Heavy and Battle Symphony sound like Chester's just covering other people's songs and Mike just adds the beats.
I might be silly but "Battle Symphony" sounds like it is sung from a comatose patient perspective or about a comatose patient and the actual "Battle Symphony" here is the voice of people around cheering him/her up? This might be even sillier but the whole album is said to have "One More Light" being the center track right? So, would it be possible that the album is about how the band deal with that one friend's illness with "One More Light" being the critical moment (his death)? Yes I know, I'm bored.
The weak spots of the song for me are; 1. The bridge where he sings about picking himself up. It's uninspired both melody-wise and lyrically. 2. The final chorus could have used some variations to it. Like someone said above, the song lacked a solid finish. 3. They could have tried a different approach to the finish. Maybe added a 3rd verse or a finale like WFTE. That said I'm expecting most songs from this album to be fairly generic in the song pattern it follows. This song is still on repeat for me tho. Whenever I go back to listening to other songs, I immediately get an urge to listen to Battle Symphony again.
The only thing that really irritates me with this song is the "Battle Symphonyyyyyyyyy". Chester sounds great but it is really annoying.
Yeah there was a bunch of more poppy stuff that got demoed during the THP period and left behind once they settled on a direction for that album. Welcome came from that batch of songs, and I'd assume either more of those demos or at least the general sonic vibe of them were revisited during the process of making OML.
That's fair. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the guitars and drums on these two songs could be more interesting, but...there was SO much in-your face guitar and drums on the last record that I feel like it would almost be a gimmick if this record had more of it. Rob played his ass off on THP, and Brad channeled as much inner shredder as he was capable of, with mixed results in my opinion. In a way, I feel like it's almost natural for there to be a regression at this point? Provided they fill that void with something else anyway, which they've at least done on this song, maybe not so much on Heavy... Also, it's not like it's unprecedented for live drums and guitars to take a backseat from time to time...I mean this is a band that recorded Breaking the Habit and stuck it in the middle of an otherwise-quintessential nu metal record.
Seriously though, i feel like LP could release a polka/country fusion album and make it sound at the very least interesting if not absolutely amazing.
I just heard that this song is meant with the LGM treatment and according to genius.com it is written by Brad and Mr. Hands Held High with Jon Green. No not kidding. See for yourself. https://genius.com/a/linkin-park-premieres-the-lyrics-to-new-song-battle-symphony
Yeah, like wretches and kings and lies greed misery. The song is released just to give people a better taste of the album. It's not gonna be a single.
I forgot to reply to this yesterday, but honestly Chester has not written every song in the LP catalogue. I hope you realize that. There's been quite a few songs that he had either minimal input in, or that Mike basically had written entirely before Chester came in to sing it. That's the benefit of having more than one lyricist in the band. Chester doesn't always have to handle the weight of coming up with songs.
Well the album after this one has been confirmed to ahve 15 tracks consisting solely of Victimized-type songs. Source: me.
It could be viewed from that perspective, interesting analysis. But the album isn't going to be revolving entirely around that friend that passed away, since the band has stated that some of songs revolves around their family lives as well. You reminded me of My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' though, and it'll be swell if LP did do another 'concept album' like that.
I'm just curious why they're pumping singles after singles (as evidence from THP), it takes away the excitement of the whole experience of listening the new album. I thought they've had learned their lesson from THP?