The Hunting Party Interview with Mike Shinoda (with a special guest Chester Bennington). God damn Mike, let him chime in. Especially when you haven't said a new thing in any interview.
We don't need to hear the rest of the album to compare UIG, as a song in it's own right, to what the band have been saying is their mindset & goal for the album. To that end, UIG is the complete opposite of everything they've said. I don't see how that comparison applies on any level.
In context to the rest of the Black Album, it is a really slow song that doesn't really fall in line with the rest of what's on the album. Now that I think of it, I guess you could say the same about Nothing Else Matters, but despite those two songs being slow, a lot of people like them. I guess what I was really getting at was maybe UIG is going to be the slowest song on the album. Probably a bad analagy, but whatever.
Better Comparison: Until It's Gone is to The Hunting Party as Fade to Black is to Ride The Lightning.
Derek said alot of the songs he heard aren't radio ready at all even the one produced by Rob of Warner Brothers. I hate Until It's Gone but it does what it has to do. It isn't filler, and from what I heard I definitely think it'd be a nice break from all of the guitar/drum heavy tracks that they keep talking about in every interview.
But no two songs on the Black Album sound the same, it's a diverse album in terms of sounds/styles, tempo, structure and lyrical content. It's got nothing to do with being "slow" or "soft", it's all about quality of writing. Those two songs aren't out of place at all. Neither The Unforgiven nor Nothing Else Matters are formulaic or clichéd 3 minute radio songs (both are 6m 30s long), neither do they sound like anything the band had done before. UIG on the other hand is all of the above, and on an album that's being touted by LP as being anti-pop rock to boot. If UIG had been LP's The Unforgiven I'd be fucking delighted. Instead it sounds like a Living Things reject. Comparing UIG to great songs is only underscoring how mediocre UIG is. But.... wouldn't that mean the entire album isn't what the band have been talking up? I'm struggling to find an appropriate gif, so I'll just go with this instead:
That's why the Lyrics from LT and from what we've heard of the THP so far aren't super AMAZING, because they didn't take 18 months to write lyrics like they did for M2M. I'm fully expecting to get Lyrics like Until It's Gone or hopefully slightly better and be happy with it. Just to lower my expectations so I can enjoy the record upon release.
That's why they need to ignore that 18 months album gap mindset in order to provide rooms for better quality of lyrics like MTM and ATS had. The 3 year album gap release is so much better...
I personally like the lyrics on LT and the lyrics so far on THP so I am good with shorter times between albums
On LPU14 I really am anxious to hear some of the demos mike was making for the direction before THP. I assume it's some ALTNC shit but I'll still like to hear it to hear the direction they were going into.
It does kind of hurt my head to think that they were headed even MORE into the EDM scene. I'm glad they're bringing it back down to earth and rocking out on this record. I wanted them to do that after A Thousand Suns, anyways.
Yeah, I hope the band will continue with this kind of passion in making guitar-driven album again after The Hunting Party cycle with more complex composition.
Until It's Gone is the Radio Single(TM). Of course it's not going to be as heavy or as good as the rest of the album. The band showed you what they were on when they released Guilty All The Same. Music is a buisness, they need SOMETHING they can play on the radio. We haven't heard 10 of the tracks on the record yet. Stop judging it before it comes out. Christ.
To be fair, UIG still has some heavy-ish moments, like when the guitar kicks in after the opening synth and when the guitar and drums increase in intensity as the song progresses. I wouldn't even call the song soft, maybe medium intensity. What I'm getting at is that the instrumentation drives the song in a more aggressive direction despite Chester's seemingly soft take on the vocals in the verses. I also believe that if the song didn't have such a traditional, formulaic structure, most people who have heard it wouldn't be labeling it as "pop".