I don't think it's a big deal. LP is as good as they have always been. And I don't think they are playing less for using playbacks. I know of a band that has two songs, one with an organ at the beginning and one with a synthesizer. The synthesizer and organ are playbacks for live performances. The organ was originally played for real (like not electronic sound), but at concerts it was too hard to have to play it every time. Because it was a very complex part. If they didn't have these ate the beginning of both these songs they wouldn't be as good. The intro builds up and makes it better! So, it's a good thing they put it in the studio versions as well as the live versions. Keep in mind many people consider this band to be one of the great bands ever as well as one of the greatest live bands ever. Most people think they are a better live band than studio band. One of the members of the band thought so too. So, with all of this said you can have playbacks at live concerts and still be fucking amazing. It doesn't mean you are being lazy.
excellent point - however, when you have a band that mixes a DJ, synthetic sounds, live drumming, programmed drumming, live guitars and samples from speeches etc. there really is no way of producing that live without some form of playback. I imagine rob is on a click. i have no problem with this, so long as it doesn't step over into miming. I read an interview with Within Temptation, who use a click track and playback for ALL songs. They basically said that, to sound like the record they needed strings/a full orchestra. They couldn't afford to tour with one so the options were to make the songs sound true to the cd by using playback, or playing songs that would end up so far away from the CD they were hard to recognise.....
A click is, of course, necessary and it's only the band who will hear the click track which they need. This discussion is more about what comes out for the audience to hear. Hardly any of this stuff is news to me; as I said before, the only thing that surprised me was finding that out the band has pre-recorded vox on playback, and I quickly came to terms with that since it's really just for, like, backing parts for backing parts which are done live.