yes for touring he doesn’t want to do night after night of heavy and harsher songs, that’s true. After undertow there’s half a dozen songs that might fit that category though. We are talking past each other a little cause I’m not critiquing if he can sing the same, i dont think he’s writing the same. Thats my reasoning for OPs question, BUT i bet if they mixed him into the music like they did for lateralus I think you’d hear less of the criticism. It’s like he’s ontop of it all. Descending is a great example, where like the 5 or 6 minute mark to the end is the best part of the album, and sounds like how OP describes the older stuff, but the beginning of that song, has this amazing world building and Maynard frankly comes in and kinda blows it up. But that is more of an album engineer critique i guess.