Definitely a great album LP put out. Perhaps their best work. The only song(s) that I'm not digging are Victimized (although Mike's rap was killer) and Until It Breaks. (Once again, I only like Mike's second verse) Other than that, an amazing album. Well thought out, amazingly executed. Edit: I can't get over the fact at how great LITE is. Probably LP's best track, period. Mike's rap flows so well and the chorus just works. Roads Untraveled is also the hidden gem of the album. I don't understand why this track didn't get any recognition at all fro previews, it's so damned good. Gives off a "House of the Rising Sun" vibe. My top 5 Lost in the Echo In My Remains Roads Untraveled Castle of Glass Burn It Down
Alright, well I know I don't post I've had this account for a while and I've been reading what all you guys have been saying. After listening to the album multiple times, I think I have a pretty good idea of where I stand on it now. Overall, something with this album left me disappointed. I feel like something's missing. Am I the only one who feels like this? Maybe my expectations were too high. Don't get me wrong, Living Things is a good album, just less than what I expected. The tracks I LOVE are LITE, Skin to Bone, Castle of Glass (maybe my new favorite LP song), and LGM. Most of the other tracks are fine. Mike's rapping on every song he's on is fantastic, I love his "re-emergence" per say on this record. Roads Untraveled, Burn it Down, Powerless, and Until it Breaks are pretty good songs as well. However, my main beef with this album is the lyrics. In comparison to some of LP's previous work I feel the lyrics just aren't up to par. My least favorite track on this album is easily "I'll Be Gone." The chorus just sounds awful IMO. I appreciate what LP did with this record and some of it worked really well, but some of the tracks I really just don't like that much. All in all I still like the album as a whole, more so than MTM and Meteora. It's about on the same level as ATS for me. /long ramble from someone who never posts
Welcome back my friend!!! It´s a different album for sure...I loved the album but I think it will grow more on me during the year!!! And maybe is the same with you... The thing that I like the most is that LP is not doing the same albums over and over again and what I like more than that is that they didn´t get one bad album so far!!!
Who knows, maybe it will grow on me. I love some tracks already and there's only 1 or 2 that I don't like!
I agree with you about the lyrics.This album is so epic that should have more epic lyrics. There's so many "promisses" in this record and that is kinda of annoying (LITE/IMR/STB/Powerless). But still a great/epic/amazing album. For me the best lyrics are the ones in Castle Of Glass and Roads Untraveled. I like the metaphor in IBG verses too. I agree that the chorus of IBG is not that great (that's why I give an 8 instead of a 10) but it is just because, like they said in a interview before, the verses are the best part of the song. ----------------------- I don't know If anyone agrees with me but Mike is so perfect through this album (singing and rapping) that for me he overcame Chester. Not saying that Chester was horrible (was his best performance in an album too) but I think Mike owned this record front to back. For the first time ever Mike is the highlight of an album.
It feels like LP has lost their heavy edge side to them, i mean LT is hard but not heavy i guess cause its not nu metal. Would be nice to see LP bring back nu metal and make it different than in the past, like recreate it.
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Living things is amongst the greatest albums i have ever heard However im not too keen on Victimised and Until it breaks. Meteora is my favourite LP album of all time and also with a few songs along the way like new divide, no roads left, the catalyst, but is it too early to consider this the greatest LP album of all time?... Well my top 5 songs on the album are. 1. Lost in the Echo - perfect in every way 2. In my Remains 3. Castle of Glass 4. I'll be gone 5. Powerless
Well, I guess I can see what you mean, as LT is energetic but not hard-hitting or agressive. (well, expect Victimized, and maybe LITE/ LGM). But you know, they don't need to be nu metal to be agressive or hard. I'm even gonna say I would love an agressive record too. But not reminescent of their past.
Yeah i love the heavy side of LP, too many soft and ballad songs are fine but, there is no energy in them, and LP has done alot of soft songs along side heavy but a heavy LP album would be really nice.Since alot of fans love that kind of stuff.
