In order to fully understand my post you'll need to have listened to old metal/rock vocalists like Robert Plant/Ian Gillan/Rob Halford.
Toshi can hit those high notes, but the problem is his durability, his durability to sing for a period of time without losing his breath or holding a note for a long time is absolutly sh*te, the worst I've seen from any metal singer, yet he's still my favourite singer.
Even though Toshi clearly has one of the highest vocal ranges I've ever seen (same as or better than Rob Halford imo) he has never (until recently) properly tried any common and expected vocal techniques from a singer with that kind of range, like falsettos.
Even in footage of clips from 1986/87 ect. Which was meant to be his prime, when it came to a section where in the studio version of the songs he was singing he was meant to do a falsetto, or several within that song, he avoided them completely, like he couldn't handle even one of them, he didn't even attempt them, and when you look at bands like Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Judas Priest in their prime, it just makes you wonder, wtf is Toshi doing avoiding any kind of falsetto or scream (the good kind) techniques. I'm not suggesting bands have to perform the exact same version as studio, that's retarded, but avoiding them completely? In basically every performace of the songs? Just really odd, really odd for a metal vocalist with a high pitch range in his early twenty's.
Another good example is ALIVE, in the late eighties when he was singing that song, he was at the age where with the vocal range he has, he should've been able to pull that song off perfectly, but he never did, barely attempted to reach the notes, and always seemed he was out of breath.
If Halford could sing songs like Exciter and Dreamer Deciever, Ian Gillian could sing songs like Child In Time, Plant could sing Communication Breakdown Down and Whole Lotta love, all at the age of 20-25 with no problems, (in fact I've seen every proffesional metal singer manage to sing songs with high notes consistantly like that), Then why can't Toshi do it? And why does he act like he's dying on stage trying to sing them?
And then in the early nineties you could see constantly in songs like blue Blood he was always out of breath and barely managing to sing them.
Toshi in the late eighties/early nineties when he was around 20 years old was struggling to sing songs like Rob Halford is now at 58 years old.
His voice cracking was also a problem throughout the late eightees to 1997. Now they've reunited and Toshi has improved his voice in some ways, his voice doesn't sound thin or like he's bored anymore like it did in 1996/1997 and it doesn't sound like he has a stuffed nose like in 1994.
However his durability to hold notes or sing consistantly for a period of time is at its worst, he's getting like Ozzy Osbourne now, luckily he still has the same range as before.
The only thing he's done for the past months is make healing songs, the new T-Earth albums do not require hard vocal work, and shouldn't do to a proffesional vocalist like him, so when there's been a couple of months since his last major concert, and he can't even sing the National Anthem (assuming that's what it is) for an important event broadcast on live tv that consists of ten lines at most before screaming, there's something majorly wrong. And I wish Toshi would adress it instead of going "yeah, wasn't that great? Hey come to my healing T-Earth concerts, because the power of my voice is so awesome it'll heal the planet!".
No Toshi, no it isn't, seek major vocal training.
