What is the most disappointing thing Linkin Park has ever done to you?

In Meeting of a Thousand Suns, there's that bit where Chester goes off about how they should ignore any outside influences that are infecting their creative process, including stressors and deadlines, and just focus on the music. At the time that ATS came out, I really dug that message and felt it matched with the bands ethos.

Living Things didn't match up wit that image at all. It feels incredibly hollow and catered. The horrendous mixing and cookie cutter pop rock didn't help. It may be a genuine effort -- I'm not saying it isn't. It just didn't translate as genuine to me. THP is a little more genuine than LT because it wasn't really a marketable product.

In essence, I wish the band would stop treating the band like a brand, and would just focus on letting the music speak for itself.

 

Sometimes they do give me the feeling that they care too much about perfection and what other people think. It kind of comes out in their songwriting process where they tear apart their songs really analytically and scientifically. But it's their process and we don't know what else has gone on and what extent they went to. I'm just speaking on my brief glimpses into their writing style.

Since they worked with Rubin, they did shed a lot of skin and are much more comfortable just making whatever music they want. I give them credit for that.

 

Fantastic post! I agree with you there. A Thousand Suns felt like the last album that was a monolith record for them. It was the last that had the most longevity. That's why, regardless of what some think of their older albums, their first 4 have been the staples in their discography to me.

Living Things felt so empty and I still am not 100% sure why I feel that way. I mean, while not being Mike's greatest verses, he experimented more with his rhyme structures and it's arguably his best flow on an LP album, and the lyrics overall may be generic at times, but they were still pretty well written imo. I feel the album felt more like LP on auto-pilot. It felt like the record was made for the sake of an album and it lost alot of that feeling of genuine emotions like previous records. I enjoy the tracks but, like you said, the pop rock sound just felt forced.

The Hunting Party is a step in the right direction imo. I prefer the softer electronic sound of LT in concept but THP executed such a new refreshing hard sound after 3 previous softer albums. I'm not a huge fan of hard rock, and I came in expecting to hate it but it did feel the band put effort into the messages they were trying to get across on the album and it worked for the most part imo.

 

Although I agree with you on some of Mike's verses, I think one of his problems is that sometimes his verses have nothing to do with the song content. Keys to the Kingdom, for example. I really dig the track, but the chorus and Mike's verses seem to be about two separate things, with Mike's verses just being about him posturing as a rapper.

To a lesser extent, I felt that way about Lost in the Echo. First verse and chorus match pretty well. But after that, Mike's verses seem to be about a different situation, and he's just posturing.

 

Yeah it's a little weird for Mike to go from braggadocious street style rap to Chester's introverted lyrics haha. But if the song's good, it doesn't bother me honestly

 

Yeah I agree. I think it's ok tbh. Doesn't bother me too much but it is strange to have these battle rap verses mixed with these poetic/desperate-sounding choruses. It works on some tracks, Lies Greed Misery especially I think it worked out, but I do think Mike needs to do something different. It was cool on ATS and LT but by THP it was starting to get stale. I think Mike needs to go a more conscious style to fit Chester.

I would however only want him to do that if he writes verses as good as Hands Held High. Not exactly in that political style of course, but in terms of improving his lyricism a bit and expanding his style. I love the drastic change of Meteora rapping to MTM. He improved so much as a lyricist, probably thanks to Fort Minor too. The issue is it has been A LOOONNNGGG TIME since we've heard a non-braggadocious verse from him. Of course some more than others, but he's relatively kept the same style since 2010. He needs to switch it up again, or at least write verses pertaining to Chester's lyrics.

 

I don't think it's fair to say that they're treating the band like a brand when they've spent so much of their career trying to distance themselves from any one sound. Opinions on LT aside, I think it's a bit harsh to act like it was created as a cash in, to 'fix the damage' they did to their brand with ATS, especially when the two albums that bookend it go completely against that idea. While LT isn't my favourite album in the world, I genuinely believe that it was simply the album that the band wanted to make at that point. I don't think that whether it was marketable or not was really an issue; if it was they wouldn't have released THP two years later. For me, I think they made LT because it was the easy album to make after exhausting themselves while writing ATS. The band have said that they could write 1000 Iridescents; it's so easy for Brad to record a few power chords on guitar, for Mike to program a beat and throw on a few drums, and to throw up a quick arrangement on Pro Tools, and then you suddenly have a demo for In My Remains, or Burn It Down. After spending, what, 18 months writing ATS, purposefully trying to push themselves, I feel that the band just went into the studio and wrote whatever came to them naturally, without worrying if it sounded like their old stuff or not. Unsurprisingly, without filtering out the stuff that sounds like Linkin Park, the result ended up sounding like Linkin Park. LP are so good at writing 3 minute pop songs, I feel that they really have to make a conscious effort not to, and LT is an album where they just decided to roll with it. This lines up with what they were saying around that time, with wanting to shorten the time between studio albums, I feel like they wanted to release what came to them naturally and quickly instead of trying to push themselves, for better or for worse. This is why they were able to release it so quickly, the album wrote itself much quicker than ATS because the band were doing what they've been doing for years. Now, I'd imagine that most of us here would have preferred the band not to have gone down that route, but I just feel like there's an important difference between purposefully writing a pop album to try to cater to casual fans and record labels, and purposefully writing a pop album because that's what comes naturally to you. Obviously I'm not in the band, so I could be completely off base, but I do think the band tried to ignore outside influences and made the album they wanted to make, it's just that I feel that they wanted to make a fun, easy album that was fun to write instead of pulling their hair out, pushing themselves creatively.

This is sorta what I mean. For me making LT wasn't some ploy or marketing decision, it was just the band writing an album because they wanted to write an album. Unlike ATS, they had no motive, nothing to prove, they just wanted to make an album that was fun and easy to write. Much of LT sounds so poppy and simple because that's what LP sounds like when they're not trying to experiment. They didn't want to spend months and months trying to bludgeon out another album, so they took the easier route.

The way I'd look at it is that I'm glad we got LT rather than nothing at all. Even though it's not my overall favourite album from front to back, I feel it has some of the most stellar songs the band have even penned (CoG ), and even though I'd have preferred them to push themselves a bit more, I don't think LT is an awful effort and I'll take it over the band deciding not to release an album at all due to the above reasons.

[Sorry for the rant, I just find the shift from ATS to LT to be so bizarre that I guess I've spent a long while trying to pin down the reasons for it. I could be completely wrong about all of this. ]

 

Hi lopia! Always great to read your posts! While I agree there is absolutely nothing wrong with LT, it was definitely a disappointment considering ATS. Nothing wrong with making a "firecracker" album and, like you said, I'd rather have this then nothing at all, but every LP album post-Meteora to me had a sound and theme that most of the tracks followed. Living Things felt more like a compilation record to me. Which of course was intentional but it could've been more. There are some great songs for sure though. I think Lost In The Echo is the best opening to an LP album and it is their rap-rock sound prefected. I also love Roads Untraveled, the last verse of Until It Breaks, and Powerless.

Unlike alot of people who would prefer LP to go on a longer hiatus to make "better" albums, a mediocre LP album is still a 3/5 to me. While LT is the most forgettable album in their discography for me, I am still happy and thankful it did come out. To me, there is a lot of positives that I think helped LP progress more even if the song structures, etc. might of not.

 

@Iopia: Woosah...

 

Absolutely agree! Looking back, I'm still a teeny bit disappointed with LT, but I guess we can't expect everything the band writes to be ATS quality.

 

I expected some shitstorm, but that was decent and interesting