What were you the most satisfied and disappointed with about THP? Satisfaction: A great heavy, rock, LP album! Disappointment: Much politics (not a huge deal though), and Drawbar. I was so hyped for Drawbar as soon as I saw the tracklist way before the release because I was expecting an awesome heavy song with a RATM style Tom Morello solo, then it was an instrumental with nothing worth hiring Tom Morello for. It was just weird piano and guitar. Such a letdown. EDIT: Mods, please move this to the THP section. Thanks!
Satisfaction: Not being let down after hearing all the pre-album comments. Disappointment: LPA not crashing a million times.
Satisfaction: Nice melodies and heavy guitars. Screams are good but not so important for me, ONE BALLADE. Especially Rebellion, A Line In The Sand and All For Nothing. Disappointment: Worst LP SOng ever with Mark The Graves. This song will NEVER Grew on me.
Satisfaction: Rebellion and Rob's drumming. Disappointment: The album gets boring really quickly. LT and ATS had all these interesting sounds in nearly every song and you'd hear something new every time. THP is just guitar that is too loud, drums and bass that you can't hear.
Satisfaction: Great overall heavy record with LP's signature style. Some awesome and memorable songs to add to LP's repertoire, with a little experimental-ness to boot. Disappointment: Mixing on AFN and ALITS. The vocals on those tracks are a little too low in my opinion. It's such a strange thing, because I usually agree with Andy Wallace's choices regarding his mixes. Also, I, for some reason, hate when Chester repeats "final masquerade, final masquerade, standing at the end of the final masquerade" once again during the bridge, around 2:06. If it were me, I'd've left the bridge entirely instrumental. The fact that the standard edition doesn't come with a lyric and artwork booklet really irks me as well.
Satisfaction: Linkin Park sounds surprisingly at home with a punk-lite vibe. Disappointment: It's a tie between two things. 1. The band (or Mike and Chester really) has decided to become a bunch of almost 40-year-old men that speak like 14-year-old boys. Doing interviews about "finding their balls" and other over-the-top macho drivel. 2. Despite all the talk about being ballsy and how *herbivorous* rock music is now and all that, the band still can't commit to a hard rock sound. The Hunting Party still contains stuff like Until It's Gone and Final Masquerade. Wastelands and All For Nothing aren't really heavy either. If you're going to run your mouth in the press, could you at least commit to the gimmick? Linkin Park has a hard time sticking with things and it comes through on this album. The Hunting Party could have been really great, but they chose to hedge their bets.
Satisfaction: performances from the founders of Xero: Brad's soloing (not spectacular but he has finally shown what he can do), Rob's drumming, and Mike's singing (hell, even his raps are great). Disappointment: certain lyrics (UIG and anything repetitive) and the random stops in the album. Like on KTTK, War, and a few interludes, but i like some others.
Pretty much the same for me as well. Listening to LT and ATS again, I miss those mysterious droning sounds that are in basically all of the songs. A few songs have this in The Hunting Party, but overall it's just basic drumming and guitar work with not much use of the turntables and synthesizers that really made their previous albums fascinating.
Went ahead and moved the thread. Anyway, for me the greatest satisfaction is hearing the freshness of new voices on the album. There's something really nice about All For Nothing and Guilty All the Same, because their contributions throw something really fresh into the mix. I like those tracks a lot. I also would say Rob's drumming is great, Keys to the Kingdom is just an excellent starter, and I think GATS is brilliantly placed on this album. The greatest disappointment for me are more generally the lyrics, the place of some weaker songs on the album, and generally the latter half of the album. A lot of people are really going to love Mark the Graves, Final Masquerade and A Line in the Sand - but those tracks are among the weakest because what the band is going for isn't exactly clear. Their arcs are wobbly (in my opinion). Final Masquerade shows Chester's talent at its finest but I just can't fall in love with that song like others have. I really liked Rebellion at first, but learning its mean has kind of soured it for me. I'll admit I'm particular but the album stops being nearly as good after War. I cannot complain about this album until Wastelands comes along, and then the album really drops off and becomes uninteresting to me. Drawbar is the only good song (to me at least) on the latter part of the album because it's a nice refreshing break from everything else going on. I feel like the band are perfectionists but that they really rushed this album like they did with LIVING THINGS. Spend the time to polish the tracks - you don't necessarily need to compromise raw sound to make good songs. You could have written better lyrics, could have done something more with a couple of songs and maybe pushed out a couple more great tracks.' It's just a hard album for me to love right now.
