Garret

If LP decides to replace Chester they should get a female vocalist. Would be different but might be in a good way. I like how she sings/screams better than any other vocalist I have heard doing Chester vocals on stage since he passed.

There is a MTM instrumental album out there but people who have it are asking for a lot of money for it. No idea where it came from but probably some 2007 WBR Promo or something that we don't know about. There is also a WBR Promo of ATS out there that supposedly had the version of Blackout shown on LPTV, with those different verses from Chester. Apparently WBR in Australia showed it to people in 2010. There is probably so much out there. HT and Meteora are both easy to find in instrumental form. MTM is out there just for a price. LT and THP were released officially from the band and OML also exists, it was going to be released officially but when Chester died, it was shelved, however you can find it out there. ATS is the only one we don't know for a fact is out there but of course it exists. Probably out there as well.

I'm so happy LPL is back. Missed it so much. Agree with Stranger that the new site is weird but in a good way. Thanks for coming back!

Great point. It doesn't fit at all with LT. ATS and LT were actually quite different in terms of sound despite what some people say. The way that they made Primo into IBG on LT, it actually fit the LT sound way more. If you had put Primo on ATS, it would fit much more than it would on LT, I'm talking about the demo we received on LPU 13. I'm sure it went under various other versions. But yeah. And it's a good example that the band went through some songs with multiple album processes. Look at a song like Ammosick which was started in the MTM process, didn't make the cut, and then was worked on again during the ATS process, but didn't make the cut once again. The band finally decided to release it on Mall in 2014. Neal Avron mixed it so it probably was mixed by him in 2010 with ATS because he also mixed ATS, not just MTM. Powerless was another song that hailed from the ATS sessions but didn't make it and was worked on again during LT and actually made the album. I'm sure the ATS version was a lot different, kind of like Primo. The band always crafts their albums so they feel cohesive so they want all the songs on the album to sound part of the album. Having Primo on LT in that form wouldn't have worked so they made it fit LT more with further work on the track. Even a song like the intro to ALITS, it was used several albums after ATS. White Noise was from THP sessions but it didn't make the cut and was released on Mall. I'm sure that if it made it onto THP, it would have been a little different, they probably would have got rid of the electronic/industrial bits and made it more straight forward rock (I know the song is still heavy AF but made it sound more THPish). Like I said they wanted to craft their albums to make them cohesive.

I own Transformers and Transformers 2 on CD. Damn, brings back memories. 10 years ago coming up, in May of 2009, I remember New Divide coming out and being so excited for it, me and my friend Cheryl at the time. I might buy Transformers 2 on vinyl.

There are things I like about both versions. I think the chorus in the LIVING THINGS version is much better. But I love the verses and bridge and rest of the song in Primo more. If they had kept the verses and rest of the song in the style of the demo and just changed that chorus to what they came up with for the final product, it would have been great.

I have seen some ''clips''. I don't have them but I would love to have them. Valentine's Day sounded amazing, I've always loved that heavy guitar section that comes in when Chester starts singing ''on a valentine's day'' but I always felt that it was buried in the mix. Sounds good in the instrumental though because the vocal isn't there to overpower it.

OML, IMO. ATS had backlash but they just put out MTM a few years before it and fans knew the band was going to be experimenting hardcore from what their sound was in the old days. And ATS still had some familiar elements of the band, such as rapping on several tracks, screaming on one/two tracks, etc. Although the guitar was missing on most songs, it was still present on some stuff. Idk. I feel like ATS had an overall very dark tone as well which was familiar to the band up to that point. Hell, OML is really their only album that has some uplifting songs. Now OML had a lot of hate. It even prompted Chester to go on angry tirades against fans saying he would punch them in the face if they met him ‘’outside the bus’’, etc. When Heavy was first released, many hated it. Myself included. My main reason was the guest feature but many hated the actual song entirely. OML, the band really went for it. Not that they didn’t with ATS but I feel like OML was just a lot different from anything they’ve ever done, the style, and also the fact each song had writers. Nowadays, I love OML, and I feel like most people who hated it, also now love the album. But it’s not my favorite from the band. Just from my own experiences being a fan and being around the fan base since 2003, I would have to say OML got the most hate out of all albums post Meteora.

