Meteora Dissection

tkd_rap · Dec 17, 2003

Originally posted by Will@Dec 15 2003, 09:29 AM
Before I make this post, keep in mind that I am a Linkin Park fan… obviously. However, as a Linkin Park fan, I feel it is my right to give my opinions on their work. Meteora, in my opinion, wasn’t nearly as great as the hype surrounding it. When the band first announced Meteora, there was so much hype around it that it was almost impossible to not like it when it first came out. I’ll admit that I was very much in love with Meteora for the first few months I was listening to it. However, after a while, I began to grow very bored of it. Too many songs are about the same thing lyrically. A lot of the guitars on the album are very boring—the most complex guitar, “From The Inside,” was written by Phoenix. The song structures are the biggest downfall of the album. With almost every song following the same structure (intro > riffs > verse > chorus > verse > chorus > bridge > chorus > outro), the album gets very boring fast in terms of how each song is set up. I suppose I could be like every other “dedicated” or “hardcore” fan and say that Meteora is better than Hybrid Theory (you should see the LPU), but I’m not going to be like them and wear a mask. I’m going to do a little something like what jmoney on the LPU did (he’s also a member here, but doesn’t post much) and detail my opinions on Meteora.

Lyrics
When I first heard “Don’t Stay,” I thought the lyrics were amazing. After a while, I began to realize that it seems as though the lyrics of this song were written in the span of an hour. It was as if they were actually going for another “One Step Closer” with the lyrics. The chorus is absolutely terrible. Instead of repeating the same thing twice and changing one line, why not go all out and write a full chorus? The choruses on Hybrid Theory were amazing, but there isn’t one amazing chorus on Meteora. The chorus of “Somewhere I Belong” is almost a rip-off of “A Place For My Head,” where Mike splits Chester’s singing apart. I can almost guarantee that the first chorus they wrote for “Somewhere I Belong” was the best chorus, but Don Gilmore said, “No, make it catchier!” When you hear a song like “High Voltage” or “Dedicated,” you’ll expect Mike’s lyrics on “Nobody’s Listening” to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Wrong. The lyrics on that song are terrible. A song like “Figure.09” (which originally had singing verses) has amazing lyrics. The fact that Mike’s verse is unpredictable is something that hooks the listener. It’s apparent that “Figure.09” would’ve been just like “One Step Closer” had the singing verses been kept. It’s sad, though, that they completely ripped off the bridge of “By Myself’ in “Figure.09.” It’s apparent that Gilmore took control of this record. It’s apparent he just wants money. He forced the band to re-write a LOT of lyrics on this disc, and because of that, they’re very simple and very basic. There are plenty of other lyrical deficiencies on this album, but I think I’ve said enough on that for now.

Instruments
One of the reasons Linkin Park doesn’t get respect from “metalists” is because their instruments aren’t very complex, either. “Forgotten” is an amazing song by way of guitar, and yet it seems that LP forgot all that on Meteora. A lot of the songs use bar- and power-chords, which gets very boring after a while. There isn’t very much actual “plucking” like on “A Place For My Head” or “Forgotten.” Also, LP needs to completely lose bar- and power-chords. They also need to either lose the rhythm guitar or just get a second guitarist. They also need to turn the damn bass up! You can almost never hear Phoenix on any of the songs. “Easier To Run” is about the only song you can really hear Phoenix’s bass clearly in. (Yes, Derek, I know if “you’re a bassist you can hear the bass,” but for those of us who aren’t bassists, you can’t hear it at all.) Phoenix is a very talented musician (perhaps the second most talented in LP behind Mike) and can obviously write very complex bass tabs and complex guitar (a-la “From The Inside”), but you can never hear the guy. It’s as if he’s just a prop on stage when they play, because you can never hear him. Rob also needs to start playing more complex drum patterns. If you ever actually listen, the drums in the verses are the same pattern over and over again, and the drums in the choruses are the same over and over again. They might as well just lose Rob and play a drum-machine live, because all the drums are is loops! I also think LP needs to add more orchestral and keyboard elements to their songs. “Breaking The Habit” is an amazing song, but the orchestra in the background is turned down! What’s the sense of having the orchestra on the song if you can barely hear it? The casual listener isn’t going to hear those strings because they’re not loud. LP also needs to have more keyboard/piano in their songs, because the songs that DO have them are absolutely fantastic (“In The End,” for example).

