I felt the same way as you initially when I got into the genre, but Between the Buried and Me made me develop and appreciation for growling vocals. They’ve got a lot of really intricate and technical guitar work, which is what made me keep listening.

For (mostly) entirely instrumental track, animals as leaders is good, and I absolutely love Polyphia (they play at different times signatures for an interesting sound), and Power Glove is amazing if you like metal covers of video game music.

As for genres, look into symphonic and progressive metal bands, they might be more your style.

I like https://masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com/ and https://keygenchurch.bandcamp.com/ !!

So there’s a lot of ways you can go with this. You can definitely find instrumentals of death metal bands, but you can also try something new.

Haggard is one of the best in symphonic metal, and while there’s still a stitch singer, imo they’re MUCH easier to understand.

Native Howl has slayer played by some country boys on banjo and guitar. They also do a bunch of their own stuff that sounds pretty wild. “Thrash grass” is one of their better albums and pretty accurately describes their flavor of fusion (thrash metal played in the style of bluegrass)

Older Arch Emeny stuff is also quite good, and having a pretty lady growling at me is a novel experience. Angela gossow also shows up in metalocalypse so that’s instant bonus points

Dethklok does pretty well at straddling the line between melodic/symphonic/death metal, and if you like the metal without Nathan explosion you can check out Brandon Small’s other stuff where he isn’t growling like a cartoon character.

Last but certainly not least is The Lord Weird Slough Feg. Exquisite technical metal wrapped up in an 80s/90s power metal package. I simp for Slough Feg wherever I can because it’s EXCELLENT metal that doesn’t get nearly enough recognition

One really quirky one I love is https://epiphanieqc.bandcamp.com/album/laube. Is absolutely beautiful by also has many crushing sections.

Metal, with a harp solo!

I forget which one, but one of the Between the buried and me albums has an instrumental release. Honestly, all of their albums I recommend regardless because the musicianship is excellent.

Scale the summit is more along the lines of prog metal but purely instrumental (I think).

Protest the hero is prog metal that has a near minimal amount of death growl (still some).

Animals as leaders which has been mentioned by several people.

Exivious is decent, I’m like 90percent sure they’re instrumental.

There’s a Japanese band called té, which is way more prog rock but you might like that.

Death, despite being one of the progenitors of death metal, is less intense on the death metal growl vocals. To me, early death metal in general is a bit different sounding than modern death metal. Regardless, Death has a pure instrumental song called Voice of the soul which is part acoustic. It’s probably one of the most acoustically beautiful songs written in the genre.

Try out Ashenspire, their album Hostile Architecture was my album of the year in 2022. They aren’t death metal per se, but they are heavy as shit. Best description is prog metal jazz infusion with spoken word poetry.

There’s a fair few that straddle the line between death growls and clean vocals. Check out Agalloch, Insomnium, Words of Farewell, and Before the Dawn. There’s also of course Amon Amarth, still gorwly but usually clear enough to understand.

I’d start looking up “melodic death metal” that’s a good place to start for what you’re looking for.

I was the same when I first started listening to bodom. Just give it time and you’ll like the vocals just as much :)

You can find instrumentals in the meantime, absolutely. (Or even fan covers on YouTube and the like)

A lot of metal bands do instrumental releases

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR1qON1IN1zBN4eo7DFL4IYRwZeuKTvWP&si=xY2lo5ha-8070b2P

thisi might be a bit of a stretch but the harder Nu Skool Breaks stuff might fit.

Break-core is also nice and noisy but might be a bit too detailed and less rocky.

I wonder if AI vocal removal would be able to handle that

Hm, Animals as leaders? But it’s not very thrashy.

Animals as Leaders, Thessa, Pomegranate Tiger, Myth of I, and Fractalize are great ones.

Stoort Neer and Vildjharta both have some really good instrumental albums.

Gore., Monolord, '68, and The Damned Things are all a little less heavy than what you might be looking for, but they are all great and have mostly clean vocals.

Polyphia and Chon are also both incredible but probably fall a little closer to something other than Metal.

Check out a band called Pelican, especially their early stuff. It’s not exactly what you’re looking for but it might scratch that itch a little

Power metal is more traditional metal but with clean vocals (no growls). Bands include DragonForce, Angra, Helloween, Stratovarius

There’s also progressive metal, where the emphasis is more on the intricate instrumentals, so some banda don’t do growls. It is usually less heavier than traditional metal. Bands include Dream Theatre, Liquid Tension Experiment, Symphony X, Tessaract, Haken, frost*, Porcupine Tree