just a replacement and you have taken the permanent position. How did this initial replacement come about and how has everything been this last year with the band, how are your experiences? Will you stay in the position?
JAMES: I actually am still just a fill-in for NeO. The intent of the band is for Xen to return in 2025. I’ve had a great time with those guys.
OBNUBIL: Download, Graspop, Metalhead Meeting, Into the Grave... are some of the festivals you've been to with Ne Obliviscaris this summer, but from your time at Hellfest you took away a special memory. The first crowdsurfing of your life! What has happened? Did you suddenly feel so excited with the masses of people that you felt the urge to do it for the first time? I imagine this has made Hellfest your favorite festival performance this summer!?
JAMES: I had an amazing time at Hellfest! Graspop and Download were on par with that show, for my part. In the case of Hellfest, I was having a lot of technical issues on my end. When issues happen in a live show, I will usually try to find a way to make up for that so that the overall experience is still a good one, both for me and the crowd. With Hellfest, that’s how it turned out!
OBNUBIL: In October you will go on tour for a whole month in Europe, unfortunately you will not go through Spain to see you here. Then a small tour in Latin America. During your time in Europe the band will play the entire "Exul and Citadel" album, is there a song from those two albums that you especially like to sing? For what reason?
JAMES: With Citadel, it would have to be Devour Me Colossus. I have a special memory attached to that song. In 2016, my band Black Crown Initiate toured with Ne Obliviscaris. There were a few nights in which Xen was unable to perform, so NeO asked me to make a guest appearance. The song I performed was that one! I’ve found that experience in retrospect to be a prophetic one. With Exul, it would have to be Equus, simply because I really love that one. It’s some of my favorite lyrics they have.
OBNUBIL: Another band you currently sing in is Replacire. You just released the album “The Center That Cannot Hold” this summer, an album that took you several years to create. Some really amazing Technical Death Metal, the album just jumped into my top of the year albums, I absolutely recommend it to all people who read this interview. I read you said that the studio experience was the most intense of your life, that it has been the most extreme and experimental vocal performances of your career to date. Please share this experience with us and tell us more about the recording!
JAMES: Thank you! That was definitely a memorable experience, one that really pushed my boundaries. With Replacire, extremity is key, more so than with the other projects I’ve been a part of, and so it made sense that the experience itself was an extreme one. I lived in the studio for two weeks, and we worked for 8+ hours every day recording. Eric Alper (the main man behind Replacire - read the band’s name backwards!) worked in that studio, and produced the whole record. He’s a bodybuilder and has been my trainer, and we both went into it with a similar approach to bodybuilding- with the mindset of pushing it to the absolute limit, to failure, and to get up and do it again. The title track was a good example of that. We did take after take, making the attempt to getting the whole song in one go. I’d get these crippling cluster headaches with those screams, and have to fight passing out and throwing up. Instead I just took a shot of whiskey and did it again, and again. This approach embodies much of my life philosophy, which is to never take the easy road. If you pay the price of hardship, it will be evident in the final product. I have a lot of respect for artists that put their own blood into their work, and that’s how I aim to be.
OBNUBIL: I discovered you and Replacire years ago thanks to Slay At Home Fest.I loved that initiative during the pandemic, and I thought it was great that it also supported some great causes. How have you experienced that time and what was that performance like for you?
JAMES: Honestly, it’s so surreal looking back at that time, it feels like a bit of a dream. And like a dream, it’s almost difficult to remember. Filming that video was a good time with the Replacire boys. But it certainly strange and difficult, trying to navigate anything during that time as a musician, in an industry that thrives on the live experience.
OBNUBIL: Is there any possibility of a European tour for Replacire?
JAMES: As of now, it’s difficult to say honestly. But you never know!
OBNUBIL: Are you part of more bands nowadays? Can we expect something from any of them soon? Or do you have another project in hand as a voice actor?
