June 18, 2017 - Clisson, France | Hellfest 2017

Thank you, this is what I've been trying to say since the singles came out. People are questioning the band's sincerity and are super suspicious of their intentions and words now. I don't get the idea of the band suddenly being deceptive or delightfully duping their fans. It's quite insulting to the work and passion they put into the album, whether or not you think yourself the album has work or passion put into it. Not liking the songs and disagreeing with their statements in the press doesn't equate to the band being liars or manipulative people.

 

#LongLiveTomDeLonge

 

See that's just going back to the whole "the reviewers aren't giving them enough credit for the deep and personal lyrics!" argument. Obviously, lyrically, shit like Invisible or One More Light is "personal" and had a lot of thought put into it. That doesn't also mean the approach they took couldn't also have been motivated by commercial success. Shit, didn't they have a video right around the time of release where Mike was more or less saying "Ok, so that last album was a bomb, are we going to try to make a successful record again or are we going to do some artistic thing", which I assume everyone else interpreted as them saying this album was "the creative leap forward". I took the other opinion, and that whereas hard rock tanked, this would be something they were going to try and get some more financial success with.

Which they can totally do while being "personal" and "passionate" with what they've done. But I really don't see how a group of people well into adulthood can see what they came up with and genuinely argue "Nothing about this was motivated at all about trying to garner some mainstream attention that has alluded them over the last few albums". Even the idea that somehow everyone knows a Hybrid Theory 3 would somehow sell a million copies in 2017 -and by choosing this route they're defiantly flipping the bird at the mainstream and their boxed-in expectations of the band- has to concede, even a tad, that it SURE SEEMS LIKE maybe, even subconsciously, that some of these songs were indeed crafted in order to get heavy airplay.

And then we'll all laugh because I said Heavy, and that's the name of a song that's controversially perceived to be about the thing I'm talking about. Zingers abound right there.

 

I think this is the first time I've properly agreed with anything you've said but you're pretty much spot on

 

Even if they did (which the mostly likely did) have the thought of "this kind of sound will have some mainstream," I personally don't believe that was their only motivator nor would they let it compromise the quality of the album and their integrity as a band.

They made a mainstream album. What the fuck is new about that? I only see two albums out of the seven they have made that don't fit into the mainstream for their time: the first obviously being THP, and the second (and its a stretch) ATS, but even then songs like Iridescent and I believe WFTE were mildly successful on pop radio stations at the time.

I just think the notion that the band would go out of their way to make an album/single for the single purpose of making more money/getting mainstream attention is absurd. I really don't see why money/fane would be a big concern for a band like this.

(This wasn't directly aimed at you Blackee, just more of commenting on your points and things I still see being said around this site)

 

This is a big point with a lot of the albums fans and defenders, but let me counter with this;

for all the Pushing Me Aways, Leave Out All the Rest, Iridescent and Roads Untravelled, how many people do you know actually thought of those songs specifically as highlights? Less on here, generally those type of songs do very well here, but on average Linkin ballads were considered "just ok" when not outright disliked.

So while the style that wasn't entirely unknown for them, how many people were clamoring for an entire album of Shadow of the Day and Iridescent? And even those were still somewhat 'rock songs', so you're taking an already not terribly popular style of the band, and tweaking it even further. I was saying in another thread, even if people didn't like OML they could imagine them doing something along those lines. But on the other side of the coin, just because someone could imagine them doing it doesn't necessarily mean the end result was going to be terribly good.

 

It's to late, people just need to stop as angry as i am with the direction the band is on and how much I hate OML it's over and done nothing we can do to change just have to move on. If you like the album great for you, if you don't than that's fine too just accept it and move on and wait for LP 8. I've been disappointed by this band many times and that's to be expected when you're a fan of something, somethings you will like and some you will hate but now that I'm older I don't put this band on a pedistal anymore like I did when I was younger. I was obsessed with this band like literally I got a big HT soldier tattoo on my left arm before meteora came out, now sometimes I feel like removing it or covering it up but what's the point just because they made a pop album doesn't mean they aren't the same band that made hybrid theory. Like I said im very angry at the band right now but I have every right to be that's the beauty of being a fan of something or someone.

 

I remember reading that as well. Mike said that him and Chester were immediately on board but the rest of the band was iffy about it. I've said it before, One More Light seems like a natural progression of Living Things to me. If you went A Thousand Suns, Living Things, One More Light, it wouldn't seem so weird. The Hunting Party threw a monkey wrench in it all, but it was a one-off type of album, something that Mike and Chester wanted to do randomly at the time. If you remember, they were originally writing a pop album to follow Living Things, but Mike and Chester decided to scrap all of that stuff and make The Hunting Party. There are many interviews about it.

A lot of the songs on One More Light sound like they could exist on A Thousand Suns and Living Things. They would probably be a little bit different, but I feel like they could belong. Nobody Can Save Me, Battle Symphony, Sorry For Now and One More Light all remind me a lot of A Thousand Suns, especially the first two. Good Goodbye, Invisible, Halfway Right, all of those sound like they could easily exist on Living Things, as well as Sharp Edges, since they were writing folk-EDM type of songs early on in the process for Living Things as it was. Hell, I could even see Heavy fitting in with Living Things. Anyone remember the Steve Aoki collabs and Recharged, etc.? All was done in the Living Things era and that stuff fits in right at home with One More Light. People need to get their head out of their ass if they think Linkin Park simply just ''sold out'' with this album, as if they never have made that type of music before or something just because The Hunting Party was a monkey wrench in between it all.

 

Agree with this for the most part

 

Some bands/artists never release a bad album in their entire careers.

 

Wouldnt make things better honestly

 

I'm questioning myself right now:

"Why do i keep discussing and following threads everyday about a music band? Why do i care so much that i even bother to debate about an album release?"

Can someone please answer that to me? Because i can't find an explanation.

 

I know for my self I am a Linkin Park superfan. They aren't my favorite band ever but there the only band I follow this closely and always have.

And I have had many different times where I've been off this website for extensive periods of times but I don't think I could ever cut it out completely.

 

This. Going from hard rock to radio pop made things initially more jarring, yes, but even coming immediately off of Burn It Down, this album would have garnered equally less than enthusiastic attention then as it did now. A bit more.. "obvious"? I think I remember reading somewhere Mike was writing radio pop after LT, and someone had the idea that a lot of One More Light was probably those same songs from way back then. Which makes sense, and it was likely the intention. But I can't think of the album being greeted any warmed in 2013 or 2014 than it was in 2017.

 

At this point, I expect some clown to say Chester deserved to have a jug thrown at him.

 

Has anyone else noticed that Chester sounds waaay better live than in THP tour cycle!
And also Mike gets always better as live singer
fingercrossed for SFN live debut soon

 

Chester sounds great on THP cycle, atleast at both shows i saw them.

 

Which bands those are comes 100% down to personal opinion though, everyone has a few bands where they happen to like every album they've ever put out. I think his point was more that if you're a fan of a band that changes genre so rapidly, chances are that they'll inevitably put out something you're not really into.

I agree in so far as I think there would've still been a backlash, but I also think If would've been a lot smaller. I'd imagine if they had gone Burn It Down (2012) -> A Light That Never Comes (2013) -> Heavy (2014), the sentiment among those sorts of fans would lean more towards saying the band has gotten worse and worse over the years, rather than saying they "suddenly" sold out. As in, they might have seen Heavy as the final straw, rather than seeing it as a sudden "stab in the back". I think the violent reaction was partly because no one really expected it, even on here I remember a lot of people being very confused, something that probably would've been lessened if it had dropped a year after Recharged/ALTNC and two years after Living Things.