These are just my personal opinions, keep in mind. Full Shows 2007.07.25 - Auburn, WA 2007.08.07 - Atlanta, GA 2007.08.14 - Virginia Beach, VA 2007.08.24 - Mansfield, MA 2007.08.31 - Noblesville, IN 2007.10.15 - Melbourne 2007.11.13 - Taipei 2008.02.21 - New York, NY 2008.03.10 - Sacramento, CA 2008.08.01 - West Palm Beach, FL 2009.07.21 - Athens 2009.08.30 - Stuttgart 2010.10.20 - Berlin 2010.11.11 - London 2011.02.04 - New York, NY 2011.02.19 - Las Vegas, NV 2011.06.16 - Helsinki 2012.06.12 - Odessa 2012.08.17 - Camden, NJ 2012.09.10 - Chula Vista, CA 2012.11.10 - Johannesburg Memorable Performances 2007.07.29 - Mountain View, CA: Hands Held High 2007.08.01 - Phoenix, AZ: Papercut 2007.08.03 - Selma, TX: Given Up, In Pieces 2007.08.08 - Charlotte, NC: Points Of Authority 2007.08.17 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH: No More Sorrow, Qwerty 2007.08.21 - Toronto: Qwerty 2007.08.25 - Camden, NJ: Breaking The Habit 2007.08.26 - Hartford, CT: One Step Closer 2007.08.29 - Holmdel, NJ: Crawling 2007.09.03 - Greenwood Village, CO: Lying From You, Faint 2007.11.18 - Shanghai: Papercut 2007.11.27 - Osaka: Hands Held High 2008.01.16 - Hannover: What I've Done, Valentine's Day, A Place For My Head 2008.01.20 - Frankfurt: Leave Out All The Rest 2008.01.27 - Manchester: Given Up 2008.02.15 - Columbus, OH: Given Up 2008.02.16 - Detroit, MI: In Pieces 2008.02.18 - Manchester, NH: What I've Done, Valentine's Day, Umbrella 2008.02.22 - Montreal: Given Up 2008.02.29 - Oklahoma City, OK: My December 2008.07.12 - Toronto: Breaking The Habit, What I've Done, A Place For My Head 2008.07.16 - Mansfield, MA: One Step Closer, We Made It 2008.07.18 - Burgettstown, PA: Crawling 2008.07.20 - Hartford, CT: Crawling 2008.08.09 - Mountain View, CA: Bleed It Out 2008.08.10 - Irvine, CA: Bleed It Out 2008.08.16 - East Troy, WI: Bleed It Out 2008.08.17 - Noblesville, IN: Papercut 2008.08.24 - Woodlands, TX: What I've Done, Bleed It Out 2009.08.08 - Chiba: New Divide 2009.08.16 - Macau: Points Of Authority 2010.10.07 - Buenos Aires: What I've Done 2010.10.23 - Linz: Faint 2010.10.25 - Paris: A Place For My Head 2010.10.27 - Koln: Leave Out All The Rest 2010.11.13 - Abu Dhabi: Wretches And Kings, When They Come For Me 2010.11.15 - Tel Aviv: One Step Closer, The Messenger 2010.12.13 - Melbourne: Blackout 2010.12.16 - Canberra: Wretches And Kings 2011.01.20 - Sunrise, FL: What I've Done 2011.01.25 - Detroit, MI: New Divide 2011.02.22 - San Jose, CA: Blackout, The Messenger 2011.02.23 - Los Angeles, CA: The Messenger 2011.03.03 - Houston, TX: No More Sorrow, Bleed It Out 2011.06.05 - Mountain View, CA: Lying From You 2011.06.14 - Stockholm: Burning In The Skies 2011.06.23 - Moscow: Intro, New Divide, Iridescent 2011.06.28 - Arendal: Given Up, No More Sorrow 2011.08.31 - Los Angeles, CA: Cure For The Itch, The Messenger 2011.09.08 - Seoul: Burning In The Skies 2011.09.11 - Tokyo: Bleed It Out 2011.09.25 - Singapore: Intro, New Divide 2012.05.26 - Lisbon: A Place For My Head 2012.06.01 - Adenau: Runaway 2012.06.03 - Nurnberg: Bleed It Out 2012.06.06 - Bucharest: Tinfoil, Blackout 2012.06.09 - Warsaw: With You 2012.08.11 - Bristow, VA: With You, Lost In The Echo 2012.08.14 - Mansfield, MA: Victimized/Qwerty 2012.08.25 - Noblesville, IN: A Place For My Head 2012.08.30 - Englewood, CO: Bleed It Out 2012.09.14 - Mexico City: Bleed It Out 2012.10.07 - São Paulo: Victimized/Qwerty, In My Remains

