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Best Replacement Singer?


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Re: Best Replacement Singer?

shame Iced Earth couldn't make it work with him' date=' best singer they ever had by a chasm[/quote'] Most IE fans seem to be under the delusion that Matt was gods gift to metal when he was just a joke. Rippers the reason I started listening to IE again. He, unlike Matt, can actually sing.
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Re: Best Replacement Singer? True but his decent into the realms of full on suck started with Dark Saga. He supposedly got singing lessons on that album. I think he took them from James Hetfield. That album is their best but I have issues listening to it because he's just so fucking awful.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 years later...

I don't really see how this is a Vs thread, but here are some of my favourite replacement vocalists: 

The best replacement singer of all time is obviously Tomi Joutsen who replaced Pasi Koskinen in Amorphis. 

We also have:

Vincent Cavanagh who replaced Darren White in Anathema. 

Maniac who replaced Attila in Mayhem (I'm not saying he's better, but I am saying he is awesome)

Can't think of any more personal ones for me without going into Bruce Dickinson territory which I don't want to do. 

 

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I don't really see how this is a Vs thread, but here are some of my favourite replacement vocalists: 

The best replacement singer of all time is obviously Tomi Joutsen who replaced Pasi Koskinen in Amorphis. 

We also have:

Vincent Cavanagh who replaced Darren White in Anathema. 

Maniac who replaced Attila in Mayhem (I'm not saying he's better, but I am saying he is awesome)

Can't think of any more personal ones for me without going into Bruce Dickinson territory which I don't want to do. 

 

 

+1 for Tomi Joutsen. Seeing him do fronting Amorphis on their Tales set was unreal. That dude's growls are huge.

 

Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

 

 

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  • 5 years later...

Can't stand Ripper, so I'd vote him down if I had the chance!

2 minutes ago, VH1986 said:

Sammy Hagar. 

I agree with that, Dave was flamboyant, had the moves and could sing, but Sammy sung most of VH songs better IMO, and Dreams is one of their best. Dave is one of the funniest old fellas in music though, his bio is one of the funniest things I've ever read, sadly though I think he wrote it as fact!

I'd go with Bruce Dickinson as the best replacement, because I never liked Di'anno. But as a replacement for Bruce, Blaze was great, however I was glad when Bruce came back.

Joey Belladonna was (still is better) than Neil Turban, but for the SOWN album Bush will always be better than Joey.

Brian Johnson gets points for longevity, he's taken the band onward and upward since Bon's death.

Mike Howe also gets a vote from me, I didn't mind Wayne in Reverend but I preferred Howe in Metal Church until they started loosing their way in the last decade or so.

 

 

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Although the album isn't out yet, but given his previous output and style, I think Erik Grönwall will turn out to be the best replacement for Sebastian Bach that Skid Row has ever had (not saying much, I know).

The guy that sings for Accept has a very good voice, and to me he sounds more enjoyable and versatile than Udo.

 

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A rock band is only ever going to be as good as the music/songwriting. A new singer will only be hailed as a worthy replacement if the band happened to also produce a great album. Who the singer was is coincidental unless maybe they were instrumental in writing the new music.

Bruce Dickinson and Brian Johnson were objectively good replacements because the band happened to maintain a high standard of songwriting and, in fact, went on to release their most successful albums after the original singer left or died.

Tim Owens was a serviceable replacement to Halford but the albums he was on just weren't very good. He will never be remembered as a great replacement, just "that guy that was in Judas Priest before Halford came back."

Interesting that replacements in many cases are technically better singers than the original (not in Owen's case obviously), because the band had a profile to attract top talent. Whereas the original singer was often just the guy that hung around with the band and couldn't play any other instrument - but wasn't afraid to be the front man.

Ozzy, Paul Dianno and Bon Scott weren't obviously exceptional vocal talents. They were just in the right place at the right time. To be fair, in retrospect each had an x-factor - but it was still blind luck they ended up fronting successful bands.

Brian Johnson is a rare example where the replacement was no more technically gifted than the original, but had a unique character which was not just a clone. Also, anyone in AC/DC had to be really short. That cuts down the options.

