Zach It's a good album, but the first half sounds too "radio-friendly" Compared to the second half, which is more Linkin Park.
JAY Z once said "want my old shit / buy my old album". Living Things whether you find it half radio-friendly or not, is a new album with new ideas and new material. Why is everyone so against a radio friendly band releasing a radio friendly song or two? I honestly think Minutes To Midnight was their most radio friendly release to date, with every single song (save Wake and cut down TLTGYA) possible to hit the airwaves. A Thousand Suns spoiled everyone. I feel like that album should be the band's only release that ends up being so random and artistic. At this rate, I wouldn't mind if Linkin Park releases another album that is half stadium rock and half experimental/creative. I know all of you after two weeks would be like "zomg ehl Pee these songs arent 8 minute long songs with a verse 1 verse 2 bridge 1 bridge 2 chorus 1 verse 3 chorus 2 bridge 11 outro struksher dis is too mainstream" but that's only because A Thousand Suns spoiled you. Hell, if they released an album that was only filled with songs that are like the first half of Living Things I would be happy because it's new Linkin Park music. As much as I love progressive music, Linkin Park still rocks with their simple structured material (Even from their newer albums). Disagree? Then stop listening to all of their music besides 10 tracks on A Thousand Suns.
This x infinity and beyond. I'm glad that after loving A Thousand Suns to death I was able to grasp the simple concept of Living Things as a fun album. Sure Burn It Down may have sounded empty and generic compared to the grandiose scale of the Catalyst but that's because it wasn't supposed to signal the coming apocalypse. And the people who bash the album for going 10 steps backwards always seem to forget the immensely experimental Until It Breaks which IMO destroys any A Thousand Suns song on sheer randomness alone. Do I want more progression from the band? Definitely and I hope that LP6 represents that progression more significantly, but it's not going to stop me from enjoying the fuck out of Living Things.
I'm not against it, but the reason I'm disappointed with it is because it isn't just a "song or two." It is almost their entire discography. After Hybrid Theory, Meteora, Minutes to Midnight, and the Transformers tie-ins, did they really need to go back to making such radio friendly music less than two years after the release of their one album that dared to do something different? They couldn't have kept that mindset for a little longer? A Thousand Suns, we'll call it the "experimental" phase of the band, essentially lasted a grand total of a year and a half out of a career that has spanned over a decade. You're really going to fault people for being disappointed that there wasn't more time spent on that? I really like Living Things. It's my second favorite album by the band, and it's a strong second at that. But asking people why they can't just enjoy a "fun" album like Living Things is kind of like feeding someone the same dinner for 2 weeks straight and then being surprised when they say they're getting tired of it. "But you love this dinner!" Personally, there are only so many "fun" albums I can enjoy before it all starts blending together and becomes not so fun anymore.
This was a good point, but I just don't find A Thousand Suns even that great. I mean the interludes were atrocious, I felt like I was back in a high school history class and a kid was tampering with the speeches to get his peers to laugh. I remember watching MOATS and they are playing harmonica, piano, sitar (on keyboard though), like brooms and so many unique experimental sounds, and what we got was a collection of Mike's loops and virus keyboard. A Thousand Suns could've been other-worldly. Instead we got Muse, Fort Minor, Angels&Airwaves, and Radiohead all blended up.
The interludes are an important part in the album. They shape the apocalyptic story and make the album more like a concept album. Actually, the album has "many unique experimental sounds", well at least in one song. (The Catalyst) "Instead we got Muse, Fort Minor, Angels&Airwaves, and Radiohead all blended up." I don't think that's a big problem. LP can learn a lesson or two about what experimenting means from these bands.
That's a bit hyperbolic. It's not as ambitious as A Thousand Suns by a longshot, but it's a fun twist on the band's old sound. Like an updated, less cohesive version of Hybrid Theory. The band wasn't trying to top A Thousand Suns. I honestly think they were trying to make music that they could have fun playing live. If LIVING THINGS wasn't what you wanted from the next Linkin Park album, that's fine. But we were all given much forewarning that this was going to be a back-to-basics album, so if anyone actually expected anything different, they were setting themselves up for disappointment.
If that's the case, they'd have already played a majority of the album live by now and not just four tracks. It's a lame excuse to say that the band only wanted to make a fun album so we should only expect as much. We were given a taste of the band's potential with "A Thousand Suns" and to have the creativeness thrown away in place of "fun live music" that hasn't even been played live is a pretty shitty thing.
Actually, we were prepared for a back to basics album, but we got a lot, lot more. I never expected, CoG, RU, STB, UIB... That's a handful of great tracks that don't appear in LP's discography twice. This is actually very true, though.
The best part of this thread is that LP doesn't care what anyone here thinks because they will continue to make music that they want to make. If they want to make a full on ''nu-metal'' album, they can, and no one here has a say about it whatsoever.