Accurate.

Definitely. I don’t understand how people don’t think QWERTY is heavier, either. It is. And other tracks like GU, NMS are all just as heavy, if not heavier. A ton of songs from HT and Meteora eras are too. I don’t get why people think THP is so heavy. Sure, if you compare it to like OML or ATS, it’s heavy. But in the scope of metal and rock it’s really not all that heavy. And UIG, FM, Drawbar, The Summoning and a few others really aren’t heavy at all. All For Nothing really isn’t heavy.

Living Things is an A+ album for me, its my second favorite album by the band next to Minutes To Midnight. I wouldnt have minded if the album went to a folkier sound like Sharp Edges, but I am happy that Living Things came out like it did, I love that album like I said. Sharp Edges also has an EDM style beat that kicks in mid song, so its almost like that Folky/EDM music that was popular around 2012/2013 like Wake Me Up by Avicii for example. But thats besides the point. I dont only listen to heavy music. I love metal and rock but I listen to a lot of different kinds of music more. I just dont think THP was as heavy as it was sold off to be, and I definitely think LP could have went heavier if they had wanted. Hell, QWERTY and Given Up/No More Sorrow and songs like that are heavier than pretty much anything on The Hunting Party. I get that you probably love THP and thats why youre defending it so much and thats great. I defend my favorite albums too. Im glad that each album by the band has people who love them individually. I just personally dont love THP. Its still a record by my favorite band so I like it more than most music but compared to other LP albums, its not my favorite. And for a 12 song album, I do think taking up two track slots was crazy. Maybe thats just me. A reworked White Noise would have even been better on the album. And Mike said they wrote like 60 songs for THP. Im sure there were a few more completed that were good, heavy songs. Until Its Gone was never intended for the album, it was written for Transotmers 4 but the film didnt want to use the song. Its a garbage song IMO. I know some people like it. Idk. It doesnt fit with the rest of THP even remotely. Next to Final Masquerade even, Final Masquerade is a rock song. UIG is similar to like New Divide and some of LT. The lyrics are horrible in UIG. It just shouldnt have been on the record.

I agree with this. However, I feel like a lot of fans were expecting THP to be in the metal genre. The way that Mike and the rest of the band talked about the album, it was heavily implied. I guess that for Linkin Park, it was a heavy album, but it's certainly not as heavy as a lot of other music that existed at the same time that the album was written and released. I feel like maybe if The Summoning, Until It's Gone and Drawbar all were replaced with other rock songs, the album would have been better. Those are the 3 tracks that I have an issue with, with I talked about in a previous post, and I know that 2 of those are instrumental/interlude tracks but they still take up an entire slot of the tracklisting, when an album has 12 tracks, each track slot is integral to the album. I do agree that they don't always do a full genre for each album, but OML was a pop album, plain and simple, it is what it is. TTM, I guess you could say is rock, but it's as close to pop as a rock song can ever get. TMM and Sharp Edges have rock roots but they are basically pop songs. NCSM isn't a rock song, IMO, it's more of like an alt. pop type of sound. You can have slower songs, like Final Masquerade, or What I've Done, etc. that are definitely rock songs, even though they're slow.

