Hamburg Press Conference Audio

BlackChester.de have uploaded audio from today's pre-listening event / press conference which you can read the highlights below (be careful, possible ATS spoilers) or check out in full here.

- They wanted to make ATS to be experienced as a whole, joking that they wanted to make it one single 48 minute track.

- How they don't think any less of Hybrid Theory, it gets boring replaying the same sound and they wanted to push themselves to create new music.

- They talk about how they try to focus on what they want to do, citing that people may love Hybrid Theory, and they do too, but they don't want to recreate previous albums anymore as they did with Hybrid Theory & Meteora, which they refer to as brothers.

- They're aware some fans got into them because of loud guitar sounds, and they like that sound too, but they're still the same guys who made that music and hope the fans are willing to listen to ATS more than once and not be put off after one listen.

- They refer to Breaking The Habit as the game changer, allowing them to be different. Made them realize they could be as creative as they liked.

- Mike talks about how they started recording the most un-commercial material ever starting with The Catalyst, and they wanted to stick with that through the whole ATS process.

- More promotion to come in LA, possibly the light show.

- Talks about how Rick pushed them to use a process called "automatic writing" as seen during Blackout which Mike describes as an "electronic beat with screaming over it", described the process as academic until Rick said it should be about the emotion, allowing them to not overthink the lyrics and come up with the sounds and harmony first.

- Mike talks about the rap verses on "Waiting For The End", and how he used the same process, didn't write lyrics until the melody was down.

- Mike talks about the contrast between songs / interludes. He said they worked a lot on making the songs weave together.

- Discusses how The Requiem, The Radiance & Burning In The Skies were made to fit together, and intentionally makes the listener wait until Burning In The Skies kicks in to give the full picture.

- Intentional silence of 5 seconds at one point in the album, a lot of work went into that, testing 2-3-4 second intervals to see which worked best, joking that Joe went against them saying it should be anything from 0 - 100 seconds.

- Martin Luther King Jr. Speech - Wisdom, Justice And Love.

- Wanted to create multiple layers / metaphorical / literal meanings, it was intentional for the listener to have different interpretations. They don't want to tell you what it means, they want to leave it open.

- It's not about preaching, not meant to tell you what to think, it's intended to raise questions for the listener, not about politics.

- They talk about getting creative with their instruments in order to accommodate the new sounds live. Mike talks about just because Dave usually plays bass, doesn't mean he will for every song on tour, he also cites Rob's piano playing ability for the live shows, saying it's a possibility.

- Not Alone - liked the music, didn't like the lyrics, found them boring, didn't connect to them. Rewrote the lyrics, and everything when the Haiti DTD came up. Saying this emotionally charged them to re-write it.

- Mike didn't know we had heard Pretend To Be yet.

- LPUX - Almost every song is a demo - 10 tracks - Dave jokes it took them 10 years to figure it out that this is what the fans want. One demo pre-dates Hybrid Theory.

- LPUX - They're not trying to make the price extra high. The LPU is going to be big this year.

- They don't like moving back to old demos and material when they have moved on from it. Going back to old uncooked songs doesn't excite them when they have moved on in the creative and writing process.

- Mike stresses again that ATS is not about politics, and talks about how Oppenheimer had his own greatest talent turned against him and everybody when he created the atomic bomb, focusing more on the person, the psychology behind it, saying not to take ATS at face value.

- ATS isn't meant to be preachy. They want the listener to reach their own conclusions about ATS and themes running through it.

Source: blackchester.de

 

No problem, I figured some people may not have time to listen.

 

A lot of good info, thanks Blackchester!

 

Good thinking, there's a lot of crazy drivers out there.

 

hahha, me?