Satisfaction: Raw, heavy album by LP. All For Nothing is really growing on me too. That flow. Not a bad song on it. Even UIG has become one of my favourites. Lots of power. And finally Rob. Disappointment: Prob the fact it wasn't as heavy as I expected. I know, I know, it's constant, hell I don't really know what I was expecting.
Satisfaction: Mike's singing Dissatisfaction: Got boring quickly, 2nd half a million times better than first, Chester's screaming are mostly meh (KTTK and War. Rebellion's scream worst part of the song even though it's good. Same goes for ALITS. UIG's scream pretty useless).
Satisfactions: - Final Masquerade - Rebellion - Mike's singing - Artwork? Disappointments: - Got boring really quickly. - The mix of some songs is horrible. - All For Nothing and Mark The Graves are probably in their top 10 worst songs ever. - Some songs feel really forced, and sadly is really evident. - Where the hell is Joe Hahn? The presence of electronic stuff is the signature of Linkin Park. The big absent in this record. - That fucking attitude of the band, well, of MIKE and his stupid epiphany about rock music, throwing shit to other bands. What the hell? I don't want them to "save" the rock music, I want them to be themselves.
I think a lot of people are still misinterpreting what Mike said about the other bands. He was never shitting on anything - just saying that the sound that everybody's making is already out there and Linkin Park didn't need to be another band to an overcrowded genre.
Satisfaction: FM, Rebellion blowing me away. Disappointment: I think my whole issue with the album and why it's disappointing for me can be summed up in the sequence in ALITS after the beautiful second verse when Chester comes in with "Another daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay".
Satisfaction Linkin Park showed they are still on top of their game and released one of their best albums to date. They continue to experiment, albeit setting their foot in a different kind of genre, whilst offering something that has seemingly disappeared from today's rock music, a bold move in itself. There are surprises at almost every step in the album, "Keys to the Kingdom" and "A Line in the Sand" going absolutely everywhere without sounding all over the place. The lyrics are mostly quite good which successfully joins the technicality of the music. The album doesn't suffer Meteora syndrome where all the songs sound the same and end up being a homogenous mess, as the band explores heavy metal, hard rock and punk and even goes ballad-mode a couple times, adding up to quite an interesting listening experience. The second half of the album, starting with "Rebellion", offers a more experimental take than the first half – much like the second half of LIVING THINGS – and much like the second half of LIVING THINGS, it is the better half of the album, displaying Linkin Park at their best. Disappointment Unfortunately, some songs suffer what has been dubbed "the LIVING THINGS syndrome", being too gimmicky and all too familiar. I find these songs to be "All for Nothing", "Wastelands", "Until It's Gone" and "Final Masquerade". However, "All for Nothing" and "Final Masquerade" still manage to stand out (although I still find FM to be the weakest song in the aforementioned second half), while the other two don't, and being right next to each other on the album, they are responsible for the worst part of The Hunting Party – "Until It's Gone" being undoubtedly the worst song on the record, and possibly the band's worst since Meteora. Thankfully, what comes next makes up for this. I guess that's all I have to say.
Satisfaction: LP pulled off hard rock again LP's lyrics are better Rob and Brad 6 minute songs Disappointment Not much replay value Until It's Gone could have been better Needs more TV performances GATS video Drawbar
Satisfaction: In a pre-A Thousand Suns world I wished for an album just like this one - A Line In The Sand is essentially my dream come to reality for what I felt the band's potential could become. Also I'm glad they kept their promise on very few ballads, and thankfully those ballads are some of the strongest they've ever made. I'm also incredibly satisfied with Chester finally making his screaming a dominant part of his vocals again. The man's voice has a legendary sound and it needs to be heard. Disappointment: I would have to agree on some of the lyrics being underwhelming, including Chester's chorus in ALITS, however I'm not nearly as picky as most people. The mixing on ALITS is also kind of washy, but I understand they were going for a jam-session type recording for the album.