I was talking with my friends about THP. They said that this album it's the natural continues on their music after MTM and before ATS. On other words, MTM was a good decision of change and evolution, but ATS and LT are incongruent on the discography. I like ATS and LT, but certainly, it's strange know that the boys who make The Catalyst, Burning in the Skies, Waiting for the end or Burn ir down are the same creators of GATS, War, KTTK... What do you think about this? Are ATS and LT incongruents on the full discography? Sorry for my english
I wouldn't like the band nearly as much if ATS and LT didn't exist. The diversity is what makes them so appealing to me.
The sound the same, definitely As some wise man said : "devilylike screaming" But back to topic. I think ATS was a great step. They do what they wanted to do, Be a band who you cant put into a box. Same the LT in my opinion. No one could say, how it sound until it released. Just with THP they told more about the progress and came back to a heavier sound, thats a step no one thought they would do after LT.
In hindsight, "A Thousand Suns" seems pretty natural a direction to me, coming after "Midnight" and "New Divide"
I agree with Tony. Lyrically, ATS seems like a natural successor to ATS. I think LT is kind of a bad mole(?) but then again, like people here said, it adds to the variety.
What obviously happened after MTM is that Mike died, then was replaced by a clone, then after LT, the clone malfunctioned and had to be replaced once again.
^ Hehe. To me, the progression from Minutes, to ATS, to Living Things seems most natural (and also Hybrid Theory EP, to Hybrid Theory, to Meteora). The only style changes that seemed incongruent was between Meteora and Minutes, and between Living Things and THP. In hindsight, the general style change that happened with Minutes actually makes sense, given that Meteora was already less "underground" than Hybrid Theory, so the trend just continued (plus the large gap in time between Meteora and Minutes could be seen as kind of a buffer). The difference in style between Living Things and THP is more perplexing, though, given that Living Things tends more to pop, whereas THP tends more to hard punk. This doesn't really matter much to me, as I'm bound to like almost everything they throw at me. With every album they introduce new styles and increase the diversity in their sound, which is what I always loved about them. So with that in mind, yeah, I think the changes are perfectly natural.
"ATS seems like a natural successor to ATS" Man, I am an idiot. --- *ATS seems like a natural successor to MTM
Living Things, rather, the first half, is incongruent. LP's career post-Meteora was to push the bar on what the band could do. Aside from the first half of LT, each album to come after Meteora was very much an exercise in "what can we do different"? Minutes to Midnight tried downplaying one of their most recognizable elements: rapping. Obviously it was still there, but very much underplayed. A Thousand Suns changed the band's approach to songwriting from a song-oriented approach to an album-oriented approach. It also changed the interplay of guitars and synthesizers in the mix. Living Things Pt. 1? Ugh. Fuck the toolbox. That was some of the worst parts of the nu-metal era with the new approach to songwriting. And it did not age well. Seriously, who listens to In My Remains anymore? The second half, I feel, while many feel to be (understandably) spotty in quality, was more in line with the post-Meteora mindset of trying new shit. The incorporation of folk is an interesting thing to do as a band most well-known for rap-rock with Jay-Z. And I feel it mostly succeeds. The Hunting Party is more along the lines of "do something different" than not. You still get your 'return to form' songs that are wildly divisive among the fans (UIG in particular), but it's something the band hasn't actually done before, which is just go balls-to-the-wall rock. Guitar solos. Wait sorry. Good-to-mediocre guitar solos. Guest appearances. Changes in songwriting. Jamming with people, self-producing. Lots of change. So are ATS and LT incongruent? I don't think so. Well, LT Pt. 1 is. But really I see ATS and THP as being well, if not siblings, then really close cousins. Those two albums really pushed the boundaries of what the band could accomplish, but in different directions. But different directions doesn't necessarily mean different spiritually.
I agree with everything in that post, except for the In My Remains remark. A lot of people, myself included, see that song as one of the highlights of the album, and one of the most listenable ones, nevermind how poppy and simple it is.
To a certain degree, I think any song on the first half of LT could apply to that comment. I just went with the first one that I actually remembered the name of. Lies Greed Misery would work too, I guess.