Vocally you can't even compare these three, they're so radically different. Austin is a screamer, and uses fry screams. When he was in Attack Attack! he did nothing but screaming, alongside Johnny Franck. He still hasn't really ever done straight-up singing. That's still the context I preferred Austin in honestly. But I digress. Tim uses a technique somewhat like Chester's, but he makes it incredibly raspy and probably uses a lot of lung power to project it in the kind of "yelling" style he uses. Chester uses a false cord technique I do believe, and combines that with his singing voice to get the somewhat gruff, somewhat melodic and clean voice he uses. While we're at it, let's add Freddie Mercury to the comparison. And Oli Sykes.
I think all of them have theire own styles. Cant say which of Chester and Tim ( i cant judge Austin, also i like his live voice, its really strong. Great!!!). I love bot of them. They can sing beautiful and more mellow (The Messenger, Hero Of War) but also can rock like hell with there voices (A Place For My Head, Give It All). Maybe some bad examples, but also in theire rockier mellow stuff (Breaking The Habit, The Good Left Undone) they just hit the nail with there voices. Two different voices, but i love both. Cant choose a winner. SO it will be Brad
Obviously all subjective questions. From my end, I prefer Chester the most. I am not a fan of Tim's live vocal performances. He almost always seems off. Austin is pretty useless in my opinion. Terrible screams and no, he can't sing well hence the reason he provides only screaming with very little low note singing.
AFAIK Chester also uses 'fry screams', or at least did at one point of his career. Could be wrong though.
Chester Bennington is IMO the best singer of the three. He is a very diverse vocalist and I feel like he has trained his singing technique a lot more than the other guys. Tim Mcilrath voice is much more raw. He is without a doubt a much better songwriter than Chester but his vocals can be a lot more rough and "imperfect". He has said on multiple occasions that he really doesn't know how to control his voice, which you can hear, especially live. Austin doesn't even compare to these guys. He can scream alright but that is about it.
You can't compare the three. Not logically, anyway. This is like comparing Bruce Dickinson to Anthony Notarmaso. They're completely different styles.
It may be. I know he uses a bit of fry when he's singing, like in Lying From You. The "higher" sounding screams are probably frys. But a few people have told me a lot of his live screams are false chord screams. Austin is a fry screamer, and a prime example of one. Danny Worsnop of Asking Alexandria also does fry screams, as well as Matty Mullins of Memphis May Fire.
I think he probably does both tbh, I've checked out both techniques and Chester seems to do both or variations thereof on different tracks.
Chester only does fry screams (Faint's bridge, Blackout's Chorus, Given Up's bridge, etc), only exception I've ever heard being QWERTY when he had a mix between fry screams and black speech (death growls). Danny Worsnop does false chords, fry screaming, and black speech. This is false chords, as provided by Oli Sykes. [video=youtube;AWggPLXeOkU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWggPLXeOkU[/video]
I'm pretty sure that Stone Cold Steve Austin would defeat both Chester Bennington and Tim from LPA in a triple threat match.
Yeah I've always considered everything by Chester fry screams, with some "growls", like in QWERTY, the outro of OSC and Faint, and kinda in Wastelands/ALITS. He might growl Rebellion live too. Assuming I'm doing it right, I think I can tell this when I try to do screams for all their songs. Anyways, don't know enough Rise Against to talk about them. I'm a huge fan of "Second and Sebring" and "The Depths", and those vocals are pretty monstrous. Of course Chester is my personal favorite just for his incredible range not only in pitch/technical aspects but emotion.