The first time I heard it I thought it was neat to hear a song with just Mike singing, now that novelty has worn off. I can't listen to it now, the guitar loop in the beginning gives me a headache. The last 1:40 of the song is pretty awesome though. Still, with that said I would still list it in my top 5 least favorite Linkin Park songs. It's probably my least played Linkin Park song besides HHH.
I was fascinated by No Roads Left the first time I heard it since I didn't know Mike could pull off those kinds of vocals. The way the music stops before the second and third choruses is amazing, though beyond that the song doesn't have too much to offer imo. It would be more interesting with one of their classic synth hooks or Chester in the bridge, but it's still good without. I'd take it over In Between any day.
Upon hearing it for the first time, I was amazed. Then I lost interest and just sorta forgot about it
As far as MtM era songs(that wasn't on MtM) go, QWERTY and What we don't know are great to me, NRL is more 'Eh, Mike sounds great on it but nothing else really'. Although, like Minuteforce, I procrastinate too so I find the lyrics relatable sometimes.
No Roads Left was great on the vocal end. But it seems that all the emphasis was put on that and the instrumentation is pretty boring to me. Had they stepped up on the instrumental end, it might have been a much better song. I mean, they just loop the bass and guitar throughout a lot of the song.
I honestly feel that No Road's Left is right where it belongs. It's a beautiful performance by Mike, but the instrumentation brings it down a few levels purely due to how repetitive it is (Although those live strings are nyyyyce). I'm glad that this and In Between paved the way for the band thinking a little more on the "Two Vocalists" side of things, rather than "You sing, you rap", and the evidence of this realization is clear on all of the band's albums afterwards, where Mike's singing presence has drastically increased throughout the track list.
Moving on to the next song, "What I've D-- oh. Wait. New Divide! "New Divide" is a song by Linkin Park recorded for Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, in 2009. After the huge success the first Transformers movie, along with "What I've Done" recieved, Linkin Park was a logical decision for Michael Bay. He approached the band asking them to write a new song for the movie. After the band accepted, Mike began working on new demos - "Optimus", "Megatron", "Starscream" and "Bumblebee", finally choosing "Megatron" as the best out of the bunch. The band kept working on the song, going through numerous lyrical ideas and reworks of the demo before getting to the final version of "New Divide". Later on, the band wrote various re-interpretations of the song with famous film composer Hans Zimmer, which were worked into the film. In addition to this, "NEST" off the Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen OST done by Steve Jablonsky, contains elements of "New Divide". Mike first hinted at the song on March 28, 2009 in his blog post, which said: On April 24, the band finally confirmed they would be doing a new song for the Transformers franchise, and the song itself was announced on May 5. A week later, a new Transformers trailer appeared online featuring all new music. This left fans wondering if that's new Linkin Park. And that night LPA founder Derek, along with a few other people, got a confirmation from no one other than Rob Bourdon itself that the trailer did contain the new Linkin Park song. The song was released on May 18, and oh boy, was it a hit. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at #6, becoming the bands highest debut on the chart, beating out "What I've Done" which entered the chart at #7 two years earlier. It stayed on top of the Alternative chart for 12 weeks. It is also one of the bands most critically acclaimed songs, with many critics praising the spacey synths and vibe of the song, along with the unmistakable vocal performance from Chester and the big, epic rock chorus. Mike later on said on the origin of the song in an interview with shockya.com: While in an interview with Time Out Hong Kong, Brad stated: The song starts with synths and tom drums as well as an atmospheric synth in the background. Soon enough, that classic Linkin Park sound is brought to the song, as a guitar line from Delson and a bass line from Phoenix kicks in, layered perfectly with the synths. Bennington opens the first verse, supported by sampled drums done by Joe Hahn and synths buried deep in the backgroud. The Linkin Park feel is brought back into the song in the chorus, as the song continues to follow the "What I've Done" formula. But hey, if it ain't broken, why fix it? The second verse is a step up from the first, with an added drumline from Rob Bourdon consisting solely of tom drums. The chorus kicks back in, and then we get what I consider to be the first taste of what the band would do with A Thousand Suns. A completely electronic, distorted part appears before the song kicks back in the bridge, followed by Chester singing the chorus again over a "No Roads Let"-like guitar riff. The song ends with the same synth it began with, and I can guarantee it left fans hungry for more at the time of it's release. The band had several re-writes for the song, but the lyrics that they chose in the end are really something special. Revolving around the imagery of a storm, "New Divide" has a dark, A Thousand Suns like feel to it, in terms of being futuristic and sci-fi inspired. But of course, they're open for anyone to interpret them. In the Making of New Divide LPTV episode, apart from the other demo's considered, Mike reveals that the first thing on the "Megatron" demo was a pattern of tom drums, which was later on re-worked, as it felt "really messy". The band worked on two options for the drums. The "live performance" done by Rob Bourdon and Mike Shinoda at NRG Studios, and the sampled drums Joe Hahn had arranged at his home. Through the song, both were used. In the video, we can also see Mike playing a piano version of the song to Chester (right after that horrible Bennoda moment underneath all those ballons), singing a different chorus. The video also has footage of Chester recording his vocals for the song, as well as doing a British version of the song, changing the lyrics to "as time began to blergh". Point of the post is, it's a funny video, go watch it. On May 13 and 14, 2009, a music video for "New Divide" was shot. It was directed by the bands turntablist Joe Hahn, and is heavily related to the movie. The video features the band performing together in the "Tomb of the Fallen", as well as separate shots of each band member performing, and some footage of various foods exploding because, you know... why not? Two versions of the video exist, one with scenes from Transformers and the other without those scenes. The version on Linkin Park's YouTube channel used to include the scenes, however