What do you want to hear in Linkin Park's 5th album?

Well if this is an I like thread, I like just about every album song except for Pushing Me Away and Easier to Run, even though HT and Meteora were my favorite.

 

I really like In Between, and love Valentines Day while were on that topic haha. And TLTGYA is pretty damn awesome as well. Whoever said Given Up is the song that brought M2M down would be correct along with No More Sorrow.

M2M will always be the album where I can't decide what it was although at the same time I like all the songs. I was relieved when ATS came out because, as Mike put it, it had more of a "sonic identity." I kinda wish M2M would have been 100% slower tempo songs. I've always thought that Given Up, Bleed It Out (though I love that song), and No More Sorrow were all forced so the band didn't completely leave their old sound. However with that statement it's arguable that songs like Burning in the Skies and Iridescent were made to not completely leave the M2M sound. Though the difference is that BITS and Iridescent are much better tracks than Given Up and No More Sorrow.

To answer the original question, I think it would be awesome if we got another ATS type of album except with a little more electronic action and MUCH more rapping. In my opinion it's Shinoda's raps that makes Linkin Park more than just another alt band.

 

Agreed. Given Up is one of my least favorite Linkin Park songs of all time. Valentine's Day was actually one of MTM's best songs. Perhaps even my favorite off the album.

 

Ah you people are CRAZY lol

Given Up is one of my favourites, lyrically it's not great but it's alot of fun to rock out to, I do love the heavier side of LP. But I agree on the fact that Given Up and No More Sorrow felt like they were on the album to please the oldies.

 

Valentine's Day is such a weak song. The people I remember criticising MTM for apparently being heavy on bland power ballads with poor lyrics was at least partly vindicated by it, and probably one or two other songs on there.

That, No More Sorrow and the guitar solo in In Pieces that's basically them waving around a banner saying "ACTUALLY BRAD CAN PLAY THINGS OTHER THAN POWER CHORDS FYI" are the three lowest points of that album imo.

 

Well I think MTM would have received way more hate if GU, NMS & BIO weren't on the album.
My problem with MTM is the balance between soft & hard tracks. and GU & NMS especially felt a little out of place on it. There should have been more heavier tracks to even things out a bit, OR if LP really wanted to be risky, all of them should have been soft/ballads. But the latter would have seriously disappointment a lot of people.

 

... But you can't hate chester's 17 second scream

Lol you have a point. The lyrics on given up is beyond awful. It's also really repetitive.

Minutes to Midnight is one of those albums where I like the songs more than the entire album. There are some of the best LP songs on that CD, and the lyrics on some of them are really amazing (Ex. leave out all the rest, TLTGYA). However, some songs were really bland and didn't fit with the album very well. I also didn't really like how they were losing their trademark sound. (This didn't mean I wanted them to go back to rap-metal. I simply thought the album was less unique and lacked in creativity than Hybrid Theory).

In my opinion, A Thousand Suns is just the opposite of that. Each song is solid hands down. Each song is unique and the creativity on that album is amazing. The flow is unbelivable, and every song fits in its category.

Linkin Park has improved. Oh gosh.

 

Same here. Valentine's Day and What I've Done are my two favourites from MTM.

 

Yeah I agree that ATS is a huge step up. I also agree that MTM could have been better with more balanced heavy and slower songs. Thinking about it, this is what i'd like to see come there next album.

 

I would have been fine leaving BIO there, though moving it later in the album. Breaking the 100% soft with a less soft song help the composition and prevents it from being too monotonous, imo. Even among soft songs, MTM was kinda all over the place and without an identity. Maybe if MTM was the way it was heaviness-wise, but with a consistent, unique sound throughout, I would appreciate it better.

I didn't really like the MTM songs outside BIO, LOATR, and TLTGYA, but yet I love almost all of ATS including Iridescent, BITS, and WFTE despite that they kind of echo MTM. There's something more authentic in ATS, I think. It has that uniqueness in sound when MTM just sounded like they were copping some other band's sound.

