For being so short and reasonably safe, I'm impressed with From Zero's longevity. Usually by now I've stuck to a handful of favourites but every day I'm in the car, I play a different 20-minute burst from the record. I was worried recency bias was playing a part in my positive reaction to From Zero, but every track still sounds fresh. I'm especially impressed with The Emptiness Machine. Apart from GATS and The Catalyst, I've usually long abandoned the album's lead single by now due to fatigue. Good Things Go Overflow The Emptiness Machine
Yeah, I really re-discovered TEM after listening to the album for a while. I had put it to the side in a way, and focused on songs that were newer to me, but it's come back around as a top favourite in the context of the whole album
Considering the objective commercial success of the track (especially in that weird country "Germany"), coupled with my own subjective opinion that it's a banger, there's a claim to be made that TEM is LP's biggest/best song, which is wild to even say/think about
It's not that far-fetch I think. It's definitely up there as both one of their biggest song to date, and one of their most important song to date. Considering it hasn't even be out for half a year, it's bananas.
Numb and In The End will never be topped when it comes to popularity though, everyone knows those songs.
Think VICTIMIZED is too electronic-sounding for THP, but it definitely (and surprisingly) was its precursor, the initial seed indicating what would be the next direction LP would follow. It was not meant this way, as we know Mike first wrote a lot of poppy stuff after LT, before switching gears - but still, it happened. Even the riff on ALITS has a very similar groove and feel to what's heard on VICTIMIZED.
That is true. I guess I meant that not only is the more scream-heavy element very reminiscent of KttK, but the melodic vocals early on sound very similar to the melodic secitons of ALitS or MtG
"VICTIMIZED" to me will always be a brother to "Wretches and Kings," since the guitar samples they used for it came from the same sample bank they created during the ATS sessions to craft WAK.
Wretches and Kings would be an absolute top tier song if the first Savio recording was a separate interlude. And Mike's bridge was less repetitive... And maybe add a third chorus because Chester is fucking fire on this track but there's simply not enough of him. As it stands, it's perfect in the context of the album, but a slog to get through in a shuffled playlist. It's a worse song than the sum of its parts.
I think the faith of Two Faced breakdown is to become one of the biggest "pit pleaser" at LP shows. Wait for it. Shit goes hard.
It's been quite some time since I was last around. I just want to say that From Zero is a really really good album and Emily is doing an amazing job fronting the band. My favorite tracks off the album are Overflow, Casualty, Stained, Two-Faced and all the singles. Every song has something great to offer, but those are my standouts!