through the past week, it was pointed out on several fansites that the video was replaced with the one without the scenes. The scenes of the girl shot with thermal lens are not of Megan Fox, but a different actress hired for the video. As seen in the Making of the New Divide Video, the atmosphere on the video shoot was nice and relaxed, with all the band members joking, some being funny and some just failing (I'm looking at you, Brad). The band was also physically tortured on set by the evil mastermind that is Joe Hahn, who decided two of his lead singers should have severe muscle inflammation and just be hurt for the next week. He tortured them by attaching them to strings and them pulling them around the room using them as marionettes, something he had previously done with Phoenix in the "Leave Out All The Rest" video. Despite the torture, the video was well recieved by both critics and fans. (wrong Transformers premiere, I know) Oh, live. Since it's release in 2009, the song was played in the vast majority of Linkin Park shows, if not all of them. It had it's live debut on June 17, 2009, during a rehearsal for the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen premiere, during which Mike also performed a cover of "Hot N Cold" by Katy Perry. The band mostly performs the song in it's original form, though they sometimes add short intros, like during the Red Square performance I posted above. Too many memorable performances of the song happened since it's live debut to count. It was featured on all... four, I think... MTV World Stage performances the band had (not counting various shorter ones). So instead of me telling you, you tell me what's your favorite performance of New Divide, okay? Go.
I remember not being terribly excited about the prospect of getting a single new LP song, even though I was happy about the idea of the band being more involved in the second "Transformers" movie than they were with the first. That escalation felt natural, which I couldn't say about LP's involvement with "Dark Of The Moon". We heard the song's intro in a teaser and I said to myself "we've practically heard the whole song - there's no way it could surprise me now" ... but, when we finally heard the song for the first time, a bunch of things jumped out at me. The most notable thing was the bridge, where the chorus instrumentation drops out and the gtr/keyboard sample loop kicks in. A bridge like that was pretty unexpected before "A Thousand Suns", I think Sonically, "New Divide" is definitely post-"Midnight"; it was another step band's departure from the sound of their earlier work. As many have generously pointed out over the years, it's similar in some ways to "What I've Done" but the differences between "New Divide" and the songs on "Midnight" are also fairly significant, in my opinion. The songs on "Midnight" showcase a raw sound that focuses on live instrumentation; "New Divide", in contrast, is built around electronic layers and shows a more production-heavy vibe that meshed distorted, lo-fi synths with thick, processed guitar tones and heavily-effected vocals. In a way, the band took the songwriting from "Midnight" and outfitted it with a kind of futuristic, sci-fi vibe and some new arrangement techniques which they'd never tried before thrown into the mix ... and which were all later explored further on "A Thousand Suns". "New Divide" conveniently serves as the middle-ground between the two albums, sonically, stylistically and chronologically. In basically every way, it was really the bridge between two very different sonic directions, two different eras in the band's career. When I first heard the song and listened to the lyrics, all that I knew about the song's creation was that it had been made for a "Transformers" film and that its working title had been "Megatron". The song came out months before "Revenge Of The Fallen" had its premiere so no-one had any idea how its lyrics related to the film's story. I found myself thinking of the first film and the "Megatron" working title and, so, I felt that the lyrics touched upon the rift and conflict between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and the Cybertronian civil war. In hindsight, it seems a bit weird but that first impression has kind of stuck with me ever since. Shinoda eventually said that the lyrics were at least partly inspired by Sam's character plotline in "Revenge Of The Fallen" but, even after all this time, I find it hard to really link them to what Sam goes through emotionally or whatever. I didn't expect great things from the video; in the past, I had always been disappointed by music videos made to promote movies. They always featured performance footage cut with film footage and the two sets of elements would never match up right. So, when I read that the "New Divide" video would be shot on one of the sets from the film and make use of actual props from the film, I was glad. I felt that that would be a great way to bridge the gap between the band's footage and the film's footage. But, as LP often do, they went a step further; rather than employing standard cuts between the two sets of footage, Hahn effectively blurred them together with datamoshing transitions, really reducing that separation. I thought that that was a great move. And he went on to do an even better job, in my opinion, tying disparate elements together for another "Transformers"-based Linkin Park music video in 2011. There's the "Transformers"-free edit of the video as well, and I'm kind of undecided about which version I like more; both have their pros and cons for me. The video was, at one point, supposed to show the band members being tugged around by unseen forces an the behind-the-scenes footage shows this being filmed. Despite this, the footage doesn't seem to have been used in the final cut, possibly aside from brief glimpses. This is something that we as fans have kind of seen happen before. The "Leave Out All The Rest" video was originally supposed to feature all of the band members (as astronauts) floating in a zero-gravity environment ... but this aspect of the treatment didn't make it to the shooting stage because of budget cuts or something, leaving us with only Phoenix doing the floating around. "New Divide" is actually one of my top-three favourite Linkin Park songs ... but it's the third in that top-three. I basically like everything about it except the boring lead gtr part
I enjoy New Divide for what it is. A classic Linkin Park song template with a thunderous chorus and catchy synths. It's always felt like the technologically advanced brother of What I've Done, however it has never felt as iconic as the Minutes To Midnight track. I will say that the production values are stellar though. I agree with the idea that it bridged the gap between Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns, whether intentionally or not. That Red Square performance is easily my favourite performance for the song. The band was on fire that day.
