mt2oo8

On 11/3/2020 at 8:01 AM, hahninator said:

They don't sound like the same song to me. It's a full band deal on the Summer Sanitarium video, and this is just a simple beat with Joe scratching over it on the LPUTV video. It doesn't seem like the same thing at all.

I can now confirm in 2023 that OP was correct and this song is infact now we know as the song Lost. Great find!

I'm here in 2023. You were correct this song is 'Lost'

Seeing the rest of the band's first official public appearance since Chester's been gone will be really eerie.

I think A Place For My Head will be played at Hell Fest. It's the least they could do for metalheads

Radiohead rescheduled their show to Emirates Old Trafford. It's possible Linkin Park will do the same. Really gutting but I totally understand

We heard what Linkin Park's attempt at mainstream was. I'm worried about what a mainstream Fort MInor attempt would be like. Welcome was sorta like that but without the drunk rapping vibe

Most people here are hating Halfway Right

Fuck all y'all I actually really loved this one. Personal favourite on the album

 

After sitting on One More Light, here is what I think about the album.

This is the first album I did not preorder from the band since I became a fan well before Meteora because of how shockingly weak Heavy was for me for months.

Before I go through the songs, I want to point out that there is guitar all over the album, used in different ways which seems much more up Brad's alley compared to The Hunting Party and Living Things. I like the loud explosive guitar sound by the band but I can understand that gets old to write/play for so long. It’s a semi-new way of using guitar on an album for LP, using it as more of a background accessory instrument instead of a prominent instrument on the songs. We see this on the Sorry For Now breakdown, the Invisible piano ending, before the chorus starts on Halfway Right, the One More Light bridge, etc. It’s actually everywhere. So Brad might have been the most creative on this album actually, just plugging in overall good sounding guitar into the pop songs.

A quick run down of it top to bottom… Nobody Can Save Me has some cool MTM-esque lyrics that remind me of Valentine’s Day in a way. Dark lyrics with a poppy beat and the clash between the two is actually good. Chester sounds super “clean”, and I don’t know anyone that can complain about his vocals honestly...it just proves what we already know - that he’s a great singer that can sing in any genre of music.

Sadly, the songs are overloaded with clapping samples, excessively sampled drums, and generic pop noises. Good Goodbye is a pre-release song that we know and I think it was a total waste to put two guest rappers on it when Mike could have had three verses to himself. The live verse he does is already better than both of the guest verses to me. Not a fan of the chipmunk on the track.

My friend Parth pointed out to me that Talking To Myself is a song that would have been overplayed hourly by KROQ in 2012...and I agree. The description that it is a “The Killers”-esque song is pretty accurate with the guitar and bass. For this album, Talking To Myself is a highlight. Is it organ samples chopped and thrown together for the intro?

So there's “doing pop” and there's “overdoing an attempt at pop”, and Battle Symphony is the latter. It sounds like the biggest attempt at creating a purely top 40 pop song in the band's catalogue and easily is the worst song on the album to me - no comparison. Invisible is the first attempt we hear at Mike singing a song by himself in a few albums. I’m not a big fan of the mid-tempo upbeat-sounding poppy songs in general so Invisible doesn’t go anywhere for me. Two pretty weak songs in a row.

One thing interesting about Heavy is after listening to it a million times, I’ve noticed how much stuff is really going on in the instrumental of the song. Where some songs seem instrumentally weak, Heavy actually has a ton of layers in it. I’m not a fan of the track but you can tell they spent some time layering and layering the Shinoda sounds on that one.

The biggest highlight on the album is Sorry For Now. If Mike wants to sing on One More Light (album), then a song written to his kids with soaring vocals over quality pop samples is the way to do it. While Invisible is more mid-tempo and Mike’s vocals don’t go anywhere, they really shine on Sorry For Now. The band completely flips the script and lets Chester rap the bridge where before the entire delivery pattern would be switched. Everything from the start to the end of the song is great to me. I’m a big fan of pop that is GOOD - some examples are Backstreet Boys’ Millenium/Black & Blue albums and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now/Red/1989 albums. Everything on Sorry For Now is done like a truly well-written pop song. That breakdown comes out of nowhere, in a great way, and is awesome. And then there’s Brad just throwing guitar over it...I dig it. A+ job. Why the hell couldn’t we get more “oh shit” moments and creative pop songs on this album like Sorry For Now? This song is leagues above the rest on the album.

With Halfway Right, we really confirm the vocal melodies become really repetitive as it’s also a pretty forgettable track. The most intimate part of the album is One More Light, which the album is named after. It’s a very natural delivery for Chester and it’s a fantastic acoustic/soft song. To me it is much better song than a comparable stripped down track, The Messenger. For once I think this would be a good slower song live and that comes from someone criticizing all these piano songs and soft songs in the setlist for a decade now. The lyrics and soft approach to the song are both great.

With a good chance to finish the album off with a strong closer, the band falls very short with Sharp Edges. LP has released three “epic” closers out of the last four albums - The Little Things Give You Away, Powerless, and A Line in the Sand. A Thousand Suns would be included in that too if the album ended with The Catalyst. Sharp Edges goes nowhere...maybe the album should have ended with the title track. If this song was on Minutes To Midnight instead of In Between I don’t think we’d be complaining, though.

