Alrighty. Lately, it seems some "THP is mediocre", "Not aging well", "not impressive" have been trendy. Nevertheless, the reasons behind that mediocrity are rarely discussed. Hence, the question, "why?" But nothing is ever more efficient than an absurd demonstration. So, I guess I could say, it's mediocre because.. Cohesiveness Record has a distinct sonic identity. Sure, it's based around crunchy guitars riffs, live drums, and raw vocals. Boring. Generic. Bland. Not appealing to you? It's all good! It still has the merit to appeal to some people. They love to feel the sweet tenderness of nasty guitar distortion all day, everyday! Technically and instrumentally on point I'm talking about guitar solos....for LP standards. I'm talking about Rob killing it on every track. I'm talking about the subtle contribution of ambient synths and piano. I'm talking about KTTK, GATS, MTG, and ALITS climax. Pushing LP composition standards ...at times. But have a big look at LP discography? Then you might remember the wonderfull. 6 min tracks are not usual for the guys. 2 min tracks neither. Long intros, GATS style, neither. Instrumental progression, KTTK / GATS / MTG /Drawbar / FM / ALITS, neither ... record has its few "creative" moments?! Ok, this one might be far-stretched, but.... still! Pendulum vocals + Childish Gambino flow + Hardcore Punk chorus? Check for KTTK. Progressive rock + rap talk + Metallica riffs? Check for ALITS Generally positively reviewed by professionnal critics Kinda fun to remember. Not that usual for the band. At all Seriously, the album definitely has weak spots. Weak lyricism is an accurate critic. Safe Wastelands-type songs is another good one. Even though. I've seen "Final Masquerade" being praised as "the best one", sometimes. I don't get it. It's litterally one of the safest songs out of the batch. Wanting better composition, but praising the safest song sounds very... weird to me. But fair enough, that was just some random act of defense! Now feel free to embrace it. Or feel free to destroy it. Feel free to have a big mighty sh*t on it. It'd just be nice to have some good points being made.
"The Hunting Party" is one of my two favourite LP studio albums, next to "A Thousand Suns". I think it makes a great listening experience if I'm in the mood for that specific brand of rock. I agree with OP, personally. As for whether it has "aged well" ... honestly, the rap/rock thing is played out, IMO. I honestly don't know why the band are still doing it. If any band other than LP had made "All For Nothing" and/or "Wastelands", I would probably hate those songs and that band.
For me it's not so much about an album ageing well, more about how some of the individual songs have. THP, like pretty much every LP album has some songs I want to keep going back to and others I rarely if ever listen to. Is it my favourite LP album as a whole? Probably not, but like all other LP albums I appreciate it's qualities depending in what mood I'm in. It's strengths imo are definitely it's power and more advanced (for LP) composition/musicianship, plus the inclusion of some very talented artists who really add something different to the album, Rakim and Daron Malakian especially. The weaknesses would be in some of the lyricism and lack of interesting melodies in one or two tracks.
I never understood the phrase "aged well" when applied to music. It isn't difficult to go back to any of their albums and listen to the songs again. Minuteforce mentioned rap/rock being over played, but there is a huge population by the band that would think otherwise. Same goes for all you people that say ATS or MTM (or both) have "aged well". Its more a matter of opinion, and since that's the case, most of the people on this forum tend to wanna make love to LP's first single and albums upon release, but after a few months essentially label it as trash, while other big fans outside of this community continue to listen to all their music and for the most part enjoy it. Now if you're referring to the actual music aging over the years and still being relevant, then the unfortunate matter on that part is that you'd all be completely wrong. The average listener will know only the band's first/hit singles like In The End, Burn It Down, Numb, What I've Done, etc, but could care less about their albums as a whole, especially everything after Meteora, which is always a tragedy I suppose. Tho, this shouldn't be news for any one that has gone to an LP concert. To me, it seems the term of music "aging well" is pretty much just a weak elucidation of attempting to apply this quote to your own musical interests.
I still love THP, and listen to many of the songs off it everyday. I think Guilty All The Same, A Line in the Sand, and Rebellion are some of the best songs they've ever made. KTTK is really unique and I love it's structure. I think Until It's Gone has a really cool sound, I love the vocal layers and the use of strings. AFN is just a cool rap-rock song, and I'm happy with it.