JAMES: Most recently, I’ve been working on “The Black Ballad”, the upcoming album by DiAmorte. This is unlike any project I’ve been a part of before - it is as much an opera or musical as it is a metal album. My first track with DiAmorte was “Where the Light Grows Cold” featuring the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, the music video for which is out now - check that out to get a taste! As for voiceover - check out the trailer for the upcoming AAA first person shooter DEFECT. It’s the first game of which I play the main character, and I narrate the trailer.
OBNUBIL: Now that I just mentioned the topic of voice actor again... you provided choir vocals for the soundtrack of the 2020 video game Doom Eternal!!! I was surprised to find out. Well, please tell us how you came to do them?
JAMES: It was simple - Mick Gordon sent me an email asking if I was interested, and the rest is history! I had such a blast working with him and the rest of the Doom Choir.
OBNUBIL: What other types of voice work have you done? Any commercials, audiobooks, animation or other video games maybe?
JAMES: I’ve also done voice in Dead by Daylight (shout out to The Monster Factory) as Silent Hill 2’s James Sunderland, Oblivion: Knights of the Nine: Revelation, and Metal Hellsinger!
OBNUBIL: What kind of voice work do you enjoy the most? Are there specific genres or types of content that you prefer?
JAMES: Mostly, my focus has been on video games - I spend more time touring. If I decide to focus more on voiceover, I will probably try out other types of voiceover, and see what catches on!
OBNUBIL: How would you describe your vocal range and capabilities? Can you perform different accents, dialects, characters, or age ranges? What techniques do you use to maintain vocal health and what do you enjoy most about voice acting?
JAMES: I can do a pretty mean Shrek impression! Haha. I enjoy doing a different voices, across a range of octaves and styles/textures. Not too many accents though, besides Scottish, English, Irish and Spanish. For vocal health, I don’t really employ too many tricks. My voice requires a lot of use to sound good. So the biggest things are sleep, hydration, warming up intuitively, and conditioning. Being an extreme metal vocalist really aids the quality of my speaking voice, and gives it a lot of depth and timbre.
OBNUBIL: What’s the strangest or funniest thing that has happened to you while voice acting? Do you have any favorite voice acting moments?
JAMES: Each experience has been so unique- which does make it difficult to pick. Mostly, I’m just grateful to be doing it. It’s a difficult industry to get into. So far, none of the experiences have been particularly strange or funny, just really cool.
OBNUBIL: What are your thoughts on the use of AI in voice acting? Do you see it as an opportunity or a threat?
JAMES: Without knowing all the implications of AI as a whole, it’s difficult to say. But in the present, it’s already begun taking work from hard-working voice actors, which is an opportunity for the clients to save money, and a threat to voice actors. The video game space seems as though it will be protected, at least for now - but with that industry as a whole being changed by AI, it’s difficult to imagine it will remain that way. Perhaps some golden age of AI is coming, but at the moment, it seems more like a dystopian scenario, at least in the transitional phase, and a blurring of the lines of reality.
OBNUBIL: Finally, a question out of curiosity. What would be your top 5 best Movie Voice-Over Performances? Maybe Danny Elfman voicing songs for Jack Skellington in “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader in “Star Wars” or maybe Robin Williams voicing Genie in “ALADDIN” on your list? Haha. If you were given the option of having done any of the jobs in your top 5, which would you choose?
JAMES: Those are great ones, to be sure! My favorite voice performances haven’t all been voiceovers. I loved James Earl Jones in Conan the Barbarian, as well as Maku Iwamatsu in the same film. I loved so many of the voices in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Cate Blanchett, Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee. It’s some of the most beautiful speaking. For voiceover strictly, I loved Andy Serkis as Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jeremy Irons in The Lion King. Christopher Judge as Kratos. There are so many, it feels impossible to choose, but it would’ve been sick to play Kratos or to have been in Lord of the Rings!
OBNUBIL: It has been a pleasure talking to you and getting to know you a little more! Thank you so much for taking your time answering the questions! Is there anything that you would like to say to the readers and to your fans?
JAMES: The pleasure is mine! Thank you so much for your time. To the fans and readers, thank you for following along - more to come!
Interview done September 2024. Photos taken by Lina Glasir, Kieran White and Devin Barnes.
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