This is one of my gateway songs. Definitely a classic LP formula. I too have always thought of it as a kind of bridge between MTM and ATS, as well as an eletronic version of What I've Done. The red square performance is amazing, and the first time I saw LP live at Sunset Strip the performance of the song surprised me by being so good.
As everyone has said, I definitely feel like New Divide was the perfect bridge between Minutes and ATS, to the point where I feel like the bridge and synth-reliance of New Divide inspired the direction the band ended up going with ATS. The song is pretty darn great, with a classic formula buried underneath layers of synth work and a very neat drum pattern. The one knock I have against the song is just how uninspired the lead guitar progression is in the song... I'm glad Brad woke up and became the God he is now!
I love "New Divide". It's much more moodier and less rawer than "What I've Done", and all the comparisons between the two are somewhat of an overreaction to me. I like the futuristic vibe of the song, something that would continue to drive the band's sound through A Thousand Suns, and I like how the electronics make a comeback here. I remember hearing the song (and watching the video) for the first time and realizing Linkin Park were back; I was very excited.
I find absolutely nothing magnificent or amazing about New Divide. It's mediocre. I would never include New Divide in my top 30 even, much less top 10. It's a song I've never listened to actively because I find it so uninteresting. Why? I have no idea, honestly. But something about New Divide just makes me yawn and say "Next song, please."
New Divide was my first LP single i bought The song and the video was really fresh and bring me more into the "upcoming" LP style, it was the year i started to listen to Linkin Park, and this one made it more awesome. Live a very powerful one.
When i talk to people about LP outside of this site, this song seems to be up there with In The End and Numb in terms of songs that the average music listener has actually heard of from LP. Its mainstream popularity always is a pleasant surprise to me
Now I want to hear those demos on the new LPU. But hey, "New Divide"! I remember being absolutely HYPED about the song at the time, mostly because I was on a Transformers high and it helped that I was so much into Linkin Park as well. LP and Transformers (back in 2009) seemed like a perfect match to me, considering that WID was what brought me to watch the first movie but I remember for weeks upon weeks, I was getting more and more hyped. I loved all the previews that the band put out there and I couldn't bear it any longer. Then the song premiered and... ...I was in love. The Transformers elements, as well as that epic cinematic tone I felt throughout, really stood out and "New Divide" was basically the only song I had on repeat for much of that summer. The movie? Well, Revenge of the Fallen was...not good, but it's Michael Bay, so I was sort of expecting the explosions and the hammy acting and robot balls (Robot balls are in the same realm as the Bat Credit Card). But I loved "New Divide". Heck, I loved the whole soundtrack too. This song introduced me to Cavo and rekindled my love for Taking Back Sunday. It also featured other bands I loved (The Fray, Hoobastank, Theory of a Deadman) while also featuring other artists and Nickelback. No seriously, Nickelback. It's a weird soundtrack looking back on it. I think "21 Guns" is the only Green Day song I love and the Cheap Trick take on the Transformers theme is pretty awesome. Back to the song, though. Nowadays, I still like "New Divide" because of all of the elements still being there, but after a couple of years, it feels like a typical single now. Also, I finally heard the cheese in its lyrics after a couple of years. I still like it, but I'm not crazy about it as I used to be. I hear it usually at concerts now, and sometimes I'd skip it if it's on my playlist, but I still like the song. It's definitely my favorite soundtrack song. The fact that the band worked with Hans Zimmer is boss. Plus, the cheesy lyrics still sound epic lol
"New Divide" to me is a good song. It sounds a improved version of "What I've Done" to me. I also agree that it marks signs from a transition Minutes to Midnight to A Thousand Suns. Nevertheless it's not one of their best songs. But it's still something good. Also like their performance in Red Square.