Trumtram

After many spins, it's time to give a verdict. From Zero (Intro): -/10; started off promising, became irrelevant quickly after, instant skip for me now because the talking doesn't add much to the overall experience. The Emptiness Machine: 9/10; certified banger of a song. Feels fresh and familiar. Song structure is interesting and Emily absolutely kills it. Best song of the album. Cut The Bridge: 4/10; Pretty unspectacular, kinda fun, but not much longevity. Heavy Is The Crown: 5,5/10; a throwback to the old days, generic chorus, pretty cool raps, the bridge scream feels super forced and out of place to me, song got stale super quickly. Over Each Other: 6,5/10; a lot happening during its short running time. I like the build-up, hook, atmosphere and the pay-off in the end. Casualty: 7,5/10; super fun track, Mike's rap is unique for LP, the riffing is great, and I like punky songs. Well executed aside from the bridge which falls a bit flat. Overflow: 6/10; aside from the ending pretty boring, uninteresting, forced "experimental" feel. Enjoyable moments, but overall not that appealing. Two Faced: 8/10; Mike's bounce in the verses is fucking cool, great throwback to the old days, chorus is ok, Emily on the bridge and during the end is gnarly, enjoyable and fun track. Staind: 4,5/10; became stale rather quickly, great radio track, nice change of pace, but overall unremarkable IGYEIH: 8,5/10; Great vocal work by Emily and Mike, enjoyable riff, cool dramatic chorus, wild bridge/outro, not much to complain here. Good Things Go: 7,5/10; strong album closer, enjoyable vocal melodies by both Emily and Mike, would have liked a bigger change on the last chorus. Overall: 6,5/10 Of note: It's probably Mike's most diverse rap performance on that album. It helps to keep the songs varied. Emily is a great pick as the new vocalist, even though I'm already feeling disconnected from the band without Chester. The band is now a nostalgia act for me that I like to check out when they have new songs or a new album, but my hardcore fandom has come to an end with this album/era. Ranking (including FZ, even though that one still has to prove its longevity) 1. Hybrid Theory 2. A Thousand Suns 3. Meteora 4. The Hunting Party 5. Minutes To Midnight 6. From Zero 7. Living Things 8. One More Light Like that, I guess?

I don't know how to be honest. Great to get this track in HQ finally. Loved the video.

First impression: It's a good album with more variety than what I expected. It has hard hitting moments that are well executed. Let's see how it develops on further playthroughs. I will circle back to this thread at some point with scores for each track. Standouts so far (singles not included): Casualty, IGYEIH and Good Things Go

A two album cycle thing sounds interesting. Maybe they do the rock stuff now and another release next year with not so rock stuff.

Ouch. It could be the fans, but it surely seems like it. That's... not a good look.

I don't see why Brad, a studio-only member now, should select songs for the rest of them to play live.

I just saw some small excerpt from the book (I think?) and it was literally nothing new or unknown. Just info you'd find on the internet/Linkinpedia. Can't say if that goes for the rest of the book, but it lowered my expectations.

This gets thrown around a lot and I have to preface that I don't think the following personally, but the argument can be made that Rob doesn't "owe" "us" anything, he "owes" "us" everything. Throughout their whole career, the band always stated how grateful they were for their fans and how without us there wouldn't be a band. That sentiment got repeated again and again through stuff like LPU letters (if I recall correctly, there is even one written by Rob, where he states exactly that). I think it is not far off to expect SOME form of gratitude for the ride towards the fans after everything. Again, he has his reasons and doesn't have to communicate them to the fans, but SOMETHING after 20+ years of being in this band and getting loved by millions would just... be a decent thing to do. So, yeah, there might be reasons for why it is like it is, there might be none: everything about Rob and his departure is largely speculative. But I wouldn't have imagined that a parting member of Linkin Park would just vanish without a goodbye at the very least.

He was part of this band since forever. Yes, he never was the most social guy in the band, but my god, you act like just saying thank you to the fans for all these years is an outlandish thing to ask for. To me, it's a decent thing to do for not only the fans of the band, but also for his fans. Providing closure, not raising a dozen question marks. He doesn't have to justify his decision, obviously. But it's by large standard procedure to put a statement out when someone leaves. Either by the band and/or the parting member. I mean, it has been almost 20 years for them together. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's totally fine if you (or anyone else) is cool with him just noping out. But I agree to disagree on that one.

Yeah, it's super strange that Rob didn't say goodbye to us fans. A small written statement would have been enough and the decent thing to do. That leads me to believe that things got messy somewhere down the road. But that's obviously as speculative as the overall narrative that gets thrown around of him not continuing because of Chester being gone.

I just watched bits and pieces of the show, but yeah, her voice had some unfortunate cracks and she does the same in those moments like what she did on the live stream: quickly point her mic towards the fans.

Ok, I see. Thanks for the info...

Could you elaborate a bit on that? Backing track for the music, vocals? I didn't catch anything but that means shit

Personally, I prefer them leaving out OML of the set. Also, Mike taking over some vocal duties here and there sounds super good. Well executed from what I've seen so far.

Haha, yeah, fair enough. But you can find solace in the fact that you probably will listen to all those songs for years to come anyway. So just go crazy and enjoy them

Wow, haven't heard these names in a while. Yeah, they were moderately successful over here. I'm on board with them dropping some songs before the release. It gives more songs from the album the chance to shine. If someone doesn't want to listen to it, just don't and wait for the album release.

