Dolores O'Riordan's voice lives on in final Cranberries album 'In the End'

Two remaining members of Irish rock band The Cranberries have revealed the painful process of recording their final album without singer Dolores O’Riordan.

Cranberries guitarist Noel Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler, joined host Melissa Grelo on the CTV Your Morning couch to discuss their forthcoming album “In the End.”

The band’s eighth and final studio album, set to be released April 26, marks the end of a 30-year career which saw them achieve massive commercial success, particularly in the 90s, selling 40 million albums and spawning number one singles “Linger,” “Dreams” and “Zombie.”

It is the band’s first release since the death of O'Riordan, who died in January last year.

Her vocals are featured posthumously from demos recorded before her tragic death by drowning due to alcohol intoxication in a hotel in London, England. She was 46.

“The vocals were fair better than an average demo,” Hogan told CTV’s Your Morning.

“That and the quality of the songs really pushed us to think ‘we should really finish this’ for her, because she was super excited about getting in and doing this album.”

By winter of 2017 Hogan and O’Riordan had written and demoed the eleven songs which would eventually appear on the album.

“When Dolores passed, the same thing happened for all three of us,” Lawler added.

“The memories of when we were first beginning and touring around in a van, the four of us and a couple of friends, those are the memories that came back really strongly.”

Recording started almost exactly a year ago.

“A lot of people have being saying that it’s very like those first two albums that we did,” Hogan said.

“That wasn’t the plan when we set out, but I think because Dolores recorded all these vocals at home, in a bedroom basically, she’s singing a lot softer, which is a style of singing she did more in the beginning of our career.

“We very much followed her lead in that when we were in the studio. There was a moment that we captured, between the emotions that were there and the way Dolores had the vocals done we just ended up with that kind of sounding album.”

O’Riordan had a second home near Peterborough, Ont., about 90 minutes northeast of Toronto, where she spent years with her family.

She split from her Canadian husband of 20 years, Don Burton, in 2014.

She and Burton, who is the former tour manager of Duran Duran, have three children together.

"I'm half a Canuck," she said in a 2009 interview with The Canadian Press. "I've spent half my life here now."

"The seasons are so dramatic here -- from the snow in the winter to the beauty of the autumn, the colours of the leaves falling -- so I have a piano outside my window and sometimes I start off there with ideas, just using nature as a backdrop."

O'Riordan released two solo albums that were recorded in Canada. "Are You Listening," in 2007, was produced at Metalworks Studios in Mississauga, Ont., and EMAC Recording Studios in London, Ont.

Her 2009 followup, "No Baggage," was recorded solely at EMAC. The album cover features O'Riordan sitting on a bench atop the frozen Big Bald Lake in the backyard of her home.

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