Like, I love all of the band's music, but holy shit ATS is just on another level for me. The thing is I feel that they could make an album as creative as that again. If they really set their minds to it, they could go crazy and do it again, I honestly believe that. And yet I don't think they ever will. The reason we got ATS is because the band wanted to rebrand themselves, they wanted to "delinkinparkify" themselves, to prove themselves. It was an album that came out of the band painfully forcing themselves to experiment. Nowadays, I get the impression (as Mike put it during the LT cycle IIRC) that the band are perfectly content in their own skins. I get the feeling that Mike and Co. are more than happy to write songs until they have enough good ones for an album, tour it, rinse and repeat. Sometimes there'll be experimentation, sometimes there won't be. Like on both LT and THP, there'll be a mixed bag, a few UIBs and MTGs among the BIDs and AFNs. 40-45 minute albums, 12-13 tracks, 1 instrumental, and maybe an interlude. There's nothing wrong with this, the guys are great songwriters and I'm more than happy to get a new batch of great songs every two to three years to add to the collection. But sometimes I wish the band would return to that attitude of frustration, of trying to prove to themselves and to the world that they were more than just a generic rap rock band. I feel the guys as people are in such a great place right now, and I'm happy for them for that, just as I'm extremely grateful that the band hasn't split up and that we're still getting a consistent stream of new music, but sometimes I wish they would just go balls to the wall again and release something alien to anything they've ever done before.
I wished i could be excited about ATS like you^^. It may be a great challenge and more excited (for us and them) to push themselves to new worlds, but eventually it is more important that the music itself is great, indepentently of the style, structure of the album. Or whether it is a song-oriented or conceptional. Therefore i'm just looking forward how the album will gonna sound and see if i like it or not.
You know what is fun? Before THP everybody was thinking the album was going to be full EDM. And now everybody is thinking it's going to be full soft. Don't know if we will ever be able to guess correctly how an LP album will sound.
I'm feeling pretty safe in guessing that the newest album will be a mixed bag as far as heavy/soft ala Living Things. But yes, I must join in and say when I listen to the Catalyst now it just feels on a whole other level, a level only come close to imo by GATS. Lost in the Echo is also a masterpiece in my book, but in a really different way.
I believe The Catalyst, Guilty All The Same, The Little Things Give You Away, Mark The Graves and A Line In The Sand all stand above and beyond the rest of the band's discography in terms of scale, ambition, and execution. However in my opinion, Lost In The Echo is masterclass in terms of Linkin Park's 3-minute song structure. The track is literally their commercial sound perfected. I'd also throw Rebellion and Keys To The Kingdom into the mix.
I would add When They Come For Me for its ambition and, believe me, No More Sorrow. The long intro feels like an anthem.
I totally agree, and it's funny that you picked the only Linkin Park songs that are longer than 5 minutes. For me, there's something about having a longer song that gives room to develop a musical idea properly. It doesn't need to be an eight minute prog epic, but I find that for me, hitting the four minute mark is important to develop a full song. Outside of ATS, every Linkin Park song except for five (SOTD, TLTGYA, GATS, MTG, ALITS) has been shorter than four minutes, and while LP are one of my favourite bands so obviously having such short songs doesn't hinder my enjoyment of them too much, I do find myself gravitating towards the ones you mentioned. Many of my favourite LP songs are of course under four minutes long, but I personally think it's one of the many reasons why an album like ATS is so strong, even a relatively simple song like Iridescent has the breathing room to properly grow from start to finish, due to its almost 5 minute run time. Again, it doesn't need to be 7 or 8 minutes long, but even those thirty or forty extra seconds over the four minute mark give a song space to breath for me, to have that twenty second instrumental break after the first chorus, or that piano outro, just so it doesn't feel completely packed in. As much as I love LP's music, this is literally my only wish for the new album.
Very good points here, I agree. Hopefully the new album will feature some more advancement in this direction. It currently feels like it could very well do so.
There was a time where I thought we would have the first single by the end of June. Oh how wrong I was.
How could I forget those two? No More Sorrow is heavily underrated IMO. People throw it into the same pile as their nu-metal music for no reason. But that live intro is indeed bone-chilling and they need to bring it back.
Oh, the NMS intro is fucking awesome. E: https://www.youtube.com/user/linkinparktv/playlists?sort=dd&shelf_id=9&view=50 LPTV is just sorted by the years.
No More Sorry definitely shows a new level of song-writing compared to the nu-metal stuff, but the stuff on THP just blew it away imo. The live intro is awesome, but there's not much going on in it after you've heard it a couple of times, no detail to appreciate, like the intricate electronic sounds of ATS, or Rob's awesome drumming in THP. For that reason I don't think it's on the same level as these other heavy hitters we're talking about. What I appreciate about both NMS and Given Up is how compelling they are for having so few elements compared to other LP stuff. It's basically just guitarz and drums but it sounds really full and awesome.
[video=youtube;PJW2Iasm6tY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJW2Iasm6tY[/video] Something I found from the Linkin Park reddit. It's actually really good!
Sometimes, I think to myself about how the band that made "Burn It Down" went on to make "Guilty All The Same" and "Keys To The Kingdom"