LP used to be in the "3 months in advance" camp, too. Glad they shortened that a bit this time around. Really looking forward to that album, even though it seems a bit short. Curious to hear how Emily sounds on it and what kind of songs will be on it. Hoping for a more (heavy) guitar-driven album. OML still doesn't excite me and it's mostly due to its "blandish" nature.

Something like that (timestamped):

Yeah, fine by me. But the picture of the Scientologist will remain ESPECIALLY in the mind of the "casuals". This one will stick, unfortunately. The outrage will die down, sure, of course. But this connection is in people's mind now. And I didn't want to imply that you don't know anything about Scientology. But there were people on here who made statements in this direction. So, sorry, if you felt attacked by that! It's just so difficult because she was (apparently) born into all this and whatnot. And just for the record: I don't think (at this point of time or anytime before that) that Emily is a bad person or an avid follower of Scientology. But we don't know.

The last sentence was uncalled for. Sure, we could argue all day long what is "worse", but enough people (even on here) showed a severe lack of knowledge about what Scientology even is, what it does and (crucially) what it believes in. I find it absolutely ok to be concerned about this connection. But you seem to underestimate the impact this whole thing has on the vast amount of sympathizers and more or less casual fans of the band (not even to mention general music fans). I shied away from comment sections, but whenever I dove in, the sentiment was "I'm done with this band". There is a substantial amount of backlash happening and it's fine if you or other people just want to give this a pass, you do you. Though, the more public awareness of "LP and their new singer" is tainted by this for now and there is a good chance that this connection will remain. I hope they'll find a way to navigate it all. Guess we'll (hopefully) see.

To be fair, this was because of his White Power thing of which there were videos. This is not tolerable in Germany. But in the US no one (really) cared for that. Sitting out this whole "thing" is not a good idea. The music world outside of the LP bubble will not ignore this and without any form of confirmation/explanation it will forever remain whenever someone talks about LP. Putting your head in the sand simply won't work, I'm afraid. It sucks and is not an easy thing to solve. I hope LP prepared for that beforehand, but so far it doesn't seem like it.

There was some discussion about that in the shoutbox, too and people were/are concerned about the whole thing. But gladly no one from LPL went the extreme route of calling for "cancelation" (aka consequences of actions). Her statement was a good start to clear the air and much needed to not let it gain more traction. Though, the whole thing might (or already has) turn(ed) off some people which is a shame.

Could mean anything, but her Instagram bio reads "In between quotations", which I interpret as being in a transformation process.

Just to write down my 5 cents after a night of sleep. After being away for more than 7 years, after stopping your band activity because of tragedy, after giving us only vague and cryptic answers to where the band stands for all these years, a 100 hour countdown appears on lp.com. Seemingly out of nowhere. There were rumors (and only that) brought in by Jay Gordon and Billboard before. The LPU is getting some kind of makeover, too. Major portions of the music industry and fans, both old, new and forgotten, are showing interest in this countdown, being curious on what comes next for the band that many loved at some point of their life. This is not another cycle like before, it's time for a statement, a glimpse of a future for the band. 100 hours to go until there is some kind of resolution. If not balls to the wall, then at the very least... something. But no, nothing aside from a couple of glitches. I pity these poor souls among us who are now monitoring a potential 100 hour count-up(?) just to find more glitches for an extremely uninteresting "riddle". A riddle that isn't needed with this type of situation. We all can wait for a couple weeks. Of course it could all be for one collaboration song or something in that vein. But, again, it would be the FIRST NEW LP SONG in more than 7 years. To address some points that a couple of never before seen faces on here bring up to defend this: 1. It gives the band more attention: The band HAD all the attention in the world. Other bands felt the need to get out of the way with their stuff because of that 100 hour countdown. They had an immense spotlight on them. If they would've posted something like a small teaser or whatever, people would be talking EVEN more than they do right now. 2. They always do something like this: Of course they do, it's their way of creating buzz and interest in a new output. But this is not JUST another new album cycle, it's not an anniversary (which they made really special with the throwback stuff, even if it was glitchy). It SEEMED like something we waited for more than 7 years. Something huge, a new era, finally! At least something small would have been a start. 3. It's exciting: What exactly is more exciting than before? We still don't REALLY know what will happen just like before, we got nothing new. 4. To those whom it may concern: It is ok when your favorite artist blunders. You don't need to find constructed arguments to defend them. If you genuinely love this and think "hell yeah, what a cool move" then good for you, have fun and enjoy the ride. I will obviously wait and see what comes up, listen to new music whatever. But my point still stands: It was unnecessary to do it that way and dragged out something that could and should have been magical. Everyone have fun staring at a timer.

Honestly, I'm kinda with you concerning your sentiment. Chester will always be the most important part of the Linkin Park I loved and cherished for so long. I probably won't feel even 25% of the hype levels like I used to before 2017. But I also came to terms with the fact that LP is mostly Mike and Brad when it comes to songwriting. So the old myth of LP being 6 guys on the same level is long gone for me. The main architects of LP are still with us and thus I'm curious what they'll come up with in the future. But I also want the rest of the band to be happy and artistically active. I will follow their output and probably enjoy a good lot of it. I'm super intrigued by a possible female lead vocalist and the opportunities which it presents for the band. It will still be Linkin Park for me because of Mike and Brad. Still, I will never feel the same excitement about new stuff by them because it was always Chester that got me hooked.