I do understand that growling is the part that often splits opinions and I won't act otherwise, but there's quite a lot of metal songs/bands with no growling.

I guess the conclusion that "metal is mostly just annoying noise and throaty growling" is related to what gets discussed online - in most cases the vocal part of metal fans are already in the deep end of the subgenres, so only the really heavy stuff gets mentioned. So I do understand where you're coming from, no real criticism here. :D

I guess the "less heavy" stuff is less often discussed, or just forgotten about when people are talking about "metal" as a whole:

• As an example Nightwish is considered metal, and they have an opera singer: Nightwish - Ghost Love Score

• Another random example, Jonathan Young's metal cover of Hellfire (from Disney's Notre Dame). Almost completely clean vocals, but also a bit "angry" sounding here and there.

• Kardashev - Torchpassing is also one of my all-time favourites, and it's mostly clean vocals. I guess the genre of this song is questionable anyway, due to being a bit more "chill" in many parts of the song - but the faster parts are quite clearly metal. Growling is used like an "extra effect" a couple of times.

It's also perfectly fine to not enjoy any of these, just dropping them here as examples about metal songs which have a clear melody and clean vocals. :D

I do like my noise-filled growling too, though. This is one of the songs where I completely understand that vast majority of people would hate it, and anyone expecting otherwise would be delusional. I love it, but I also hate when some people act like everyone should enjoy stuff like this lmao.