Song Structure
This is the thing that really bugs me. Almost every song is set up the exact same way. You hear the intro samples, which are really cool, then you hear a big, crashing riff that gets the song going. Then you get a verse sometimes followed by a pre-chorus. Then you get your chorus and you’re back to the verse again. Once the chorus goes off for the second time, you’re immediately at the bridge (which comes in too early on a lot of songs on Meteora), and you’re right back in the chorus again. Then you get the outro, which is basically just the chorus twisted up a bit. If LP can get away from the formula a little bit, while still keeping the same rap-rock hybrid, it would be insanely amazing. Songs like “Forgotten,” “A Place For My Head,” “Easier To Run,” “Crawling” and “And One” display that LP can be amazing without following the same song structure every single time they play a song. If they just splice it up a bit, it would be great. They could also start mixing the verses up: They could have a song where the first verse is rapping, the second is singing, and even throw in a third verse that is rapping and singing before ever getting to the bridge of the song. If LP could do these different things with the structures, they’d be respected a bit more and the songs would have more life to them.

The band obviously put a lot of work and effort into this album, but sometimes I feel that it was rushed in a way. A lot of songs sound as if they were written in a week and just thrown onto the record. I realize that they were a little scared to take too many big risks with the album, but they shouldn’t worry what the critics think. All that matters is what their fans think of them. If they start worrying about the critics, that’ll be their real downfall, and they’ll never be able to recover. They need to add more to their sound. Rap-rock is a dying genre, but LP is the only band still sticking with it because they’re the only band that can make it work. Rage Against The Machine started it (supposedly), limpbizkit made it better, and Linkin Park perfected it. LP can still keep the rap-rock hybrid, but they need to mix things up a bit and make it so their songs aren’t so predictable. Like I said, I loved Meteora when I first heard it, but in the past few months, I’ve grown quite bored of it lyrically and structurally (but I still listen to it all the time). The only real reason I still listen to it is because of the energy in some songs (“Don’t Stay,” “Figure.09,” “Faint”). LP perfected the genre of rap-rock, now they just need to take it to the next level and keep it from dying.
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will, i agree with most thing you said there, man you hit right on, it bothered me a whole heck of alot when they turrned down the orchistra and then, using the same song pattern!!!! two things they need to change for the next one, listen to "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by the verb, and thats what a rokc song with a orchistra should sound like! lp screwed it up, or don gilmore

Trumtram · Dec 17, 2003

Originally posted by J Money@Dec 17 2003, 12:00 AM

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--0----3----8----5----7------0----3----8----5----7----------------------------
--0----3----8----5----7------0----3----8----5----7----------------------------
--0----3----8----5----7------0----3----8----5----7----------------------------
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hmm, nice! it could be right, i mean musically it's just an advanced Db5 with the Gb and Hb fret, but it's not even more complicated to play.

in addition: if so, it's not brad's part, mike plays the rhythm.

slammer800 · Dec 19, 2003

Great review. The thing with Linkin Park is that is almost every song they do or in every song they do, they have an intro and a song that sounds the same from the rest of the songs on that cd. In a few of the songs you can really here the guitar and in some you cant. The cd with the most guitar sound is in Hybrid Theory, Meteora doesnt have quite as much bass to it becuase when LP released Hybrid Theory, at the time they had been a heavy metal band and now they are just an alternative rock band that makes good music and makes there fans want to listen to it. The songs with the most bass I think is-"One step Closer","Hit The Floor", maybe "Faint" and a few others in Hybrid Theory.

I just hope that the band comes out with a cd that has some MORE NEW songs to show the world becuase they have 3 cds with the same songs, "Hybrid Theory", "Reanimation", and "Live in Texas". LP is kewl!

LiveInCalifornia · Jan 10, 2004

I think Meteora is a great album. One of my favorite albums of all time, if not my favorite. But no album is perfect and either is Meteora. The biggest flaw with Meteora are the lyrics. They are simple and repeated throughout the album. Some lyrics are still very good like BTH and Figure.09

As its been said many times, a band has there entire life to craft their debut album, but only ~ three years to right the next. I think this defienetly happened on Meteora where the song sounded great but it was hard to find the perfect lyrics to go along with it. A lot of you seem to blame this on Don Gilmore. Did you forget that he also produced Hybrid Theory? They probably did little different in the studio, and I dont think Don became a crazy over-demanding-force song rewrite crazy type of a guy in a couple of years.

