I watched a few performances with Chester and he was okay. I think with the way some of the auditions were going and how poor some of them are, Chester was better by far, but also because he's obviously had more experience and time in the industry.
I'm still baffled though as to WHY the DeLeos chose him to sing and not some guy from the grunge era who wasn't doing much. It's like getting the singer from Crazytown to replace Chris Cornell in Soundgarden.
I don't think you just plug in a guy from the same era, simply because he was from the same era.
Also, Chester gets a bad rap because of Linkin Park and the association of "rap/rock".
His pre-LP band was influenced by and more in line with the 90's bands than Linkin Park.
As for "High Rise", his vocal styling was very Scott-like. He didn't come in and scream his balls off, like he may do with LP. I think he honored the "style" of vocal that would come in an STP song, as best he could.
If he was too different people would say "what is this?". If he was channeling Scott, he was "copping his style". All things considered, I think he handled it pretty well. That was a tough spot.
And yes, while Chester didn't always have the tone for some of their older material, CheSTP's performances were overall pretty solid. He was never going to be Scott. But if we are to take the Deleo's at their word that "moving on with new music" was the intended focus, then in time, fans would embrace him a little more (if they liked the new material, of course), especially because, if nothing else, he was helping keep the band alive.
We'll never really know. They just needed a kickass full length record together. I refuse to truly base my opinion of their potential on a 5 song EP that was thrown together.