Any source available is worth noting IMO.

This is MASSIVE and AMAZING. Thank you guys so much.

Well, Mike said they were writing straight up pop songs after LT, but somewhere in the process, Mike decided that he wanted to write heavy rock songs instead, and they then basically scrapped that pop album and started work on The Hunting Party (or what would become The Hunting Party). So OML basically is the next step after LT, because we probably would have got a very similar album to OML if they had just continued on without Mike scrapping the songs and making heavy rock songs. THP basically was a detour. If you remember all the interviews and stuff from the time, Mike said that he felt like rock had become too ''Disney'' and ''pop'' and he didn't like it, which prompted him to write those style of songs. And Mike also has said that the only other member who was on board right away was Chester, and it took a while for him to convince Brad and the rest of the band to write songs for The Hunting Party. That's why I say it felt forced or uninspired. Each of the band's albums, they have done what they want, whatever style it is. But for THP, Mike basically forced the style of the album. I mean it's fine because Mike is/was the nucleus of Linkin Park, and Chester generally always supported whatever Mike wanted, as seen in many making of's, etc. During the making of Welcome, Mike asked what he should do with the song, is it FM or LP, etc. and Chester was like ''I say do whatever you want to do buddy, it's whatever you want''. Seems like Brad really didn't want to make THP, or Rob, etc. But they ended up making it and I'm sure they got on board at some point. It just seems like it was a very ''living in the now'' type of thing and by the time it ended up coming out in June 2014, I feel like the band was kind of over the idea. Keep in mind, the band started writing the rock songs starting in September of 2013, there was an interview with Chester from a STP show in September 2013, where he was joined by Richard of Filter, and he said Mike started writing these super heavy metal songs and wanted to go that way, and Richard asked Chester if they wanted to do a heavy record and Chester said yeah, they were going to do one. June 2014 was a long time after that and if you watch videos and stuff from the tour for THP in 2014-2015, Brad looks SUPER uninterested in the songs from THP, yet he danced around on COG, BID, etc. And they kept saying they wanted to play the songs from THP live, etc. and they ended up playing only 5, and ALITS didn't even get debuted until like May of 2015. LOL. And UIG was only played in full for the very first part of the tour, it got cut in half for Carnivores and then wasn't even played at all in 2015. Rebellion was dropped from the set a lot in 2015 and GATS was dropped basically for all of 2015 (minus the 3 shows in Jan) because ''Rob couldn't handle it'', or maybe it was Brad. But Mike said it was one of them that couldn't handle it. Just feels like they didn't care much for THP at all. I think at first, in September/October/November of 2013, Mike was super into making those heavy rock songs, but by the time 2014 came around and all the way in June, he was probably even over it. Just seems like it. And the band focused literally more on the Steve Aoki collab of DTB than they did for all of THP's promotion. LOL. I don't think that they play ''jazz''. I said that I don't consider ATS, LT or OML to be ''rock'' albums. I did say that the majority of their albums were rock, though, HT, M, MTM and THP. 4 out numbers 3. OML is definitely a pop record. Maybe I shouldn't have said Disney because I know it offends some people. Wasn't Heavy literally nominated for something by Disney? Anyways, it is a pop record, there is no questioning it. You mention some of the songs being indie rock, indie folk and synth pop. You must be referring to TTM and Sharp Edges for the indie ones. Yeah, they have somewhat of that indie type of quality, but play them next to songs by The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, etc. They sound way more pop. What song would you say is synthpop on OML? SFN possibly? Other than that, can't see one fitting that genre. Even with these few songs, the majority of the album is still pop. Now, I don't even hate OML entirely. There are some great songs on the album such as NCSM (I consider it one of the band's best songs), BS, OML, etc. But I will still call it a pop record because it is and the band knew that. Not sure why you brought up K.Flay, grandson or Phantogram since they aren't relevant to OML at all. I mean they did make a song with K.Flay for OML (MIAIG) but it was never finished for the album back then and it was almost an entirely different song in that form. ATS is basically experimental electronic alternative, that's the best genre I could come up with for it. I don't think many people would call A Thousand Suns a rock record. LT is basically electronic alternative, it definitely has more rock attitude than ATS, but it's still not really what I would consider a rock record. At the end of the day, Linkin Park is basically a rock band who has experimented with many genres. But they aren't a rock band in the same way that a band like Korn or Slipknot or Breaking Benjamin or Three Days Grace, etc. are a rock band. You get what I'm saying? And they certainly aren't comparible to metal bands. My entire argument was that Brad, Rob and Phoenix aren't really quipped to play or handle extreme metal or hard rock songs.

