A complex and/or intricate riff does not necessarily a good song make. Again, not defending Brad's guitar playing skills, as they are indeed average at best. But the parts written for those songs are exactly what they needed to be. For every amazingly played guitar song you can name, I can name 10 great songs with ridiculously simple guitar parts that fit the song.
I agree wth your point. I have no question about it actually, great guitar skill doesn't necessarily culminate in good music. Sometimes a simple yet effective riff might be much more successful than a complex one. No argument in that regard. Our discussion was about Brad Delson as a guitar player, and I said from what I'd heard of him over the years I thought he wasn't a good guitarist and it seems like we both agree with that point. Of course, you could always make a case for Linkin Park's music not being about complexity, and it is true, but what I've always wondered about is that perhaps if Brad was a better player, Mike and the rest of the band would have more faith in him and use his skills much more in their records, and as result, we would hear better guitar work in LP albums than what we have so far. And of course, there's always room for improvement, Brad is a young man anyway, maybe in a few years time he will become a much better player. If I want to name a song, I can make a case for Qwerty. I still believe it's one of the best guitar works I've ever heard from Brad, and I think it was played brilliantly.
I think we can all agree on this: Brad makes average to good riffs, awful solos, but somehow it sounds good in Linkin Park. And he could definitely do better.
His solos aren't awful, since they were the first he broke out on a studio album. That doesn't make them phenonomal though. His riffs, yes average to good.
I hate how guitar players are like "yeah man I can play it so it's not complicated and therefore it sucks".
I will honestly say, guitar solos are great only if they add to the song. Otherwise, they are completely unnecessary(like 50% of all in existence) and are just a way for the band to say "hey look at us, we can play the guitar very well and are trying to get street cred and join the club" I respect the band who have the balls not to rely on such simply staples to make a good song. I am never impressed with how great a vocalist can scream. I am never impressed with how moody and grungy and complicated and deep lyrics to a song is. I am never impressed with how heavy a song is. I am never impressed by guitar solos. I am never impressed with how long a song is. What impresses me is how well everything complements the song and how well the song is put together and sounds. Adding a guitar solo to a mediocre song isn't going to change it mediocrity. If at all, it would just be that awful song with the awesome guitar solo. Making a song 6 minutes to get some cred that is bad will only end up being a 6 minuted song that is bad instead of a 3 minute song that is bad. In regards to Linkin Park, why i prefer them to say a band like Tool is because they are musicians who don't let stuff like "a good rock band has guitar solos and heavy distorted guitars, and screaming and "deep"(and i use that word loosely) complicated lyrics that no one understands. They go with what makes a great song? Their template isn't about the individual pieces but about how it all comes together and how it should. And i for one love that method better. I tried listening to Tool a few years back and got so bored and frankly annoyed. I couldn't form any sort of connection with their music. Non of the elements impressed me. Rock music has so many different sounds under that umbrella to the point that expecting a sort of uniform is insane. I for one let the sound of the music lead me instead of a built in formula.
Agreed. That's why I think TLTGYA's solo is very good, it's complementary & fits the song to a T. Not completely agreed. I can be impressed by individual elements of a song, but that won't make it an impressive or good song. Like Given Up. Impressive vocal work, awful song. Complexity for the sake of it will probably end up boring. But that does not mean complexity = boring. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to push your skills and explore you instrument. That's an invalid criticism as Tool aren't a band that do that. They don't put things in songs because of a pre-defined formula (or indeed because someone else told them to. Hi Meteora!), they do it because that's what the song calls for. That's all they've ever done. LP on the other hand didn't really make "serving the song/ignoring what the label wants" their main MO until recently. To directly adress your points: - Tool don't have guitar solos in every song. Adam Jones (Tools guitarist) doesn't even play conventional or technical solos. In fact his playing style is pretty minimalist and simple (generally not much more difficult than what Brad plays), focusing more on creating moods. - MJK doesn't scream in every song. In fact he screams in relatively few songs. -Re: Lyrics, snark all you want, but MJK as a lyricist is so far beyond Mike & Chesters combined efforts it's not even funny. There's great wit, intellect, insight & sincerity in his stuff. Why is it a bad thing if you need to make a little effort to understand it? -Yes, they use distorted guitars (not exclusively, might I point out). Guitar isn't even a main focus in the music, said focus is spread pretty evenly on every member. But I honestly don't know how that could possibly be a criticism? A Prog Metal band using dist. guitars? Shocking! It's not that a band uses something, it's how they use it. Jones has a very unique tone. As do the other members of Tool on their respective instruments. You just described Tool's approach more accurately than LP's. You shouldn't criticise someone for doing something when you don't even know if that's what they do. You don't like [what you remember of] Tool. Perfectly fine. But you're criticism is far more suited to what LP used to be, obviously not the solos bit, but the general attitude of doing things because of a pre-defined idea of how a song "should" be built, not what Tool have ever been. You just went on at lenght about how individual elements don't impress you...