Im a huge fan of Linkin Park and I can't wait for their next album. For the next album I thing they need to:
Lenghten the songs and change up the structute
Concentrate on writing great lyrics, no matter now long it takes them
Make it more then 12 (I know meteora was 13 but foreword doesnt really count) songs
Do another all rap song with a new type of rare sample and much better lyrics

Jamie · Jan 10, 2004

Instruments

I think that they need to explore more with instuments and lyrics. They should write a new album that uses more chords that the boring power-chords. I know all the songs on guitar for LP, too easy. More complex chords and riffs would make me sit for hours to learn it. Maybe, dare I say it, they need a new guitarist and maybe add a solo or two in it to create something new. Maybe that way they can breathe life into the dying rap-rock genre.

Lyrics

Lyrically they deffinantly need to stop using the same pattern. It gets very boring, maybe they should try, intro, verse, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, solo, outro? That would deffinantly sound more interesting than the organization they use now.

Volume

Whats the point in having all the other things in, such as the orchastra when you can't hear the damn thing? There is just no point. I don't play bass, so I sure as hell can't hear Pheonix. Turn up the damn volume on his bass!

Production

They need to lose Don Gilmore, he hasn't got a clue about rap. We would deffinantly have way better rap lyrics from Mike. Self-produce the album if they have to. As long as that monkey doesn't have anything to do with it. There sound is way to clean and polished. They need to toughen it up a bit, open a new harder and heavier world to all 'metallers'.

erasethepain · Jan 10, 2004

Lyrically they deffinantly need to stop using the same pattern. It gets very boring, maybe they should try, intro, verse, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, solo, outro? That would deffinantly sound more interesting than the organization they use now.

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That's more for the guitar than it is for the lyrics. A lot of people blame Rob because the drums follow the same pattern aswell - but if the guitar and samples are verse-chorus-verse then they have no other choice really.

Neil · Jan 10, 2004

Remember when I posted this awhile ago? I did a diagram.. I can't find it though. But in a sense, Meteora lacked originalness unlike HT

Alacrity · Jan 10, 2004

Originally posted by Mark@Dec 15 2003, 02:36 PM
Great review. *thumbs up*

Lyrics
Hybrid Theory
Hybrid Theory has some amazing, amazing lyrics. An example is "A little peice of paper with the picture drawn, floats on down the street til the wind is gone, and the memory now is like the picture was then, when the paper's crumpled up, it can't be perfect again" from Forgotten. Every song on HT had lyrics which ran together well, contained deeper meanings, and had metaphors/imagery behind them to make the song a great thing to listen to and conceptualize. The songs would start off with one subject, branch off into different subjects, then close up with the original topic of the song. Many of the lyrics could apply to many of our daily feelings and emotions, this is what made HT so amazing. Papercut was about paranoia, One Step Closer was about bottling up anger, Crawling is about having a problem with yourself (Chester said this in an interview), Runaway is about getting the truth behind things, By Myself is about isolation and questioning, etc.....
Meteora
On Meteora, almost every line is about the exact same subject. They need to branch out more with the lyrics. Instead of dwelling on pain constantly in every line, branch out into other subjects! Metaphors make music deeper too, so try that too! It's like every song could be put into one huge track and you wouldn't realize that there was a change lyrically.

And the others....

As for Drums, I think Rob improved over the course of Meteora's production. Breaking The Habit, Faint and Easier To Run are all good examples of this.

Guitars are just more of the same from HT. Crunching riffs. Numb and In The End have almost the exact same riffs. It's just one held down note for a few seconds followed by another riff the same length, but lower or higher. There's no acoustic guitars either and I think that'd sound cool. I don't know much about octaves or arpeggios or anything like that so I won't try to say I know what I'm talking about. . They need to branch out and experiment more! Solos! More complexed riffs! Anything!

I don't really know how you can improve upon DJ'ing and scratching, so Joe did fine on both albums.

And bass needs to be turned up more, I agree with Will. I need to change my equalizer settings if I ever want to hear bass on Meteora.

Blood on the Dashboard: Don't ever call someone not a fan if they feel like constructively criticising their favorite band because they know they can do better. He's speaking up and saying that LP can be better than this and any "real" fan would notice how their potential isn't being reached. It's an opinion and he's allowed to have one.
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I agree with just about everything he said.

I think that LP really needs to touch on different subjects other than Pain and stuff like they've focused on before, because like it has been previously stated, the lyrics are getting a little repetitive(sp?). I like Meteora because they did experiment with different things, but I do think that if they could really reinvent and build on what they have already did then it would make a big difference.

*Hopes she made sense*

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Meteora Dissection

tkd_rap Banned

Trumtram Well-Known Member

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LiveInCalifornia Member

Jamie Super Member LPA Super Member

erasethepain Well-Known Member

Neil Super Duper Member LPA Super Member

Alacrity don't stop talking to me; i haven't been listening LPA Super Member

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