THP is definitely worse than OML. In my opinion. OML, there are a few songs on the album that I really like. It also has grown on me considerably since it came out as a whole. But I still don’t think it’s the greatest thing ever. At least I’m not bored when I listen to it. And I like a lot of the lyrics. THP, I fall asleep when listening to. It’s so boring. It doesn’t capture my interest at all. It isn’t heavy to me. I listen to tons of heavy music and THP is almost like a pop record in comparison to that stuff. I also just don’t really like any of the lyrical content on THP. It’s extemely bland to me and a lot of it is just words for the sake of words. IMO. The guest spots on THP were pointless, the band could have done them all themselves. At least the guest spots on OML provided something to the track. Not a huge fan of Kiiara and I wish Chester had sang the entire track, but she did bring a super pop element to the song way more by adding her vocals. Pusha T and Stormzy were both good on Good Goodbye, IMO. I just really don’t like THP much. Final Masquerade could have been a cool sound for the record. A track like Wastelands worked well for me, for that ‘’heavy’’ sound they were looking for. I think more tracks like that and Final Masquerade would have made for a better record. I think they tried to do a bunch of styles on the record that the rest of the band besides Mike and Chaz weren’t comfortable with. It feels like a really uninspired album to me.

I wouldnt even say they are in a rock band. Lol. One More Light was like Disney Radio pop with every track. Like pop music that little kids listen to type stuff. Living Things was like half rock. ATS wasnt rock. But I guess you are right cuz the majority of their albums are rock (HT, M, MTM, THP). But good point. They arent equipped to play metal. I like ATS and LT a lot but I wouldnt call them rock at all. It just comes down to Brad and Rob not really being able to play metal. Phoenix, not sure about him, you dont hear his bass anyways in anything besides like Given Up. He definitely seems like hes more into metal than Rob and Brad though. Chester of course he was the most metal but hes gone now. Mike is weird like he used to like heavy stuff but hes basically gone full pop and doesnt look like hes going back ever.

