Yes, because we're all holding onto that like some deep, dark secret. I think Shinoda's singing voice is great and I feel that the band have done a good job at using it in the right places.
It's not even so much a lack of creativity. ATS and the demos from around that period prove they're capable of making masterpieces. They just choose to make these completely average commercial albums like LIVING THINGS and Meteora that completely throw out the creativity of the prior album. It's beginning to piss me off too. They're a better band than they allow themselves to be on record sometimes.
Seriously... I'd love to hear how Irridescent or Bits, which are more or less classic power ballads, are more creative than a song that blends a folk melody with punk with hip hop with metal in a 1:30 min song (Victimized). LP isn't pissing me off. That commong assumption that music has to be progressive to be good, which is often seen among ATS elitists, is what really piss me off. EACH TIME a song will be compact and hit hard from beginning to end, ATS elitits will say it's mediocre. Proof with Wretches and Kings, the so-called weakest track on ATS, because it's not "creative". Translation: because it's not progressive. Proof with Living Thing. And EACH TIME it will begin soft to grow into an epic final, ATS elitists will say it's the best song they ever heard. Yes, I am exagerating, but I don't think I'm that far from the truth.
Let's be clear here, we're not asking for 2112, mostly because we can all admit Linkin Park doesn't have the virtuosity Rush has and partly because Ayn Rand sucks. The band has at least two and a half albums of the same damn sound and it's not even as hooky as when it first came out. We're talking about wanting something progressive relative to the sound the band's pigeonholed into, especially when that band wants to be seen as more ambitious than their former peers. I know I'm not gonna get shifting time-signatures or ten-minute song lengths, but I'd like to hear something that isn't basic.
Lots of the haters dislike Linkin Park for making too-average tracks and albums. Living Things didn't help at all. If the band keeps making good but not great albums like that, it's going to become hater-bait. The band has massive potential for making something great, but none of their albums other than HT and ATS have potential to become classic. I want a Linkin Park album that showcases how good they are and how much they've learned from their past mistakes, not cause new ones. I love all their albums, but none of them amaze me as much as other bands do. You see, this is why my friends are surprised when they hear me say that Linkin Park is NOT the best band in the world, and list down many bands and songs superior to that of LP's material. I hate doing that, but it's the truth. Plus, they're in a major creativity crisis, considering the new albums of Paramore and, dare I say it, Fall Out Boy are much more amazing than Living Things. Linkin Park makes good music no doubt, but they have the potential to do something much more...spectacular.
The problem is, I find a little touch of hypocrisy in the ATS lovers arguments, since if LT had been full of 5-min power ballads again, I'm sure they would have praised its creativity again. MTM had tons of power ballads, and so did ATS. It was time for a change. And to me, songs like Victimized, Skin To Bones, Until It Breaks, COG or dare I say it, LGM, were more unexpected that having again 5-min slow progressive songs. Despite being totally different from anything on ATS (and previous records), which should be a good sign of creativity, it seems like those songs didn't meet expectations of those who were waiting for 5min songs again, under the banner "creativity" which would in fact have been "more of the same".
I was pretty disappointed with LT since the rest of the album wasn't as good as "Until It Breaks" or "Lies Greed Misery". Until It Breaks, for me, is one of their best songs, showing off their massive creativity, including Brad. What makes LGM a great song for me was the fact that the band dared to go into poppy dubstep-y hip hop beats backing what could be HT-era performance from Mike and Chester. The songs in LT were good. Just not AS good as the others.
When the hell have any of us ever said that we want more goddamn slow songs? I think you're just pulling your critique of ATS fans out of thin air.
Yes, it's an assumption I'm making "out of thin air". Neverteless, I'm like 99% sure that if LT had been full of 5 min progressive songs, with slow start, and epic finals, Derek, Agent O. and others would not have complained so much about a lack of creativity. They love that style of music, so why would they have complained about something they love? And that's fine. But I find it ridiculous to bring the creativity argument there. Sure it was a totally uncreative and expected move to make short and intense 2/3 min songs after ATS. Sure Victimized and Skin To bones are type of songs I've already heard tons of times from LP. Sure, it was totally uncreative to bring some folk elements in their songs, which they had never done before. Sure, it was uncreative to let Brad sing. What a shitty uncreative commercial record!
You do know all of the people who thought Living Things was uncreative was because of every song but the ones you keep referring to? You're grasping at straws, here. Any attempt to paint ATS fans as close-minded as diehard nu-metal fans is just some false equivalency bullshit. I love ATS. I also like Imaginary Sonicscape by Sigh and that ain't samey. I bump the shit outta Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music and El-P's Cancer 4 Cure and those albums aren't soft.
Well, if the creativity critics are diriged toward LT first 5 songs, it would be nice to precise to begin with. There's a good difference between a complete uncreative record and a record which is "half-uncreative". Even if this case, I find the critics not totally justified. The basic structures of the songs from the first half is compensated with a good amount of creativity in the instrumental sonic elements. In My Remains, for example, really has tons of electronic layers and cool sounds. The fact they're structured as a classic pop song shouldn't take out all of the song's merits. And LGM stills sounds as one of the most surprising songs from LT. After hearing ATS, who would have though LP would make a song like this, honestly?
Because it's angry and use an alternance of rapped and screamed parts? Well, that's a good way of ignoring it's dancey chorus, the shouting style Chester's uses in it instead of his usual melodic chorus, its totally electronic instrumental, Mike's mc performance which is very far from his old style, and its intensity/lenght compared to post 2004 LP work.
Well it did and now like a parent washing a load of shit-smeared shorts, you gotta live with it. How about the fact that it's just A Place for My Head with a weak pseudo-house instrumental instead of nu-metal and even worse lyrics? Yeah, take the structure of a dated, decade-old song and revamp it so that's it's a more current brand of dated. Then give it the most phoned-in, obvious lyrics you possibly could. That's the height of creativity.
I don't see any similarities with APFMH, except for the vocal alternance. And a pseudo-house instrumental with bad lyrics doesn't change the fact that a pseudo-house instrumental is surprising for LP. That you think the song is bad is another story. A song can be both surprising and bad. I must be pissing off you, specifically
Give me a narrow enough scope, I could tell the difference between different Disturbed songs. Just because something isn't replaying the exact sequence of notes doesn't mean it isn't a complete rip-off. Congratulations, Linkin Park. You adapted an old song, soft to screaming bridge and all, to fit in more with the Skrillex crowd.
You know why I grew to dislike LIVING THINGS? Because a vast majority of the tracks on there are generic bullshit. Songs that follow the "old LP formula" to a science and break no ground for the band at all. You know what ATS is? It's not an album of slow ballads. It's a collection of experiments and songs of differing lengths that deliberately challenged the classic LP song structure and convention. It's why you had a 6 minute electronic dance style track at one part, and then a Bhangra influenced track at another. LIVING THINGS had none of those risks. The folk influences weren't totally new for the band and most of the "creative" tracks sounded like other artists. It was a huge let down after ATS and it completely abandoned the foundation they built till now in breaking through their genre stereotypes. As much as I respect the band it felt like a lazy effort in comparison to their previous work.