You are most certainly right about that. I've never listened to much 90's western music to begin with.
Rebellion, GATS and ALITS are the songs that really stand out to me. Musically I think GATS is still the strongest song on the album. AlITS would've better with chester singing the chorus. I personally thought his screaming on that song sounded like shit. Mikes parts were spot on.
IMAGINE HEARING ACAPELLA VERSIONS AND INSTRUMENTALS THE ALBUM AS IS, IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! i like it.....a lot and in the future....... an acapella of the summoning and drawbar and Reanimation 2.0 and EMINEM i just really like the album...a lot
While I love some of the songs (Rebellion, Until it's gone, Wastelands, Final Masquerade, A line in the sand, Drawbar), I'm really disappointed by the record. I think I read that before in this thread, but it's lacking soul. I don't even mean that it's too heavy, I love some of their heavier stuff, it just makes me feel nothing, and that's really disappointing to me. Especially after Living Things, which simply took my breath when I listened to it the first time.
You don't have to use the colored text and all of the smilies you know. Even though they're there, doesn't mean they HAVE to be used.
Yeah, I wasn't a fan of going for the "raw" factor on that particular song. I still really like it, and it's an otherwise absolutely beautiful song; I just personally wish Chester had gone a bit more melodic there. My life is a lie!
Overall THP is great... My only issue with this album is the mixing... Some songs like "KTTK", "WAR", I'm having a hard time hearing what Chester is saying because the instruments are louder... I'm hoping the album version will be clearer otherwise it's a badass album!!!
He's not screaming the choruses. It's more like No More Sorrow type of singing. Throat singing or whatever the word is. He's only going balls to the walls at the end of the song.
I think their first two albums were them learning and being excited about their experiences as a band with newly found success. Their "trilogy" with Rick Rubin needed to happen because he was a source of guidance and reasoning for them. He showed them to embrace being themselves and being comfortable with their ideas, despite outside opinions. On THP, it seems like a combination of their excitement in the beginning of their career and their mentoring from Rick Rubin. During THP, I sense they wanted to bring the spontaneity and atmosphere of their live shows to a studio album (which worked tremendously). Also, the random kid and baby voices were a little weird at first, along with the sounds of a ball game somewhere. But I am guessing they wanted to include their families in the album, if that's what it is. And if that's true, that's a beautiful thing for them to do.
On that note, has there been any confirmation of where those voices originate? I've been wondering whether they're random audio samples or actually a band member's kids, etc. It's a shame Mike's screaming goat didn't make it in.
After being pretty disappointed with all the singles, I went into this hoping to be blown away by the other songs on the album. Things started off well with Keys to the Kingdom. While I wasn't blown away, I enjoyed the song. It had that heaviness they were aiming for with this album while also not being too generic. I felt it set a great tone as an opening track, and I was excited to hear more. Then it all came tumbling down. I was just so bored. I think the reason people were moving away from the sound that the band sought to capture with this album was because it's just so dull. I don't think hardcore/heavy "rock" makes any music inherently good. That's what nearly all these songs felt like. Generic rock songs. I loved Linkin Park's direction with previous albums because of their hunger to innovate and challenge the genres that people tried to place to them in. This made for some amazingly original albums that had wonderful variety with a genuinely unique sound. The Hunting Party feels like the antithesis of this. The album is sorely lacking variety. I got bored once I got to GATS and had to consciously remind myself to focus on the music and not mentally zone out. The over-emphasis on harder rock on nearly all the tracks made each subsequent track lose its power. Songs like Given Up and Blackout felt far more powerful on their respective albums because of how they were woven among tracks that were very different. And in my honest opinion, I feel like Given Up does a good job of capturing the sound the were going for with almost every track on The Hunting Party. The main difference is that Given Up is leagues better than this entire album. Gah... I truly wanted to like this but it just sounded so dull to me. I'm hoping dearly for a better album next time.
A part of the instrumental of All For Nothing (starts at 1:40) sounds really similar to Until It Breaks, am I right? I haven't seen anyone commenting this.
Love it love it love it. A+ for me. Wow. Definitely some of the greatest work this band has ever done. Only track that's kinda meh for me is All For Nothing. The rest are fucking awesome. What a great album.
this echoes my sentiments exactly. very, very, very well said. it's like they boxed themselves in with ths record. "we have to make heavy hard hitting visceral music" and if it didnt fit that description it got canned. also people are all over Brad's johnson because the "guitar is so awesome!!11!" but honestly this guitar is not great. its far from great. im looking for tasteful, theatric solos like on LTGYA. I don't care if hes tremolo picking super fast. I'm looking for solos with a purpose. Mike's keyboard solo on Robot Boy was better than any "solo" on this record. All of these solos sounded like the "solo" he plays in the extended live outro of faint.