The Official Book of Souls Tour 2017 Thread (Warning: Spoilers Within)

His performances weren't that bad, Foro. Yes, his voice has changed, but for example he could never have sung COTD in the late 80s/90s as he does now, in terms of high register.
Still, I've been worried about his voice for a while now, and I hope he takes care of it. It isn't necassary to constantly sing in the highest register, never was imo. It's impressive when he does it, but it has *always* annoyed *many* people, when he did it all the time. I for one love his 'natural' voice, as I've been trying to point out for years.
 
Suit yourself.

I said: FIRST downfall (of these proportions), however temporary, whatever the reason.

The performance was very dramatic, I thought. And your interpretation of my words as well, perhaps. ;-)

@jazz from hell I am not talking about a full concert performance, or moments that went well. I pick some moments Matic presented and I feel these are honestly worrying performances. Very bad timing, he suddenly can't keep up. Suddenly, because I can't remember he ever went this slow, and that he ever had so much lack of breath.
 
Brigantium said:
Things could be greatly improved if they slowed some songs down, never mind tuned guitars down. Trooper is almost falling-over-itself fast, and I don't see why they needed to speed up IESF, when it's a new song, and doesn't need to live up to any 80s past glories. I just don't think Bruce's voice has ever lent itself to fast passages, and it's taking him longer to engage his voice properly these days. He excels on longer notes. This was happening pre-chemo too, but he did point out some time ago that he lost a certain amount of feeling and movement due to chemo, and we don't know if he ever fully got that back.
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Next album: Slow down, tune down, make it doom-y.
 
IESF and Trooper aren't faster than 2016, they're just too fast per se. IESF was perfect on the album, but it sounds rushed live, and not only from the point of view of Bruce singing. Trooper sounds messy.

It's probably a combination of age, punishing schedule of performance, and chemo, affecting Bruce, but apart from choice of setlist, I don't think they're making enough adjustments to help. No doubt this is probably Bruce's choice as much as anything, he'd go ahead and attempt the impossible if he thought there was an outside chance he might carry it off. I'd be happy to see a slight compromise on stage energy - including the running around - if it meant less punishment for Bruce's voice. For all Priest looked pedestrian on stage the other year, they were spot on with performance. There has to be a happy medium somewhere.
 
He never kept up this badly. Compared to everything I heard by him Cried. If you disagree, fine. I know what I hear and remember.
 
Brigantium said:
IESF and Trooper aren't faster than 2016, they're just too fast per se. IESF was perfect on the album, but it sounds rushed live, and not only from the point of view of Bruce singing. Trooper sounds messy.

It's probably a combination of age, punishing schedule of performance, and chemo, affecting Bruce, but apart from choice of setlist, I don't think they're making enough adjustments to help. .
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Do you agree that these matters did not affect him so much last year in Trooper? The band and Bruce must have noticed that. A good reason to not adjust these songs at the start of the tour.
 
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It wasn't as serious, but I thought Trooper was messy last year. I remember at Download last year he was avoiding high notes, and towards the end of the set, he regularly took breaks from singing by encouraging audience participation, so that might have covered up any difficulties. I don't remember so much about his performance Oslo, but I thought it was similar to Download.
 
I have to say, I agree with Forostar here. I don't think Bruce has ever had this level of difficulty in any single performance of the The Trooper. It sounds like he can't just get the words out rapidly enough to keep up, which is definitely a concerning development if you ask me. And it's not that the song is even played that fast, they've notably slowed it down from where it was before 2016.
 
Brigantium said:
Things could be greatly improved if they slowed some songs down, never mind tuned guitars down. Trooper is almost falling-over-itself fast, and I don't see why they needed to speed up IESF, when it's a new song, and doesn't need to live up to any 80s past glories. I just don't think Bruce's voice has ever lent itself to fast passages, and it's taking him longer to engage his voice properly these days. He excels on longer notes. This was happening pre-chemo too, but he did point out some time ago that he lost a certain amount of feeling and movement due to chemo, and we don't know if he ever fully got that back.
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Exactly. I have always thought this. It's why the more modern songs written by Bruce work so well, because he really knows how to best utilize his voice. This is the same reason why I think songs with melodic structure similar to The Red and the Black sound less impressive: because Bruce's voice has never, and certainly does not now, sound best when rushing through lyrics. Even when he's singing amazing songs like Phantom of the Opera, Trooper, or hell even Hallowed, it's not his strong suit. Age and health is surely affecting this a bit, too.

GhostofCain said:
As far as we know, the sound onstage could have been shit in Hamburg. Anyway, talking about a downfall based on that performance of The Trooper is a bit of an exaggeration if you ask me, especially as Nicko is playing it too fast if you ask me. :)
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Yes. I get it, and I don't think Bruce is in absolute top performance, but we don't know what it sounds like on that stage. We only know what it sounds like through a potato phone.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
Exactly. I have always thought this. It's why the more modern songs written by Bruce work so well, because he really knows how to best utilize his voice. This is the same reason why I think songs with melodic structure similar to The Red and the Black sound less impressive: because Bruce's voice has never, and certainly does not now, sound best when rushing through lyrics. Even when he's singing amazing songs like Phantom of the Opera, Trooper, or hell even Hallowed, it's not his strong suit. Age and health is surely affecting this a bit, too.
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I have always thought that Bruce sounds at his best when he has written the vocal melodies (e.g. Revelations, Powerslave). The tongue-twisting nature of many of Steve's lyrics and fast melody lines are really, really difficult to sing. Maiden were lucky they got one of the best hard rock singers of all time to try and do that back in 1981. I wished Steve would have accommodated his song-writing style a bit to make his life easier though...
 
CriedWhenBrucieLeft said:
He was speaking differently post-cancer, fact. You don't need to be a Maiden/Bruce fan to have heard that. So "disagree 100%" is nonsense.
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Ofc he was speaking differently post-cancer, because the interviews we heard were recent enough. Bruce said the chemo effects would be around for 1 year or so. The effects were there when we heard the interviews, but they are not there anymore. They are gone.

What I'm trying to say is: it looks like people are blaming the chemo effects right now, saying that it has affected his voice "forever". But the fact is that Bruce was singing much better in 2016 (post-chemo and cancer) than he did in 2013 or 2014 in Maiden England! Hell, as I said, the São Paulo 2016 show was fucking impressive. As of 2017, it's still too early to say anything, but if there's something affecting his voice right now it is the fact that he is 58 years old, about to turn 59! So, as many people pointed out, Maiden has do to something to adapt all this situation. In my opinion, Bruce is still able to nail it all the way he wants to sing, but that would last only 2 or 3 months on the tour, as he is not young anymore.
 
Poto said:
Berlin was Bruce from 10 years ago.
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I pray to the fucking gods they release a live CD from that gig (I know they record at least audio from all of them). I was at that gig, the crowd participation was incredible and the band was on fire. An iteresting fact: Bruce himself knew that he will have a great night. He said before COTD that the bootlegers better do an amazing job, because this show was gonna be a classic. TBOS from that show gave me chills when I heard it there. Best 80 euros I spent on Iron Maiden, and probably the best IM concert I will ever attend.
TBOS:
 
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