And it is a darn shame when the band doesn't use their talents to their full potential. Especially when Joe and Mike write their talents out of the album. Bands with LP's makeup are rare and that alone sets them apart from everybody else.... if they just darned use all their potential.

 

You bring up a valid point that going 100% soft may have been a little too extreme for a followup album to Meteora. Overall, the only things M2M can be classified by is an album with a bunch of songs that don't go together and songs that are new to the band in a lot of cases, but pretty unoriginal compared to other artists and a transition album from Meteora to A Thousand Suns. Though the band didn't know ATS was coming when they released M2M so I wouldn't give them too much credit for that.

I also agree that there are many instances where the band isn't using their full potential. I love Shadow of the Day, Leave Out All the Rest, BITS, Iridescent, ect. but they're capable of so much more. Waiting For the End is an example of what they are capable of (a damn masterpiece). And The Catalyst is a song that they should try to make more of except with the addition of rapping and other things.

 

I kinda agree with this, but more leaning towards No More Sorrow. In Between is my favorite out of the entire album to be quite honest. *ducks from teh flamez*

 

I still don't get why people hold up the stuff they were doing right before MTM as being better in terms of how original it was. Being derivative of their own past work isn't really any better than being derivative of other people's work, and at least MTM was kind of a breakthrough for them without going into how original their music is in the wider context of things.

Not to mention that about half the songs on MTM aren't that different to their previous work, just with a fresh lick of paint one way or another. Off the top of my head: What I've Done sounds like most of their previous singles, just rawer and more guitar driven, Bleed It Out is another song in their old format but with a different kind of rock and a different style of rapping, LOATR is Linkin Park doing a pop song, NMS and Given Up are Linkin Park taken to a slightly heavier extreme and Hands Held High is them doing a more rap-based song. It's trying new things but it's not as massive a departure as people make out.

And In Between is one of their best songs, KMT. /initialism overkill

 

being "derivative" of yourself is totally different than being derivative of other styles. I wouldn't even call it being "derivative of yourself." If you invented something, you created it and you own it. It's okay to have a kind of pride over it. It's okay think that it inspires something in you and you want to expand upon your earlier creation. Meteora was an expansion of HT, but I'm perfectly okay with that, and only after that was the idea was run though and burned out. It's entirely different than, for example, ripping off U2. U2 is already there doing U2-y things, so it's cheap to emulate it.

I don't think every LP CD necessarily has to be different. I would also be okay with an "ATS part 2" because I think what the band invented this time could be explored further. I don't think "part 2's" necessarily have to have this negative connotation about them. Just because you do something once doesn't mean you finished its potential the first time around. There might still be gold in those mines, or even a passageway to a new mine with new ideas: Like how BTH kinda inspired LP's softer departure.


As for MTM, I think you're being too liberal with your standards of comparison. I could be equally as liberal and make the case that MTM was exactly like every other alt rock band in existence at the time. Or take it up a notch and say that LP doing a polka album is just like HT because it's both music. Sentences like "LOATR is Linkin Park doing a pop song" is either contradictory or tautological. Did you mean it's Linkin Park except not Linkin Park? Or it's pop and not Linkin Park's nu metal style? Or are you saying that pop and nu metal are not so different? You start off talking about how MTM wasn't that different and then you go and call a song pop. MTM was a clear departure, and I think the mass surprise in its release shows it.

 

To be honest, LOATR isn't a great deal poppier than Numb was. It just has a tad less guitars and there pretty much the same genre.

 

I just want to hear something good and meaningful. No matter what that means

 

Dis 100%

 

I'm not expecting anything in particular, expectations are an easy way to get disappointed. I'll just open up my mind.

 

more songs like robot boy and the catalyst. i love the direction they've taken. it could be way different than all their albums though. you know they're gonna suprise us... however it turns out its going to be amazing.