The vocals on The Hunting Party were much different than any other vocals in the band's discography. Listen to Chester's screaming and aggressive vocals on Hybrid Theory, Meteora, Minutes To Midnight, A Thousand Suns and even Living Things. He sounded different. The vocals on The Hunting Party were almost too raw and unrefined. I guess that could be an issue that I have with the album is that I hate the mixing/mastering of the record. I don't like the way the guitar sounds, the drums sound, or the vocals. But even beyond that, I just don't like the songs all that much. I would say that the tracks that I enjoy are KTTK, War and ALITS. I used to love ALITS a lot but over time, it's got a bit boring for me. KTTK is a pretty solid jam but I'm not a huge fan of the Mike vocals in the song and I really don't like the outro with the little kid screaming. I know Mike's intention with the song was to quote on quote ''kind of just fuck you up'' and be jarring, but it's almost overkill to me. The song has no structure at all besides the chorus. War is just a solid song, I actually like that song. The guitar solo is extremely badass and Chester's vocals are some of his best aggressive vocals ever. But that's one track. The reason that I mentioned The Summoning and Drawbar is because even though they are instrumentals and short, they still take up a slot on the album. For a 12 song album, taking up a slot for something like The Summoning just seems crazy to me. Foreword was annoying too on Meteora but they still gave us a 12 song album and didn't sacrifice a song for it. Same with Empty Spaces and a few of the other interludes on A Thousand Suns, they gave us a 15 song album. Drawbar was also kind of a waste IMO. Nobody in the world would guess Tom Morello was featured on the song if you didn't tell them. I don't think he even did anything on that studio recording because if you watch the making of video for it, it seems like his parts were kept out of the final recording. I don't have as much of an issue with Drawbar as I do The Summoning, though. LP always gave us an instrumental track but I just feel like a better one could have been chosen for the album over Drawbar. Personal preference. Until It's Gone was a slower song that was actually written for Transformers 4, but Transformers 4 went with Imagine Dragons song instead. It should have been kept off of The Hunting Party and perhaps given to us through LPU as a demo or something. It doesn't fit at all with the rest of the album in terms of sound and the lyrics are horrible. I've seen MANY fans agree with these statements about the song. Again, personal preference. Final Masquerade is actually a decent song, and it definitely has an alternative rock feel to it, it fits with the album. I don't mind that one. At the end of the day, I just am not a big fan of the album. It's definitely my least favorite album by the band. I don't even know if it's because I think the songs are bad, I just really think it's a very boring and uninspired album. Like I said, there are a few songs that I hate but for the most part, it's just boring to me. The lyrics are all very boring to me. The instrumentals are. The vocals are. The mixing, I hate. The band also seemed really uninspired with the album. Mike had to force Brad and Rob to get on board for a while at the start. They couldn't handle a lot of the songs live, or even recording them in the studio. I think a large part of it was not only because they were hard, but also because I don't think Brad and Rob's soul were in the songs. The band only played like 5 songs from the album. You could say the same for LT, but Mike has played RU and UIB now and the only songs now not to be played from LT are IBG, STB and Powerless. STB was featured instrumentally in a mashup and IBG was rehearsed.

It's funny because you can definitely hear Chester when listening to Maestro's chorus on the studio version of the song, but I never really noticed. Thanks for sharing.

Exactly. LP would be fine as a 5 piece. Mike will be a great frontman. The thing about the heavy songs is, what songs are we talking about? From HT, you have OSC, Crawling, APFMH, Papercut. Mike can do those and the crowd can easily sing Chester's parts, or Mike could do something cool like he has done with Papercut, etc. Crawling, I'm not sure if he will play it just because it was personal to Chester, but he could easily do it, look what he has done with Numb! Cmon. Meteora, the band wasn't playing Don't Stay, LFY, HIT, ETR, Figure.09, NL or Session at any recent shows before Chester died. Mike can do SIB and Faint, the crowd can help with those and shit. He could do BTH easily but I don't think he would cuz of the personal lyrics to Chester. MTM you have like GU, NMS, BIO as far as heavy songs, and GU and NMS weren't played in recent years anyways. They aren't necessities and GU is another one of those personal songs to Chester, Chester said in 2017 that when he wrote GU, it was him wanting to die, like Heavy. So yeah. NMS, the band hadn't played that since like 2011 and he probably could do some of it, honestly. BIO, easily done, look at recent shows. On ATS you have Blackout which he could do a remix of or something like they did on Carnivores, no vocals, and the song hasn't been played since like early 2012 anyways. On LT you have Victimized (a deep cut they haven't played since 2013 and likely won't anyways). THP, they only were literally playing Wastelands from the album on the recent tours with Chester, so yeah. As far as the rest of the main albums, Mike can easily handle all of the songs. His vocals have improved massively, like Hahninator said. Hell, Mike even wrote most LP songs, they are his songs, he should be singing them. People keep bringing up all these heavy songs and shit from prior to 2017 like they matter. Like who cares if Mike can't scream Qwerty? Using that as an example. Look at the 2017 set. OSC, APFMH, Faint, FTI, LITE and BIO were the only songs to feature ''screams''. APFMH and FTI weren't in every set, either. But the thing people are forgetting is that the ''scream'' part of those songs is very short. Most of the song, Mike can do. The crowd will be singing massively anyways. And like I keep saying, they can easily write an entire new album, then you have all of those songs that they can play. And there are also the possibility of many b-sides, demos, etc. being able to be played now. Look at Mike's 2018 tour. LP could very easily whip up a 23 song setlist and be perfectly fine. As far as LFAA, I like the song a lot. I'd like to see it be released in studio form, in whatever way Mike wants. It would be a great ''comeback'' song for LP.