I guess since everyone's posting their top 5 songs I will as well! In order: 1. Castle of Glass 2. Lost in the Echo 3. Skin to Bone 4. Lies Greed Misery 5. Until it Breaks (just because of Mike's rapping - it's just filthy)
Aww shit son, you know what time it is? Astat's book-sized review time! LOST IN THE ECHO Pretty solid opening track, I feel like it could use a bit more of a drawn-out buildup in the intro, but it doesn't sound bad the way it is either. I think this track has my least favorite of Mike's rap parts on the album, with the possible exception of the bridge on BURN IT DOWN. I really like the backing vocals at the end of each verse, and the chorus is really cool too. My biggest gripe with this track is how random the vocal scratching part after the second chorus is. It comes out of nowhere and doesn't really add much to the track in my opinion. Great overall vibe on this track, just some nitpicky things about it that bug me. 7/10 IN MY REMAINS This is one of my favorites on the album. The really poppy verse vocals threw me off at first, but they provide an excellent contrast with the chorus, which is another really good one. The part where Mike comes in over the military-style snare drum roll makes my hair stand on end, and I love the "one by one" gang vocals that accompany the last chorus. I can definitely see this being a single at some point, and it'll probably be a great live song too. 9/10 BURN IT DOWN I still think this is a solid song. I like to think of it as "New Divide light," similar style of track, but more concise and with a rap verse added in place of the electronic bridge. Chester really puts in a good performance on this track, and there's a lot of "ear candy" to be found in the instrumental as well. I'm not a big fan of Mike's rap on this track, it's always sounded like they put it in there just for the sake of having a rap part on the first single, regardless of whether or not the song really needed one. 7/10 LIES GREED MISERY I still stand by my initial opinion of this song, it sounds like Mike had a couple decent verses and a somewhat interesting musical idea that amounted to maybe a minute and a half's worth of a song, so they brought in Chester to take a big, angsty shit all over it just for the sake of not having two "full" songs on the album that clocked in at under 2 minutes. I see this song as a cross between Wretches and Kings and Bleed it Out, it has a lot of musical similarities to the former, but tries to pull off the "death party vibe" of the latter, but it doesn't do either one particularly well. This song's biggest redeeming quality is that it surprisingly translated well to live performances. 4/10 I'LL BE GONE Okay, there HAS to be an intentional connection to When They Come For Me on this song. I wondered that when I first saw the song title, but kind of shrugged it off as a coincidence. But seriously, try singing any of the singing parts from WTCFM (either the "ahh-ahh" chorus or the "oh, when they come for me" part in the bridge) over the chorus to this song - they fit PERFECTLY. If that's a coincidence, it's a mind-blowing one. Anyway, I like this song quite a bit. I was kind of disappointed in how subtle Owen Pallett's string contributions wound up being, I was anticipating more epic-sounding, Breaking the Habit-esque stuff. I feel like the last chorus could've gone on a bit longer and kicked the song up one more notch, the way the song ends just seems a little sudden. Overall a cool-sounding song, but it doesn't have anything about it that really jumps out at me enough to call it a GREAT song. 7.5/10 CASTLE OF GLASS I was kind of surprised by this one, I should really learn to stop paying attention to pre-album reviews of songs, because in the case of this song, they weren't even CLOSE. "Americana?" "Campfire song?" Seriously? It amazes me how some people can be this far off and hold down a job in the music journalism industry. A line like "take me down to the riverbend" doesn't make a song folk, and the presence of an acoustic guitar doesn't make a song a campfire song, kthx. Anyway, pretty cool song that starts off with an eerie electronic vibe, but winds up in alternative/pop punk territory by the time it's over. I really like the unison vocals by Mike and Chester in this song, they really blend well on this one. It amazes me how far LP's come with their vocal arrangements as their career has progressed, and this song is a great example of that. 8/10 VICTIMIZED This song is a minute and fifty seconds of total WTF-ness...in a relatively good way. The drums on this track kick all kinds of ass, I really look forward to watching Rob play this track live. Really curious what that garbled voice at the beginning is saying too, it sounds like someone talking through a megaphone about how they want Linkin Park to go back to their roots? If that's the case, I think it's a brilliant musical bitch-slap to all the people who want to hop in a time machine and go back to 2003. I think my favorite part of this song is the singing part Mike has at the beginning, it has this vibe that comes across like he's playfully mocking/gloating to someone who really deserves to get their ass kicked right before karma finally catches up to them. I would normally facepalm at vocal parts like the one Chester has in this song, but I can't really think of anything else that would better suit this song. The inclusion of the rap verse really leaves me scratching my head, but it definitely helps make this song fit the whole "cram the entire Linkin Park style into a song under two minutes" tag that the band seems to have put on