Mark knows his shit. It was plastered on every news article and interview that LP wanted to go back to basics. Yes, they showed with ATS their potential but the thing is that the process made them exhausted. They admitted it was stressful as fuck to create ATS and LIVING THINGS was just LP sitting back, relaxing and having fun with what they got. Maybe in the future LP will want to push themselves in a different way, who knows.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. That's why Linkin Park is pissing me off. "Creating good music has left us stressed the fuck out. So we're all going to sit back and let Mike's computer do the work and call it "having fun"" Brad doesn't want to do anything too crazy because he doesn't like to "show off". "LIVING THINGS sounds like music we've made before because we are getting comfortable in our own skin! Plus, we love the energy when we play our hits live! So we made an entire album that is back to our rootz!" Look at bands like Muse and Nine Inch Nails (to name a few). Massively successful bands, yet every album that they have made has been incredibly different from prior efforts and beyond unique and creative. The band doesn't want to push themselves and that is why they're pissing me off.
Can you show me an exact quote on this? I'm not calling you a liar, but I've seen this statement a lot on fan forums but have yet to see a source. If there is no exact quote, is MOATS the thing that makes people feel this way? Because I really don't think the ATS sessions were significantly more stressful than some of the albums that came before it. The only difference (in my opinion), is that MOATS showed what making an album can really look like, as opposed to the MTM one that was a lot of press release/interview style quotes and the band goofing off. If I remember correctly, Mike also called MOATS the truest documentation of their album process to-date (at the time). I'll go try to find that quote. Edit: From Mike's blog http://mikeshinoda.com/2010/09/11/meeting-of-a-thousand-suns-a-story-behind-our-album/ So he didn't use the word "truest," but he did say that it is one of the most "powerful insights" into the process. Close enough.
I agree with this. Every album presents them a lot of stress; the "A Thousand Suns" documentary was the only one that tried to show it.
Chester in 2012 said that every LP album was really fun to make, and that Hybrid Theory was the hardest to make. I bet each album has stress on the band, but I believe Chester when he says that. It's like, ''you got one shot, if your album isn't great, you're doomed'' feeling I imagine. Mike and the rest of the band have all said MTM was laid back and fun to make, but that's probably because at the time, they could just make whatever kind of music they wanted with no restrictions, while Don Gilmore had them make a specific kind of music basically. ATS was probably really hard to make, but I am sure the band had tons of fun making it, and it seems from the meeting of a thousand suns, that the stress was from the label and deadlines and stuff, not making the music.
Was A Thousand Suns really as daring as it seems? I really don't want to be that nagging guy who just becomes a hater but let's be real. I appreciate the ideas, the thought put into the record, and a couple of the songs we got as a result. This won't be the first time you'll hear this from somebody but songs like "Burning In The Skies" and "Iridescent" show no progression in the band at all. The lyrics are more colorful (hehe pun on Iridescent?) but other than that the sound is so cookie cutter I just made a whole sheet tray with the layers of the songs and ate dessert. The interludes were awful but did kind of fit the more I think about it. I just feel like they were lazy ways to bridge the songs together. "Oh let's repeat this lyric, play this full song, and repeat that lyric" type of deal. When I listened to the whole album I didn't feel the need of "Fallout" nor did it even come close to reminding me of "Burning In The Skies" and how it opened the "destruction". The band could formally interpret the album for us which they don't like to do, but since they leave it up to the individual I got nothing out of that part. "The Catalyst" is the highlight of the record, but even that seemed forced. It felt like one half of the band was wanting in to be a dark electro dance anthem, and the other half was like "add this so it doesn't look too conventional". Brad wanted it to be like a song while Phoenix kept saying that he was bored with that. While that puts a smile on my face to see some of the members wanting to go out of the box, they didn't really have to force it. If we would've never knew the "lift me up let me go" part would've ever existed at all, and we got a 3:30-so version of the track, would we care? The lyrics are still a little unconventional for the band and the song would've just gotten more sonically broad and crazier and finished off smooth. Like driving down an empty highway. Keeps getting faster and more hectic. Nerve-wracking if you'd like to say the least.
With the rest of Linkin Park's albums as poppy as they are, yes. Absolutely. I don't think anyone claims A Thousand Suns is a really experimental album when it's compared with other experimental/progressive albums. But for the band, it is as daring as it seems. And since you mentioned it, I think Burning In The Skies shows a good amount of progression in the band, just maybe in subtle ways. I recently wrote a review on this:
In the age of EDM, Linkin Park releases ''A Light That Never Comes'' with Steve Aoki. They don't follow us on the LPA, but they definitely follow what's popular and tend to adapt to it. So anything like the old LP is not happening unless Korn's new album gets a Grammy for AOTY and sells 20 million this year. And no, LT is nothing like the old LP.