The Hunting Party wasn't really that heavy. It was more like what people considered ''heavy'' back in the 1980's and very early 1990's. Hard rock and metal has evolved so much in the late 1990's, 2000's and now 2010's that a lot of people had a different expectation for The Hunting Party, myself included. It came out halfway through the 2010's decade and by that time, like I said, hard rock and metal was just much different. It has a few heavy songs that I liked, such as War (best song on the album by far) and Keys To The Kingdom (but the whole song wasn't heavy). It also had a lot of slower stuff like Until It's Gone, Drawbar, Final Masquerade, The Summoning, that's 4 tracks of that right there, a quarter of the album. Heavy also doesn't mean just instrumentally, there's a reason why virtually every metal and hard rock band features vocals akin to the style of Cross Off. The Hunting Party also had A LOT of Mike vocals so it was also kind of different. Another thing to note too is that while The Hunting Party had heavy-ish moments, they were for a very brief time in the song, the entire song didn't stay heavy most of the time, like Cross Off, etc. It could be due to the fact that Rob and Brad can't really play true metal and hard rock because it is hard to do, I don't think Linkin Park was ever equipped to be that heavy. The drummer in DBS, Elias, was a much better drummer than Rob, like Chester said in JK's EPK, ''they found one of the best drummers in the world''. And it's no surprise that Amir Derakh is much more advanced at playing guitar over Brad. DBS had a rock sound like that on many tracks and they were capable. Mark Morton is from Lamb Of God, which is even more advanced. The lyrics were also SUPPPERRR bland on The Hunting Party. It just felt like a very uninspired album to me. And Mike forced the rest of the band besides Chester to make the style of the album, they didn't even want to do it. I'd say the heaviest Linkin Park tracks of their entire discography are probably Given Up, No More Sorrow, Qwerty, Victimized, War. Victimized I actually consider heavier than the entire album of The Hunting Party. Even just Chester's screams alone on Lost In The Echo were heavier than any vocal on The Hunting Party. But yeah, Chester was super versatile, he proved he can so slow songs (She Couldn't, My December, singing on some Hybrid Theory tracks) and do heavy ass shit (OSC, APFMH, more) all the way back in 2000.

I think that they don’t need to play all these heavy songs. If they want to do a few, let the crowd sing the parts that Mike can’t/won’t. The band has so many songs that they can do. Mike’s touring throughout 2018 has shown so many opportunities. And they can also write a new album and play all of those songs, too. It will be different but obviously it will be, anyone that expects the band to be the same as before 7/20 is crazy.

Eh, not me. Likely wouldn’t be a fan of that at all. To each their own.

Id love for LP to continue as a 5 piece with Mike as the frontman if they decide someday to carry on. I wouldnt like anyone joining the band or replacing Chester.