I'm still baffled how people criticise Tool. I understand how people dislike or even hate them, but they are one of the best bands out there. Their drummer and vocalist are arguably one of the bests of all time.
Touche. You can have that one on the Tool parts anyways(LP is up in the air). Maybe it would have been more accurate to say, i never connected with their finished product. Art is subjective and music is the most subjective of them all next to paintings. It's very relative. Not only did i try listening to Tool, i saw them live which only happened because they were playing along with LP and Alice in Chains at Epicenter. And i still regret staying after LP against my better judgement.(maybe i was hoping to be entranced by the performance? After all, I never liked Bleed it Out until i heard it live) It wasn't a bad performance. It was just that their music failed to ignite a single flame of passion in me. I was bored to tears. It doesn't matter to me how good a musician is if what they play doesn't register with me. I usually make it a habit of never wasting my time talking about bands i don't like. If i don't like their music, i forget they exist until they make something i connect with unless my displeasure is the singer's voice then that will never happen. So this will be the only time i get into my dislikes. I know LP have their flaws. So does every other band because surprise surprise, bands are made up of human beings who are by nature imperfect beings. But i don't waste time discussing LP's flaws because the parts about them that i like outweighs the flaws. So it may look like from here on out that i never criticize LP or whatever, but it is not because i think they're perfect and can do no wrong like some dimwitted people spew, but because i am more enamored with their best features and prefer to discuss that. I would never join a fan forum to discuss how much i think a band makes shitty music or disappointed me(because i wouldn't even be here) or their music now sucks or whatever moaning people usually do.
So you do accept LP are not a perfect band and have flaws, but choose not to discuss them? You think it's a waste of time? Great. But why making such a lenghty post trying to invalidate other people's opinions? Your post seems to be just a really long way to say "I thinks it's ok we all have different opinions, except when you say something bad about something I like." We all know the good parts of LP outweigh the bad ones, actually this is one of the few threads where something negative is said about the band or their skill as musicians. The rest of the forum is all about praising their albums, their songs and pretty much everything LP does. So I don't think there's nothing wrong if we make one thread to talk about how some of us think Brad's guitar work is not that good, because all of us are fans, and some earnest criticism doesn't make us any less fans.
I don't think most people are saying they should play wankier music anyway, just that as they develop their songwriting and whatever it stands to reason that they should develop their instrument playing as well.
Which is completely fine. I just wanted to point out that Tool aren't one of those bands you were describing.
And they have, to a certain extent. I remember back when it was a novelty to see Mike playing keyboards on stage, there was a time when the only songs he did that on were My December and Numb (and a little later, Breaking the Habit). Now he's working keyboard parts (piano or otherwise) into a ton of their material. It used to be like...if they needed an extra instrumentalist for whatever reason, they'd give Mike a guitar or put him behind the keys, just to fill out the sound. Now he's just as much of an instrumentalist as the other guys, minus Chester. Rob's drumming has improved by leaps and bounds over the past couple albums, even though ATS doesn't have a ton of live drumming on it, what's there is quality stuff (When They Come For Me, the endings of Iridescent and The Catalyst). I just think with ATS in particular, it's not much of a "guitar album." If LP's ever come close to that, it was on Minutes to Midnight. There was an abundance of catchy riff-driven stuff (Bleed it Out, Given Up, No More Sorrow) and songs with guitar solos/breaks (What I've Done, Shadow of the Day, In Pieces, TLTGYA) on that album. I'm sure guitar-focused stuff is something they'll come back around to in the future, as much as they like to experiment with new directions and sounds and instruments and stuff like that, I think they're smart enough to know that they're doing themselves just as much of a disservice by ignoring the untapped potential of stuff they already know how to do. Guitar-based rock has been around for a good 50 years or so, I don't think LP's exhausted everything they can possibly do with the instrument.