Bruce's vocals

Babo 91

Babo 91

Nomad
The thing that shocked me most about this album was how strong Bruce's voice is. It's been 5 years since the final frontier and I was honestly expecting his voice to decline slightly and thought they would write more melodies in a lower register, but the opposite is true.

In my opinion Bruce sounds better on this album than he did on TFF, AMOLAD and DOD and his vocals are probably on par with BNW.

The highest note he hit on BNW was a C#5 on TTLBLAH, other than that he hit a load of C5's on the title track, a couple on GOTN and a couple on DoM.

On the book of souls he hits a G5 scream on SoL, numerous D5's on TRATB and BoS and a few on EOTC, Plus C5's on SoL, TRATB, EOTC and IESF.

I just find it amazing that not only does he have the confidence to write and sing melodies in that register but he can hit them notes very convincingly. He sounds less strained than he does on the previous three albums and sounds as good as he does on The chemical wedding.
 
Yeah, it's amazing how strong Bruce voice is after all this years. His voice ages very well.

For most of the BoS I was like
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Given his age, the performance is outstanding... What struck me, is that he seems to be far more engaged into the songs than on The Final Frontier. His vocals are more lively. Listening to TFF I sometimes had a feeling he was delivering... a textbook performance (for the lack of a better expression). I mean it felt stoic, as if the priority was to sing as faithfully to a certain melody as possible in order to avoid any imperfections.
 
He delivers a solid performance,, significantly better than on TFF. However, his belting doesn't sound as full or slick as on BNW, and the vocals in general sound strained compared to 2000. It has been 15 years since BNW, which I find is his vocal peak, so there's no shame in it. But he sounds very motavited throughout TBoS and I did not expext him to sound this good. Sure, the highs are a bit thin and strained, but the emotion he conveys makes up for it.
 
Srogyy said:
Given his age, the performance is outstanding... What struck me, is that he seems to be far more engaged into the songs than on The Final Frontier. His vocals are more lively. Listening to TFF I sometimes had a feeling he was delivering... a textbook performance (for the lack of a better expression). I mean it felt stoic, as if the priority was to sing as faithfully to a certain melody as possible in order to avoid any imperfections.
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I really don't like the bland singing on the verse of mother of mercy, the alchemist, el Dorado, isle of avalon, the man who would be king and the 2nd half of wild wind
 
Babo 91 said:
I really don't like the bland singing on the verse of mother of mercy, the alchemist, el Dorado, isle of avalon, the man who would be king and the 2nd half of wild wind
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True, but at least we could understand what he was singing. A more passionate performance on this new album, sure, but half the songs I have no idea what he's singing. And before you say just read the lyrics insert, I say, I shouldn't have to rely on a book to interpret the songs for me.

That being said, I'm still super impressed. I mean nearing 60 with a voice like that? After years of touring? Amazing. He really shines on the IESF, and TOAC. And in general, anytime he's singing slow, and low, it always blows my mind.
 
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As Yax says, really. His voice was at its best in about 2000, and he's gradually become gruffer since them. Still singing incredibly well, though. I think they steered clear of putting as much strain on his voice in TBOS as they did in parts of TFF, eg Mother of Mercy, Talisman.
 
The question is, how will he handle these songs live ?

The BoS chorus is particularly difficult and the verses in TRATB are very fast but also high
 
He hits the big notes but they don't sound as clear as they used to.
When he is in the centre of his range he sounds as good or better than he ever has - the first few stanzas of the first song are a great example.
 
Far better than TFF, where a lot of the verses in some songs were almost sing-talking. Sounds about the same as DOD in my opinion, which isn't a bad thing.
 
I must say I hear a significant improvement over TFF - that album suffers from some strained singing alright. However, while it's very good and even better considering his age, there are still some hiccups - he sounds very strained on the WtRRD intro, it's almost unpleasant to listen to.
My favourite Bruce performance is probably AMOLAD and I usually compare his vocals with those on that one. As you have written, his BNW performance is also top notch. But I would also like to stress out I like his vocals on the 90's albums; it's really something different and it fits the songs. I definitely could imagine some songs sung with that style to rest his voice and to accomodate him as he gets older.
In fact, I think most of my problems with his voice nowadays seem to come from the fact that he can sing high notes, so he does, all the time. Sometimes with amazing results, sometimes it's not that great. I wouldn't mind at all having more songs in the lower range (more Blaze-isms?), just like WtWWB off the last album.

But yes, otherwise he's absolutely amazing and his performances on IESF, TRatB, TBoS and EotC have completely blown me away.
 
His performance on The Book of Souls, If Eternity Should fail, Empire of the Clouds, Death and Glory, The man of sorrows are really good. Maybe the production is the main issue for me. It is not that the sound is muddy or something (indeed the CD sound is much better than the leak) but I think that the vocals are a bit unbalanced compared to the rest of the instruments.
 
I think my favourite performance from this album is If Eternity Should Fail. I haven't thought about it too much and haven't really compared it to the rest of songs, but that's what comes to my mind first. I'm not impressed by stuff, whose characteristic is that it's difficult to sing. I mean, for example hitting a high note is not any of deciding factors to me. What I like about the singing on this song is how inventive/irregular the melody is (or at least seems to be to me). Maybe that's a silly thing to say, but what he does in the intro is like a cool, simple solo on vocals. Something like the beginning of Walking on Glass on guitar. I really liked that. Then, I really like the verse - the subtle bending notes, falls etc. It has a very cool rhythm too.
 
To me it not only sounds like he was more fired up about the vocal lines here compared to TFF, but that he also believed them a bit more if that makes any sense. The fact that the vocals actually have some producing this time helps a bunch too - I like the use of delay here in spots as it really fits.
 
Bruce is the star of the album for sure. I was expecting him to sound worse than he did on any of the reunion albums or maybe that he wouldn't be pushing himself to the limit, hitting high notes all the time or doing falsetto. Also, I realized this is a very hard album to sing, it definitely requires a lot of technique and training as a singer. Hope he can manage doing these songs live without any problem.
 
I think Bruce's voice sounds strained in some places too. Yet it also sounded strained in places on The Final Frontier, but he seemed to nail those same songs effortlessly live.

I cannot help but wonder if the guys are just mixing the vocals weird in parts because their hearing range isn't quite as good as it used to be?
 
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