Is "The Hunting Party" the best LP album?

THP is incredible album. I waited for something like this since Meteora. Of course, nothing can beat first two albums, but I really enjoy this one and it`s my third favourite. Guilty All The Same is crazy as sh*t.

 

I think that it's a great album, although not all of it is completely to my taste and there are some tracks i'd skip from time to time. To make it my favourite it would need more hip hop elements, and a few slightly less balls to the wall songs to add balance.

For me Reanimation is probably my favourite album, although i'd rank THP alongside MTM and ATS in joint second.

 

To me, The Hunting Party is great and I will listen to it more than to Hybrid Theory and Meteora, but still I don't think it's their best album and, overall, I don't see any "best" album in the band's discography.

 

Yes! Along with a thousand suns

 

Propably i think this is how i see the things in the moment

 

LIVING THINGS and The Hunting Party are by far my favorite LP albums. Definitely has some of their most energetic material.

 

ATS is still number one for me, they'd need to really blow my mind again to top it in my books.

As for the rest, I'd personally go for MTM, then LT, then THP, then HT/M, but they're all so close for me at that point I'm not sure if it's even worth ordering them anymore after the first 2.

 

There's something about MTM that THP and ATS lack for me. But, yeah, I'd rate MTM=THP=ATS. All these albums are not perfect and have their ups and downs but definitely better than the other three.


Man if LP took the lyrical seriousness of ATS and some of the energy of THP but also some of the mellowness of MTM, they could make a nice album


Seriously though, I'd like to see the band as hyped up as they were for BTH or TLTGYA for a song again. Also,sure, the band made it a point to talk about rock music and everything in THP interviews but I feel like they didn't really pay much attention to the actual album or songs in particular.

 

Fuck it, I'll just turn this into one of those threads.

ATS > THP > LT > HT > M > MTM

Throw in remix albums and shit.

ATS > THP > Reanimation > LT > HT > M > MTM > CC > Recharged

 

Lol, THP is down at the bottom of my albums list with LT. I don't think it's that great.

 

I can't change my vote, but I'm now sold this is their best album.

 

I love THP because it shows us they can still rock

Edit: And that the best is still to come

 

Ht will always be my number 1, i mean that is such a timeless album
nothing beats it. THP is 2nd for me. I really like it, the heaviness, the guitar solo's
are amazing on it. This is the direction the band needs to go in.

 

So you can look into the future?

 

Yes. Yes I can

But seriously, Brad's improvement and Rob's ecstatic drumming give me hope that the band will continue to improve and make better and better music

 

Their best?

Hard to tell. Depends on your perspective. But this is definitely the LP album I've been enjoying the most for the last few months.

 

Its only competition comes from A Thousand Suns, that's for sure. And while A Thousand Suns may be a tiny bit more consistent overall, and the lyrics may tell a better story, Keys To The Kingdom, Guilty All The Same, Rebellion, and A Line In The Sand still put a giant fucking satisfied smile on my face 8 months after release.

So there's that.

 

NOTE: I ended up rambling a lot in this post so I decided to try to contain my tangents as footnotes/annotations denoted by superscripts and included at the bottom of the post. As it happens, I actually like this posting style more and will probably continue posting in this manner for a long while.

Honestly, as much of an improvement THP was from LIVING THINGS, it was still more of the same in spirit.

What does that mean, you prick?

I'll tell you, imaginary voice inside my head.

The one common strand THP and LT have in common is that half of it is just NOT GOOD or forgettable at best. For LT, it was the entire first half of the album. For THP, we're looking at AFN, War, UIG, and Wastelands. Four out of ten1, 2 songs are not that great.

If this were released as an EP3, it would be a fucking solid EP and probably run up in the top releases by the band in my mind. I came to the same eventual conclusion about LT4 after the "new music" smell had faded away.

As an EP, THP would be great. But because it's bogged down by middling or outright cringeworthy tracks5, it's merely a "pretty good" in my books.

And now the conclusion that you've all either been waiting for or have heard a million times from me and are absolutely sick of it: LP's best album is A Thousand Suns.6

Let me break down my opinion in very general terms.

I did not say that ATS necessarily had the best SONGS LP has ever written7. I said that this was LP's best ALBUM. As in, a collection of songs meant to be consumed as a whole.8 I'll be the first to admit that there are some arguable high points on other albums that could conceivably surpass the emotional apexes found in ATS. But I'll also be the first to vouch that the lowest point on A Thousand Suns9 is higher than the low point of any other LP album. I'd even say it's higher than the midpoint of a few albums.10 The flow, consistency, and payoff on risks makes this my personal favorite and, to be quite honest, the only album by LP that I don't mind relistening to nowadays.

Footnotes
1 - When thinking of tracks on this record, I drop The Summoning and combine Drawbar with Final Masquerade.

2 - That there's a skippable interlude says a lot about how useless I believe The Summoning is. It doesn't ADD anything to the next track, War. Although this means I could probably have gotten away with say five out of eleven in the above post but that'd mean counting The Summoning as a track and not Drawbar, which I'm sure is a sin in most religions.

3 - Keys to the Kingdom, Guilty All The Same, Rebellion, Mark The Graves, Drawbar/Final Masquerade, A Line in the Sand. It actually flows pretty well like this.

4 - Castle of Glass, Roads Untraveled, Skin to Bone, Until It Breaks, Tinfoil, Powerless. Have I mentioned how horrible the first half of LT is? Because Jesus Christ. I mean after a year or so of enjoying Meteora, I started realizing it was shit. I didn't even need half a year to reach that point with all these songs. As an additional note, if I'm allowed to cheat I'd include Primo in this hypothetical LT EP.

5 - I'm looking at you, Until It's Gone. You know you're a bad song when you're the (at the time) current single off the new album and you're already being shortened in live sets.

6 - Empty Spaces > The Summoning. Shit, Empty Spaces > UIG.

7 - My current opinion on that front, ATS songs aside, go to Mark the Graves and The Little Things Give You Away.

8 - It's kinda sad that we have to make that distinction nowadays. Insert old man voice "WELL BACK IN MAH DAY" diatribe here.

9 - If you were wondering, that low point in my opinion is Wretches and Kings. It's very deliberately a nod towards the nu-metal days of yore. But that beat is so fucking dirty and the delivery of the chorus is fantastic.

10 - *cough* LIVING THINGS *cough*

 

Man, I am the only person that thinks UIG is good?

The instrumentation on UIG is so nice and the airy atmosphere it has is also nice. And the lyrics aren't that great but the theme is nice. Overall, seeing the real theme and other things, I think UIG was a song the band were pretty passionate about.


Again, not gonna argue its flaws, just wanted to stick up for the song