One thing I love about the song is the lack of power chords and distortion, the guitar is just nice and warm, it doesn't overwhelm you and bury other sounds in the mix. It's nothing spectacular, but it's the direction I want LP to go in the future, less power chords and distortion, more interesting sounds, progression and melodies with the guitar instead. Valentine's Day is another good example. A simple but nice melody repeated, complimented by bass, piano, drums and other sounds, until the end when it gets all Linkin Parky and a wall of noise. There's so much more to guitar than dunununununun, that style of guitar playing would put me to sleep, there's just nothing at all interesting about it to me.
I think that's the case on "A Thousand Suns" as a whole. The guitars never drown out anything else in the mix, more interesting elements remain up front
I find distortion to be an interesting sound. So many different kind of distortion, different distortion pedals, different tones. Burning in The Sky 4x4 drums are boring as hell. But I'm missing the point. Which is, I don't agree with this thread. Dayum.
The thing about distortion to me is that coming up with a tone with distortion is fairly easy. Finding interesting clean tones is more difficult. I always tend to fall back on Frusciante-era RHCP on this subject. Look at Californication and By The Way. Lots and lots of interesting clean tones that really bring out intricacies of playing that you can't really show with distortion. With distortion, about 90% of the time it's "CRANK THE NOISE AND PLAY THE CHORDS/RIFFS". Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, I love rocking out to songs of that nature. But I appreciate a unique clean tone more than Distortion Variation #1000.
Oh sure, that is true. I do agree with that. However, op is a tiny bit pessimistish about the interest of distortion "dunununun" altogether. But as much as I dig cool clean tones, sometimes a gritty distorted one is the best option. Of course not all the time, but sometimes.
I also like distorted guitars. Of Course. But I freaking love the guitar in BITS. But it's not only because it has a nice clean tone. For me, it's also connected to the nice melody and the dreamy mood it creates in the context of the song. In fact, BITS is one of the songs, if not the one, which made me fall in love with LP in the first place.
Nice to hear that. For me, it was a friend who just obtained ATS and played it frequently while we met. Amusingly, at that time, he didn't even like ATS that much and preferred their older stuff. But the album got me hooked nevertheless.
Please never say those four words together in a sentence ever again. But in all seriousness, BITS isn't the best guitar work on an LP record IMO. It's good, but in general I actually prefer the guitar on THP. It just seems more intricate and complex to me than anything else, to be honest. Love the guitar solo, though. Easily one of their best.
Burning In The Skies is pretty beautiful, though In Pieces, Iridescent, and The Little Things are all arguably equal IMO. That said, Guilty All The Same is the pinnacle of Linkin Park's guitar work. Every guitar riff serves a purpose in the track, rather than just being heavy for heavy's sake.
Oh yeah. Bridge riff is monster. Intro riff also is. Even the powerchord progression during the chorus is pretty neat! And the solo actually is decent.
BITS is probably is Brad's most subtly good parts he's written so far. It's all finger-picked and the chords work wonderfully with the song. Easily the best guitar part on ATS.