it. I honestly can't decide whether this song is filler or totally fucking brilliant...I think LP has finally done a song that I can't quite wrap my head around, so I have to give them credit for that. 7/10 (I'm giving it an average rating for neutrality's sake - I could look at this song one way and rate it as a 3/10, or look at it another way and give it a perfect 10/10. It's THAT weird.) ROADS UNTRAVELED I love the chime-like sounds that this song is built around. This might be LP's best ballad yet. I can honestly say this track gives me a lump in my throat at certain points, and I'm not a person who tends to get emotionally affected by music. I feel like the lack of a real chorus on this song might hurt this song a bit in the eyes of some (LP just did a "wordless chorus" with When They Come For Me on their previous album, after all), but I feel like the verses on this song say a lot, and sometimes it's best not to add words just for the sake of adding words. This is definitely one that I'll be playing a lot. 9/10 SKIN TO BONE Cool instrumental vibe on this song that sets it apart from most of the rest of the album, but I feel like this is one of the weaker tracks on here. I really like Mike's bassy singing voice on the first verse, but I could take or leave a lot of the rest of the track. The second verse has some REALLY cheesy lyrics - "Right to left/left to right, Night to day/day to night?" Really? Did LP decide to write a song based around an elementary school-level exercise on what opposites are? Sheesh. I feel like this is the In Between of this album, it's a song that sounds cool and doesn't necessarily "suck," but it doesn't really seem to go anywhere. Just seems like filler to me...but I still like it more than LIES GREED MISERY. 6/10 UNTIL IT BREAKS I can definitely tell that this song was made up of a few different demos. Mike's best rapping on the album is on this track, but I'm really disappointed that he returned to his obsession with the phrase "like that," a.k.a. 80% of the reason I don't listen to Fort Minor anymore. The tempo change leading into the "Apaches verse" after Chester's part is interesting, it sounded really abrupt the first time I listened to it, but it actually works pretty well now that I've analyzed it a bit more. I really love the contrast between the lo-fi, underground rap sound of Mike's parts, the calm piano ballad style of Chester's part, and the symphonic quality of Brad's part at the end. And how about Brad, by the way? I knew he had a decent voice, but I would've expected both Phoenix and Joe to get a lead vocal part on an album before he did. He actually sounds really good, even on the layered harmonies. I'm curious to see how he'll handle this song when/if the full version is played live. I really don't have anything bad to say about this song, but I bet a lot of people won't like it based on how it jumps between the different parts. 8/10 TINFOIL So, we're back to the Foreword/Don't Stay tactic of splitting one song into two parts to make the album look like it has more songs than it does, huh? This is the intro to POWERLESS, nothing more. Cool instrumental vibe that continues into the following song...I have a feeling the only reason they made this a separate track was to save themselves the trouble of having to make a radio edit version of POWERLESS when it's inevitably released as a single in conjunction with that stupid Abe Lincoln vampire movie. Completely unnecessary. 2/10 POWERLESS Pretty "meh" way to end the album, in my opinion. It's a rather predictable and (surprise) movie soundtrack-esque track. It's a really nice instrumental, particularly starting in the second verse. Also some really nice vocal harmonies on this one, but they aren't enough to redeem the song. The whole thing just sounds really forced to me. It's bland enough that I really can't think of much more to say...which kind of bothers me, usually I'm better at picking out little things about songs that I like and dislike, but this whole track just bores me. 5/10 Final score: 79.5/120, which works out to like 6.6/10, but that doesn't necessarily reflect my overall view of the album. Since TINFOIL and LIES GREED MISERY really brought down the overall rating, I'm gonna say I look at the album as an overall 7.5/10. Good, with some really great moments and some not-so-great ones. I'm just thankful that it didn't end up sounding like 2012's version of Meteora, which I was honestly worried about for a while. Ranking the 5 albums is tough for me. I definitely like Meteora the least, and Hybrid Theory/A Thousand Suns are pretty close competitors for my favorite. Minutes to Midnight and Living Things are obviously at spots 3 and 4 then, but I'm not sure which one would go where.
Just cause you dont like heavy stuff Minus not including (nu metal and electronica ) that doesnt mean other people dont lol.
Can't you "heavy" fans EVER be happy? You got Lost In The freaking Echo, a song that IS Linkin Park's answer to an evolved nu-metal. You got Lies Greed Misery, which features a HEAVY ending with the longest streak of screaming Chester has ever done outside of Given Up. You got Victimized, an aggressive as fuck song that is apparently underwhelming because there's no "nu-metal guitarzzzz". Even though it has brutal screaming and rapping. You even got Until It Breaks. A song that, while featuring some brief, light vocals, also demonstrates some of the dirtiest, most badass rhymes Mike has done inside a beat that wouldn't look too unfamiliar in a sequel to High Voltage. Not to mention In My Remains and I'll Be Gone aren't exactly slow songs...