I think on that basis, Brian Johnson must be the "best" replacement singer because he was neither a technically great singer nor a clone, yet still landed a job in the biggest band in the world at the time and did not dent their popularity. 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Sheol said:

Although the album isn't out yet, but given his previous output and style, I think Erik Grönwall will turn out to be the best replacement for Sebastian Bach that Skid Row has ever had (not saying much, I know).

The guy that sings for Accept has a very good voice, and to me he sounds more enjoyable and versatile than Udo.

 

Saw them live recently with Erik. He's definitely got voice talent although I would say that it lacks the character Bach had. I can't define that explicitly, just something in the feels. I saw Bach on their first US tour (88 maybe?). Nobody they've had comes close. Erik struggled with much of what Bach did effortlessly at a similar age. Plus, dude is ridiculous on stage. Cringe worthy.

I'd throw Todd la Torre in the discussion. Decent replacement for Tate. He does a decent job on the early stuff although admittedly young Geoff would blow him off the stage. To @JonoBlade's point though, they lack a killer record with him on vocals (then again, they haven't had a killer record since Mindcrime even with Tate).

Bruce, Dio, Brian Johnson, Belladonna, Attila - those are the easy answers. Halford - yeah, remember he was a replacement too. Outside of that, can't really think of any big names that fit.

Messaih Marcolin?

Corpsegrinder?

Barney Greenway?

Micheal Kiske?

Mike Patton (Bungle)?

Ian Gillan (although Glen Hughes is far superior IMO)?

Phil Anselmo (even though I personally detest Pantera)?

Don't think I'd make a strong argument against any of those if someone suggested them.

Not a direct replacement, but I've always thought Miles Kennedy does a better job on GnR stuff than Axl. Outside of the first album (recording not live), Axl has never impressed me.

The dude who replaced Lane in Alice in Chains is decent, but he doesn't hold a candle to Lane and again, no killer record.

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2 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

A rock band is only ever going to be as good as the music/songwriting. A new singer will only be hailed as a worthy replacement if the band happened to also produce a great album. Who the singer was is coincidental unless maybe they were instrumental in writing the new music.

Bruce Dickinson and Brian Johnson were objectively good replacements because the band happened to maintain a high standard of songwriting and, in fact, went on to release their most successful albums after the original singer left or died.

Tim Owens was a serviceable replacement to Halford but the albums he was on just weren't very good. He will never be remembered as a great replacement, just "that guy that was in Judas Priest before Halford came back."

Interesting that replacements in many cases are technically better singers than the original (not in Owen's case obviously), because the band had a profile to attract top talent. Whereas the original singer was often just the guy that hung around with the band and couldn't play any other instrument - but wasn't afraid to be the front man.

Ozzy, Paul Dianno and Bon Scott weren't obviously exceptional vocal talents. They were just in the right place at the right time. To be fair, in retrospect each had an x-factor - but it was still blind luck they ended up fronting successful bands.

Brian Johnson is a rare example where the replacement was no more technically gifted than the original, but had a unique character which was not just a clone. Also, anyone in AC/DC had to be really short. That cuts down the options.

I think on that basis, Brian Johnson must be the "best" replacement singer because he was neither a technically great singer nor a clone, yet still landed a job in the biggest band in the world at the time and did not dent their popularity. 

The thing about singers in rock and heavy metal bands is that because they're the "frontmen" a lot of fans make these deep connections with them that go well beyond the level of connection someone like I would be interested in forming with a vocalist. People's perceptions of and attraction to singers goes much deeper than just their voice. Just like with actors on popular tv shows some people will inevitably start to feel like they actually know these singers. So charisma and appearance and other personal details play just as big a part in many people's perceptions of a vocalist as the quality of their voice, if not an even bigger part.

But I agree with you that songwriting and the quality of subsequent albums has a lot to do with how fans view a replacement vocalist. So it seems to me when people argue Dave vs Sammy for instance their opinions are generally based on which  group of albums they like better and which personality they like best moreso than the two men's respective vocal abilities. I am not particularly a fan of Ozzy's or DLR's voices, but I would argue that the albums those bands produced while these vocalists were in the band were clearly their best. So obviously I'm not going to view their successors more positively than the icons they replaced, even though I have no problem admitting that both Dio and Sammy's voices are technically superior to the singers they replaced.

