I don't expect them to, but I hope they do. The whole "second half of the year" we've been getting for the past two albums always translated to fucking June. And why? Because they'd announce they're headlining RaR or something 8 months in advance and then rush the album so they have new stuff to play. I guess I like the fact they're not doing the May/June European festivals, but setting a time limit like this on themselves is stupid. It's now January and the album is "mostly just piano, acoustic guitar and melodies". I know Linkin Park well enough to know that if this album comes out in July, it's not the best thing they could do with it. What I'm saying is, if Warner doesn't actually have them by the balls like they say they don't, fuck a deadline. When the album is finished, it's finished. If they do end up booking a summer tour, don't rush the album because of it. Play the old shit. Truth be told, 90% of the audience will be like "aw is this a new track?" when you play Final Masquerade. People come to those shows to hear In The End and Numb. All I want is them not to rush it out like they did with the last two.
Well, no festivals this year so no reason to rush for them. As i said earlier, i think it will be Late September/Earlie October... at the earliest.
It's funny because the band tends to be at their best with their softer intended albums ala MTM and ATS. They went for more energy and rock in the last two and they weren't as impressive. ATS and MTM may even have about the same amount of soft tracks by percentage.
If you take it song by song, though, the highlights are real highlights even if the albums might be mediocre as a whole. I don't know if it's really the sound that makes certain albums less "impressive" or whatever. I think it's more the songwriting approach, and there's an emphasis on that for this upcoming album like there was for "Midnight" and "A Thousand Suns", as opposed to just seeking a certain sonic aesthetic.
I still maintain there seems to be a high bias in favor of softer material on this forum though. For whatever reason, I can't even picture an energetic record ever being praised as the best one from the band. Because, really, aside maybe from the lyrics, I don't think records like MTM or ATS are more quality-records than THP. Hell, for both being rather organic records, THP is definitely far superior to MTM in term of technicality, regarding both drums and guitars. And I'd even say in term of songwriting, buth I'd get killed. With that said, I actually hope the band takes a really chill, soulful approach this time. Because it's always cool to have different styles of music for different moods. And because if anything, it would make THP more special and unique in the band discography.
Speaking of chill and soulful, there was a recent livestream with Mike Shinoda on Facebook where he mentioned that Chester is singing some "soulful" material, as in you can hear that it comes from the heart and has meaning. The band's different approach this time with putting earlier emphasis on vocal melodies, lyrics and chords could yield some interesting results, they haven't got anything beyond acoustic/piano instrumentation-wise so they're being open minded on the soundscapes that could form this album.
Well, I think it has less to softness and more to do with wholesomeness. For one thing, MTM and ATS were much more cohesive as whole albums. Living Things feel like a bunch of songs strung together compared to that and THP, to a lesser extent. They're a bit less consistent as a whole, if that makes sense. Individually, I love the songs as much as the ones on the other records but as an album, it all seems less impressive to me because of that. Didn't Mike or someone say that this sort of "cohesion" was very important to them in a early 2000s interview (iirc). Although this is a very subjective opinion.
Yep. I, for one, consider THP one of the band most cohesive record as far as having an overal sound direction, while I'd say both LT and MTM come at the bottom of that cohesion ranking.
For me, MTM's "messy" track order is its greatest strength. LT however, suffers from side one and side two feeling like somewhat different albums IMO.
Minutes to Midnight is an album I never grow tired of listening to because it serves just enough of everything at the right time. The execution is honestly perfect.
Eh. First half of MTM was pretty incoherent. I really love how the album ends though, and I do have a certain collected "feeling" on he album as a whole which I never really got with LT.
LT definitely was the worst in my opionion Album felt like 2 EP put together. MTM was kinda random with all the different sound directions, but in a way, it was cohesive in randomness, along with the material being all pretty organic.
When I judge an album, I judge it based on how much I like the individual songs, since I just pull all the songs into my iTunes and shuffle my library, I never listen to an album from front to back. So I loved the variety MTM and LT brought, and they both had a lot of amazing songs. I think that LT has some of their best songs, and some of their worst, so it was pretty inconsistent.
Exactly. I think that what's more important than the albums as bodies of work are the individual songs which they bring into LP's catalog.
But cohesion also makes an album stronger. A cohesive, well strung-together album with strong songs is a good album.