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Originally Posted by
Terry
I watched three full length shows from different gigs on the 2015 tour via youtube, uploaded from audience members smartphone recordings.
Even taking into account said recordings can obviously never capture what the band/Roth sounds like live in the venue, I listened to Roth's vocals carefully: with each of the shows, he was off-key more often than he was on. Every now and then he'd sing a couple of lines that sounded serviceable to where I could see paying money to hear that live. Then he'd be back to his strained off-key yelping. A shame, because as in 2012 all the Van Halens sounded good. Some good deep cuts on that 2015 tour, too. Drop Dead Legs, Light Up The Sky, Dirty Movies...Van Halens playing them well, Roth struggling to make the lead vocals sound good.
To be sure, Roth is an intelligent guy who - assuming he is heterosexual - has gotten more pussy in a month than I have in a lifetime and has made and spent more money than I ever could have dreamed of. Unfortunately, all of those truths are unable to negate how shitty his vocals sound live these days, nor are his center stage dance moves enough to compensate for how bad his singing has become.
Doesn't give me any particular pleasure in terms of snark that this is where Roth is at vocal-wise: I'd just as soon his singing was passable, because I would have liked to have seen the band in 2015 and going forward (assuming there are more shows to come in the future). As it stands now, if what Roth has been doing in 2012, 2013, 2015 and the one-off 2018 performance is as good as it gets, it's not worth paying to hear.