I guess I could throw Dickenson in that category too, I liked Maiden with D'anno up until Bruce joined the band. Not because Bruce isn't a better vocalist (I don't personally prefer his voice to Paul's but I understand that most people do, and I can recognize that Bruce is objectively more talented than Paul vocally) but mainly because I didn't like the more progrssive and epic direction the band's music took after he joined. If they could have stayed on their Killers trajectory I might have beeen willing to tolerate Bruce's wail and stayed a fan longer than 1984 when I gave up on them. So I don't look at Bruce as a successful vocal replacement because he ruined the band for me, even though they of course went on to be quite successful with him singing.

I could even throw Belladonna in here, I'm not personally a fan, but he's widely considered a better vocalist than Turbin and they sold more albums with him so therefore he was a successful replacement. But I perosnally liked Neil Turbin's vox on the debut much better than Joey's and might have stuck with that band longer than 1987 if they had kept to their original speed metal style from the debut and hadn't gotten into all that comic book crap. Also I think Bush's voice is better than Joey's too but the Bush albums suck so bad that he is not generally considered a successful replacement.

But anyway for me it was usually guitar players not singers that I became fixated on and enamoured with as a teen and into my early 20's when I listed to more rock and traditional heavy metal. The 70's was the era of the rock guitar hero, so for me bands like Van Halen or AC/DC or Black Sabbath were all about their guitar players, while the singers in those bands were completely irrelevant to me. They were just there, a necessary component of the band like the bass player or something. You could have plugged just about anyone in there behind the mic and I honestly wouldn't have cared, unless their singing was so bad as to be distracting from the guitar gymnastics. The only bands I can remember being specifically a fan of the vocalist were Zeppelin, Overkill, Molly Hatchet with DJB and Riot when Rhett was in the band. But regardless, when we went to see any of these bands perform live we'd still fight to get a spot right down in front of the lead guitar player. Guitar always came first.

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17 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

But I agree with you that songwriting and the quality of subsequent albums has a lot to do with how fans view a replacement vocalist. So it seems to me when people argue Dave vs Sammy for instance their opinions are generally based on which  group of albums they like better and which personality they like best moreso than the two men's respective vocal abilities. I am not particularly a fan of Ozzy's or DLR's voices, but I would argue that the albums those bands produced while these vocalists were in the band were clearly their best. So obviously I'm not going to view their successors more positively than the icons they replaced, even though I have no problem admitting that both Dio and Sammy's voices are technically superior to the singers they replaced.

With Ozzy I sometimes wonder whether the band would have even worked with a better (i.e. more conventional) vocalist. His voice was secondary and didn't overshadow the awesomeness of the riffs. Can you imagine Bruce Dickinson singing for Black Sabbath (too young obviously, but theoretically)? It would have been terrible. 

17 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I didn't like the more progressive and epic direction the band's music took after he joined. If they could have stayed on their Killers trajectory I might have been willing to tolerate Bruce's wail and stayed a fan longer than 1984 when I gave up on them. So I don't look at Bruce as a successful vocal replacement because he ruined the band for me, even though they of course went on to be quite successful with him singing.

The Number of the Beast is not that musically different to Killers. You just prefer the grittier vocals. I do too. It is not that hard to imagine Paul Di'Anno singing Run to the Hills or the title track. They (Steve and Rod) go on about how Bruce brought greater range and capability, but on the musical side he didn't bring anything extra to the table. Di'Anno wrote great songs and lyrics. I think they just liked Bruce because he fit into the world conquering vision better. Frankly, he was more professional and reliable.

17 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I could even throw Belladonna in here, I'm not personally a fan, but he's widely considered a better vocalist than Turbin and they sold more albums with him so therefore he was a successful replacement. But I perosnally liked Neil Turbin's vox on the debut much better than Joey's and might have stuck with that band longer than 1987 if they had kept to their original speed metal style from the debut and hadn't gotten into all that comic book crap. Also I think Bush's voice is better than Joey's too but the Bush albums suck so bad that he is not generally considered a successful replacement.

For shame, I never even heard Fistful of Metal so I just ordered it off eBay. It completes my vinyl collection of all Big 4 bands' 80s output up to and including 1990 when the quality of all Big 4 bands started to sharply drop off. Also, vinyl itself started to disappear. 

17 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Guitar always came first.

You'd hope so. It's metal!

 

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