Disappointed by Living Things?

I'm actually not disappointed. I think it's most similar to MTM although MTM is my least favorite LP album. But still, I can feel the energy, it's not as boring as MTM. And it's also more creative than Meteora IMO. My ranking: Hybrid Theory < A Thousand Suns = Living Things < Meteora < Minutes to Midnight

My sister liked BID too

Oh and hey, Castle of Glass is the next hit in Germany. #6 on German iTunes, but only #51 here in Switzerland.

 

I can kinda agree with the op, it gets repetitive very soon, and I was just hoping that there would be more tracks Wretches and Kings - like u know.. because I was kinda seeing LP's next album being in such a direction.. i consider it their weakest though at first i was very excited about it and thought that its very interesting.. but listening to it again and again just some of the songs are too corny .. its my opinion though, i know why someone can enjoy the album but i was seeking for someth else

 

To be honest, I literally have not listened to it enough to give a proper judgement, but I do think the answer may be yes. Lies Greed and Misery seemed weak, Burn It Down very weak, Victimized could have been so much more. Powerless was good, and of course the self-cited toughest song on the album to put together Lost in the Echo, was the best. Just not sure yet thought to be honest.

 

its a nice album and it would have been nicer if it had been mixed properly. i found live versions of some LT songs much better.

 

I think people throw around the whole 'radio friendly' songs thing a lot. I don't think the problem with LT is that some of the songs were radio friendly... they were just boring (IMR, IBG, BID in particular). I'd consider 'Castle of Glass' a radio friendly song, but it's still one that stands out for me. You can make innovative songs that appeal to the masses and you don't need to alienate 80% of your fanbase to make something unique. Some of you might disagree, but I find Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto a unique, innovative and moving album, on par with, or perhaps even better than ATS. It's still packed with radio friendly songs though, so I refute the idea that the band have to make a conscious choice between one or the other.

LT is a decent set of songs, I don't think there's anything particularly bad on there, it's just too bland. I still get excited when I hear The Catalyst synth, those iconic Faint strings, the OSC riff, the WTFE intro, but I just don't feel like there's anything like that to pull me in on LT. There are so many moments throughout ATS where I just think 'wow', but LT just kind of flat-lines the whole way through aside from a couple of instances.

Chester's vocals are LT's biggest asset if I'm honest, which are absolutely solid, as per usual. I just feel like the music leaves a lot to be desired. My biggest problem is the boring and uninspired guitar work - I'm not one of those people hell-bent on a return to the Hybrid Theory days, I just feel like if there's going to be guitar, it should contribute something worthy to the song, instead of just being layered in as some sort of 'wall of sound' noise (the exception to this rule is The Catalyst, but I feel like that has other things to offer) like much of LT seems to be. When I look at IBG and compare it to something like Lying From You (both of which follow the same basic structure), LFY is the definite stand-out track for me, simply because it's not polluted by this boring downstrum guitar pattern that ends up making LT sound so samey. It's as if the band recognised the calls for more guitar but couldn't be bothered to do it properly... I understand that they might not want to move back into nu-metal territory, but I don't think more guitar necessarily has to mean that. I think they could learn a lot from Muse in this sense - Matt Bellamy is a pretty innovative guitarist.

I just feel like LT was, for the most part, a re-hash of old songs, but without what made those songs so good in the first place. Where there were attempts to bring in some new sound, it only truly worked in the case of CoG and perhaps LGM (debatable, but seriously, that song is just so damn fun ). It's not about making crazy shit like The Catalyst (I'm not sure we'll get anything that departs from their previous sound in quite the way that did), but I feel like their next album will be a success if they work on inserting those little jewel-like moments that truly set the songs apart from each-other, rather than just being another song on the track list.

 

Radio friendly = boring. Fact bud!

 

^this.....but not all the time.

 

Honestly, I agree with a lot of thing you've said in those 2 paragraphs.

To me, LT was definitely their weakest effort guitar-wise. It didn't have the energetic and iconics riffs from the first 2 records. It didn't have the variety of styles of MTM and, to a lesser extent, of ATS. In LT, the guitars feels like they are here just because they had decided to make a more up-tempo record. They feels...I don't know, uninspired.

Also, agree with LGM being so freaking fun!

 

Not really disappointed, but i still prefer ATS.

 

I personally think that Living Things was a combination of the commercialized mainstream rock format heard of M2M and the epic, electronic rock scope and scale seen on A Thousand Suns. It was really hit or miss for me. The record had its moments.

 

I have a lot to say about this album.

A few of the individual songs on Living Things are definitely LP's best individual works IMO, but it lacks the conceptual feel that i'm used to with their other albums.
It seems to lack soul for that reason, a bit B-sidey in comparison to Meteora or Minutes.

There's not one song on the album that i'm not keen on, the consistency in the songwriting quality is great, but one thing that really annoys me is the mixing/mastering.
Manny Marroquin is arguably one of the best mixing engineers on the planet, Brian Gardner is arguably one of the best mastering engineers on the planet; but one of these guys messed up big time.
The album seems to be so intent on being AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE that the gargantuan amount of mastering strips every ounce of dynamic from the songs.

Musically = Awesome
Technically = Poor