For me.... not at all. The album is very mellow. I was expecting something a little more heavy. I don't see any of the comparisons people have made liking this back to old school Linkin Park. I think it's something new altogether. It sounds more out there in some cases than A Thousand Suns to me and is going to take some getting used too. I was expecting Vicitimized to be more heavy as well. Kinda like a more hardcore version of QWERTY. It seems like a very complex album. Ultimately I think my experience of it is going to be quiet different. I am going to I think ending up loving some of the tracks from it. But be less bothered by some of the others and perhaps not listen to it in the future as a complete album like ATS. Different doesn't mean bad though. In a way I am glad they surprised me again. That's what I love about this band. After all they are the band that got me into Rock and Metal in the first place. They are always introducing me to new sounds.
I really had no idea what to expect for this album, but I was pleasantly surprised. It seems that the comparisons to old school Linkin Park don't refer to the sound of the music (although LITE takes me back a bit), but more of the concept of merging ideas and music that you'd not really heard too much of before, if at all. In the early days they combined metal with hip hop. With LT they combined folk, rock, hip hop, electro, punk, hell all kinds of things. So I think it's more of that concept, the Hybrid Theory as Mike mentioned in his blog. And for me, it worked great 'cause I haven't really stopped listening to the album since it leaked!
As a note. I think lyrically this is some of the best work from LP by far. Some amazing gems in there.
For all the talk about LP wanting to have high energy shows and the current set lists certainly doing that. This is a very down tempo album. Not very high energy at all apart from the odd song. I was surprised by that.
Uptempo songs: Lost In The Echo, In My Remains, Burn It Down, Lies Greed Misery, I'll Be Gone, (while Castle of Glass is more mellow than most tracks... it's a hell of a lot more uptempo than say... Burning In The Skies or Iridescent), Victimized. High energy does not = heavy. Also, the return to their roots comments made by LP were never meant to be going back to the heaviness of HT and Meteora, much to the dismay of LP fans still stuck in their nu-metal days. It was more of that uptempo, high energy that was lacking from MTM and ATS, and not being afraid to fall back on certain techniques or structures when constructing songs.
This album was not as good as I expected it to be. The songs are pretty decent, I rated all of them from a 7 to 8.5. Nothing really stands out though. It just seems like "oh yeah, this is pretty cool" or "oh yeah I like this chorus it's catchy". This is the first Linkin Park album that I wasn't able to give a track a 9/10 which shocked the hell out of me. (For those who want to know what I rated a nine; With You, Pushing Me Away, Nobody's Listening, In Pieces, When They Come For Me, Blackout, Messenger)
This. Most of the album has high energy. I'd say even UIB has high energy, and Powerless has high energy for a ballad. This album is very high energy.
For the most part, I suppose it was. High energy pop music is what the first two albums were, and that's what this is. They went back to writing shorter, catchier, uptempo music. Of course I was pleasantly surprised when, on the second half of the album, they were able to do some more creative work within those shorter/fast-paced boundaries.
Living Things was exactly what I expected, which is not a good thing. It's a solid album no doubt, but I wanted to be mind-blown like I was with A Thousand Suns. That said, I totally did not expect Castle of Glass & Roads Untraveled's awesomeness. Hell yeah!
When will people learn that high energy does NOT always equal heavy guitars? Even though this album had plenty of them. Living Things is easily the most uptempo album Linkin Park has done since Meteora. While I could peacefully fall asleep listening to Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns, I can confirm that Living Things is a perfect workout album. Every single song on the album has a moment of high energy, other than Tinfoil which serves as a catalyst to Powerless' eruption at the end. I will say that Living Things was pretty much what I expected, although it still left me blown away and pleasantly surprised at the same time. Basically Living Things was as close to my dream album as Linkin Park has ever got.
Ditto. Except maybe swap CoG & RU with Echo and Powerless. Also, I don't equate uptempo with high energy. I don't regard this album as a high energy album. I associate energetic with excitement, of either happy or angry variants. This album is too mellow to count as high energy, regardless of tempo.
Played the album through a few times now I skip the first 5 songs and ignore Skin To Bone. The rest I'll listen.
This is my 2nd favourite album from LP but i felt that it's very bland. Anyone feels that way? and it gets boring after many listens. I felt that it doesn't have the high energy :/ But i like it because it really show all 4 albums combining into one and none of the songs i didn't like when first listen. The lyrics and mike's rapping in LITE is AMAZING
I was expecting more Meteora-influenced songs on the album, but nonetheless, I am still proud of what they offered. It definitely boosted me up unlike A Thousand Suns
honestly I did not know what to expect. I think I even did not have any special expectations other than it being great