UndeadSoldier

The overall album is average at best. I'd say a 5/10. Talking to Myself, Sorry For Now, and One More Light are the album's best tracks, though still nothing memorable. Good Goodbye is the only song with rapping, which is a disappointment. Live drums are almost nonexistent, and like with THP, turntable scratching isn't featured. The instrumentation all kind of blends together. Other then a few good sample beats here and there, nothing sticks out. Though I found the song topics to be honest and genuine, the lyrics are not as good as they could be. I only found the lyrics of One More Light to be something of note due to it's subject matter. The production of this album overall just feels like it was done in a way that Maroon 5 does their albums. In which, it's just Adam Levine writing and recording with a handful of outside producers and then slapping the Maroon 5 name on it when it's done. In this case, it was Mike, Chester, and often times Brad working with songwriters and having the rest of the group come in when the occasional "gang vocal" is needed. Maybe that wasn't the case here, but that's what it seems to be from all the short making of videos we've seen. If they're gonna change up the experimentation again for the next album, what I'd like to see happen is the rest of the band (Brad, Rob, Joe, Phoenix, Chester) write the album and have Mike play more of a producer role than a songwriter one. It be interesting to see what kind of songs/album would materialize without Mike fully at the helm. Perhaps this would maybe freshen things up by putting things in a new perspective. In conclusion, this isn't a bad album, just not one I see people (including myself) talking about in the years to come. Favorites: Talking to Myself, Sorry for Now, One More Light.

It's insane that the vocalists from 4 out of the 5 bands that shaped the Grunge movement have now died. Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, Scott Weiland, and now Chris Cornell.

I think we're at a point now where the guys can pretty much do whatever they want now. This was a different time when LP were still a young band on the scene and still had much to prove to their label before they could do anything outside of the group.

...and then wind up on Youtube and other mp3 sites an hour later lol

My biggest complaints are that Chester's verse sounds out of key and the instrumental is mixed too low. Kiiara is the biggest takeaway for me. As much as I don't care for her music, she sounds great here. IMO, this is LP's worst single to date and definitely not a track I'll be clamoring to hear over and over. 3/10

I'm thinking it's gonna end up being 9 actual songs. Battle Symphony seems like it'll be an instrumental. 10 tracks is rather short, especially if most of the tracks are 2 1/2 to 3 minutes long.

They'll probably give us half the album before it's release.

Linkin Park, Blink-182 and Skillet would be awesome. An LP & Skillet tour is way overdue to happen.