Zero temperature spectra of mesons and glueballs are analyzed in a class of holographic bottom-up models for QCD (named V-QCD), as a function of x=N_fN_c with the full back-reaction included. It is found that spectra are discrete and gapped (modulo the pions) in the QCD regime, for x below the critical value x_c where the conformal transition takes place. The masses uniformly converge to zero in the walking region x->x_c due to Miransky scaling. The ratios of masses all asymptote to non-zero constants as x->x_c and therefore there is no ''dilaton'' in the spectrum. The S-parameter is computed and found to be of O(1) in the walking regime.