I agree here totally with you Tony. THP is next to ATS my favorite LP album. If i want to listen to some more raw rock kind of music, it sperfect. With ALITS, GATS and Rebellion it brought some great songs. Everytime the intro of GATS starts, i would love it to start a moshpit Final Masquerade is a very nice ballade. KTTK as an opener cool too. MTG is definitely also one of LPs more special tracks and it grows on me a lot. It had some really pretty good points. The problem: i dont have the mood for this kind of genre so much in last time But when, its always awesome.
Honestly, THP STILL feels like a breath of fresh air for me, in both LP's discography and in music in general. I'm not even sure it has shown any major signs of aging at all, given how recently it released. I still view it as an album that tried (and largely succeeded) in capturing what once made hard rock and sub-genres of metal stand out and be memorable. The fact that THP purposely went against the flow of modern pop-rock, and demonstrated how modern and retro elements in rock/metal can be seamlessly blended together, really speaks for itself IMO. In short, THP really hasn't aged to a significant extent for me and is still highly enjoyable and relevant in rock music, even if it was released a little too late for the era it harkens back to.
Make no mistake, it's a great album, but it doesn't have much replay value. Heck, I could listen to more Living Things songs on repeat compared to THP albums, probably because of the poppy songs of that album.
IDK about "replay value", even the band members say they found it difficult to listen to all the way through as an album. I find the urge to listen to some of the songs once in a while, though
I occasionally return to THP and still very much enjoy it. I've grown to tolerate the tracks that I didn't quite like as much and still really like the tracks that I liked when I first listened to it.
This is a good point, but it's only part of the story. I do think replay value affects it as well. The Hunting Party is a very dynamic album. I don't listen to it very often, but my impressions haven't changed much from those I had, say, two months after it was released. Still hate UIG and FM, still don't like "Wastelands" very much, still love the shit out of "Rebellion", "Mark the Graves" and "Drawbar" (fantastic three-song run which gets horrifyingly ruined by "Final Masquerade"). THP to me is a testament to the band's creative capabilities: they can still do it. And I hope the next album pushes the limits of this creativity like A Thousand Suns did five-and-a-half years ago.
I loved "The Hunting Party" since it was released. 2 months later I started to get tired of it and eventually I stopped listening to it. A few times I had listened to some tracks like All For Nothing, Guilty All The Same, Rebellion, A Line In The Sand... maybe Until It's Gone sometimes. Now I started to listen to the album again and I enjoy it even more than before. I feel like the music is fresh and complex. I think is a very good album. Fuck it, it's perfect in my opinion. I don't know why people hate this album or still say that the album hasn't aged well. I still love every track. Yeah, and every track includes Until It's Gone, Final Masquerade and Wastelands. Why? Maybe because english is not my native language, and when I hear to music I usually listen to the melodes, the guitars, the sound and I don't pay attention to the lyrics. Only in songs with english language. So that's why I like Until It's Gone though the lyrics are bad. The same case is with Final Masquerade and Wastelands.
And now everybody is actually praising the record I dunno. Actually I'd love to hear how those who dislike it would adress what has been said in this thread. I mean, really. I've seen those "mediocre" terms used so often without any backing argument, other than "bad lyrics" or "being safe". And I don't even think the "safe" critic is fair, as I've elaborated in OP.
Because it's so loud. It isn't an album that I listen to often because I rarely feel the need to listen to music that's aggressive in that way
I really love THP, but I do think the "safe" criticism does apply a bit. The band really amazed me with THP, pulling songs like GATS, Rebellion, MTG, and ALITS out of the hat, songs that I would never have expected to be on the follow-up to Living Things. But that's only half the album. On the flip side, the band also wrote songs like UIG, AFN, FM, and Wastelands. I like these songs, I actually do, but these songs don't contain anything surprising. They don't contain anything that makes me think "wow, only LP could write a song that good!". They don't show off the great musicianship they showed off on the previous songs I mentioned. They are the very definition of safe. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I really like most of these songs, especially FM. But I feel like they could have pushed themselves a bit further. Imagine if Wastelands had a two minute long jam outro at the end. Imagine if UIG had an electronic breakdown in the middle. Imagine if FM had a short piano solo at the end, reprising what we heard in Drawbar. Obviously songs aren't written like that, the band can't just tack parts on if the parts don't fit there naturally, but I still feel like the band could have pushed themselves a bit further on the "safer" songs of the bunch, especially in terms of song structure, but also in other areas. Does that mean that the album as a whole was "safe"? No, not at all, but there are definitely a few parts of the album that don't excite me musically. I still love the album though. FM, one of the aforementioned "safe" songs, is one of my favourite LP ballads of all time.