I have recently been listening to alot of LP demos and these two kept my attention Forgotten VS The Demo (with Mark?) and A Place For My Head Vs Esaul(either version of it) in both of these examples i think thats Mike's rapping on the demos are alot better then they are on the finished studio recordings. more so in Forgotten's demo. and the Chrous in both of them are alot better on the HT. and i was posting to see if anyone else feels the same way and what are your opinions on this matter.. DISCUSS
I liked the demo's more in a lot of cases just because they sounded raw-er. Kinda more experimental, more angry. The production on all LP albums (especially Meteora) really zaps out the energy.
I think the lyrics were simplified, in those cases, to make the songs more easily relatable. That might not always be the right way to get there but the band obviously saw it could work at the time. The lyrics on the demo's are certainly more interesting and more intriguing to me but, a lot of the time, they just don't click with me. Sonically, yeah, "Hybrid Theory" (and, by extension, "Meteora") had a very studio-polished sound, which, at that point, pretty much became Don Gilmore's signature sound. I take it that Don Gilmore's signature sound was pretty much born from his working with Linkin Park on their debut album, but I'm not totally sure. All I know is, I've heard several records that he's done since "Hybrid Theory", and they all have a marked resemblance in sound to that album, usually in terms of the rhythm sections. If the band had been given access to gear that they had when they created "Hybrid Theory", back in 1998 while they creating demo's as Hybrid Theory (i.e. without Don Gilmore and without record label pressure) ... would they have created the same sound they had on the debut? Probably not. Don Gilmore and Linkin Park seem to have influenced each other pretty heavily, both walking out of the "Hybrid Theory" sessions with a new signature sound. Were it not for Linkin Park, I think Don Gilmore-produced records would sound pretty different, and vice-versa. Anyway, that studio-polished (supposedly "nu-metal") sound, clearly present on the first two studio albums, contrasts so heavily with the raw sound of the Hybrid Theory demo's that it's not even funny. Obviously, they weren't loaded when they made those demo's and that played a huge part in the raw sound you hear on them, and they didn't have the expensive gear you hear at work in the debut, nor the producer who would help them further flesh out their sound with said gear. Which is better, between Shinoda-produced demo's and Don Gilmore-produced albums? That would depend on what you're after in a song.
I like Part of Me demo over the final cut. All the other demos are inferior to their final versions IMO.
The production values on some of their demos are awful, and some of the lyrics they eventually got rid of are just fromage-ridden. Not that they're usually a great band lyrically anyway but yeah.
I liked alot of the demos over some of the final products because because I guess (especially for Mike) you can hear alot more emotion during their delivery> and i think thats why I like the demos alot because on HT Mike sounded like a robot while delivering his parts
Both HT and MTM, as far as the production and mixing is concerned, are examples of polished albums done right for the most part. Meteora though is one of the most ridiculously overproduced albums I've ever heard, and rawer demos from that period would probably be preferable to the album itself just because of that.
Definitely. Meteora is horrible, production wise. Also, even though HT and MTM are okay, I would prefer a rawer sound. I don't like polish. I've never had an album where I went "this should be more polished".
I think that the Part Of Me and Carousel demos are the only ones I prefer over the studio recordings. There are certain aspects of some of the demos that I reckon would have been better placed in the final versions (e.g. some of the lyrics in The Untitled are much better than the lyrics in the final version of In The End IMO) but for the most part I think the band got the songs spot on.
Yeh, I agree on most part on what everyone else had said. I've always been puzzeled why everyone loves Don Gilmore so much. And Its due to him why loved the HT EP way more than HT & Met. It was just LP and there sound and style where completly unquie. But I do agree that some of the demo where a bit rough in my opinion, Though I reckon HT would have been absolute perfection if they did the following (IMO).... The dark and melancholy verse lyrics in the "in the end" untitled demo The awesome "time to sink or swim" bridge in the "PoA" demo The terrific "Raindrops..." freestyle in the bridge of the "Crawling" demo The chilling "CUT MYSELF FREE" scream from the "part of me" demo The background vocals and verse lyrics from "Esaul" P4MH demo Oh, added awesomenesses they should have kept in should have been the "ARGGHH I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!!!!!" from the "Crawling" Demo and the "so, what do you think?" whisper from the "by myself" demo
I think this has been discussed before in another thread, but the Part of Me and Carousel demos were actually recorded AFTER the ones seen on the HT EP.
Yeah, we know that. Was it because the band was dissatisfied with the versions on the EP? I prefer the post-EP cut of "Part Of Me" for the screaming during the pre-chorus and the singing during the bridge, and I like post-EP version of "Carousel" for the bridge also. But the versions on the EP seem like they had more time spent on them, mix-wise.
I agree with this 100%. I can't get over the awesomeness that is the bridge of Crawling. They should have totally kept that in.
the "hidden" esaul live recording on 'pancake festival' is raw and rugged. i don't know what it is, but chester's voice sounds even more amazing than usual. regarding 'crawling' demo... the 'raindrops beat the rhythm on the pavement' verse obviously doesn't completely fit the meaning of the song; however, the flow is uber cool. imo