The bottom line for me is - music was an obvious afterthought on this album. Did Phoenix, Rob, or Joe write anything *at all* for the album? The problem with pop is that it utilizes such small numbers of people from the band. Overwhelmingly we see a reliance on computer beats and noises, inevitably from the database of “Shinoda sounds” (or the chipmunk gallery). The lyrics are not inherently better than any previous efforts… specifically let’s reference the Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns eras where lyrics were being delivered in their prime. Even the laughable Living Things had good lyrics at points. Most importantly, the melodies get old, fast. This album was an experiment but one they did not necessarily succeed at for a cohesive effort… this makes three albums in a row cohesively weak when home runs, erm, grand slams were hit with MTM and ATS which I consider the prime of the band creatively. Three albums in a row have been full of filler content (remember Until It Breaks, Skin To Bone and Until It’s Gone?). Creative parts of the album like Sorry For Now are minimal and hard to find outside of that song. Imagine if the music had been approached first - we’d see many more creative moments like Sorry For Now and maybe would have ended up with a good pop album. Remember Leave Out All The Rest? That’s a signature pop song (probably the best in the LP catalogue) that would fit into this genre perfectly, and the band nailed it.

It’s a bad album but it’s even worse when LP throws their name on it. While Linkin Park is not held down to one genre or style specifically, there are elements missing from One More Light, specifically more rapping from Mike. In the one song where it could be showcased (Good Goodbye), unnecessary and unfitting guests were shoved into the song into what can be called the greatest wasted opportunity of the album. But doesn’t that sum up the album in one sentence?

The Good: Sorry For Now, Talking To Myself, Nobody Can Save Me, One More Light

The Bad: Battle Symphony, Good Goodbye, Sharp Edges, an attempt at putting chipmunks into a song

Recommendations: Drop Battle Symphony from the live show ASAP (which Joe has messed up already 3x) and replace it with Nobody Can Save Me.

Final score: 4/10 because I’d keep these 4 songs I enjoy and rewrite the rest of the album. Someone call Ryan Tedder, Max Martin, etc for some pop advice.

 

Good review. I agree with everything you said

Sharp Edges writing process went something like

"How can we be Ed Sheeran"

To the people saying they "love it", what other bands do you listen to? Do you like pop music in general? Because anyone who leans toward rock, or harder music, can't possibly like this crap.

I usually get shat on by Linkin Park fans when I tell them that what they are writing now is downright awful. My influences come from bands that are insanely creative and talented, bands that have released new albums recently and I consider them masterpieces from start to finish and I love Linkin Park as well, but when they take a simple approach to something that should be special hurts inside. I'm a song writer too and I feel like if I had written most of these songs I wouldn't be proud of them. I would be proud of the One More Light song though

I haven't listened to it and I don't plan on doing so until Friday.

My friend told me almost every song has that annoying sampled 'clap' sound like it's some kid playing around with FL Studio or something, which is hilarious but hopefully not true. Linkin Park's potential is so high and I feel like this is a bad way to show it

The album will leak any day, how is it a bad move? If anything it's a good move that they are playing so many new songs versus just 3 like THP.

It could leak and there will be people that choose to listen to a very compressed version of the album but that's not me. I waited for THP to officially release despite it being out there. I enjoyed not knowing what to expect with all the songs that weren't singles

I HOPE NOT.

We've already heard 6 new songs from the new album of 10 songs. There's absolutely no surprise anymore. We even heard One More Light which was the most hyped song (in live version at least). I think it's a bad move and they showed us too much already. If Sharp Edges is played then we've only got 3 more songs to enjoy.

Mike's rapping style reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0OdmRtuQew

Like some of you already said before the Future/Migos style, personally I dislike it, it isn't Mike's style and he can do better than that.

 

Song is okay, reminds me of We Made It. The chorus is weak though, really 'cheap' sound of the claps, and the lyrics and vocal delivery is very cheesy.

Fuck you're absolutely right. Snoop Dogg nailed the impersonation.

 

Battle Symphony had a music video too. My assumption was that these were early promo songs released for fans from the album.

 

It would make zero sense to release a new single right now. Heavy is still climbing on the charts and is doing better than it has since it was released.

Lyric video and Music video are two things. Good Goodbye is getting a real one similar to Heavy. Hopefully it grows on me but I was really hoping for this one to be good in my own opinion

 

Wow, so "The Summoning" is better than "Good Goodbye"? Wow. Are you delusional?

That was an obvious joke. No I wouldn't prefer The Summoning, I could have easily said Foreword or something. What I'm trying to say is I'm not a fan of the song. I just can't see the appeal to it, I'm sorry. Linkin Park can do better than this

 

I haven't seen anywhere that it's a single.

This song is getting a music video. I just assumed it was a single, isn't that how it works?

OK I heard it. I was hoping this would be good but this has to be one of Linkin Park's weakest singles of all time. The lyrics were poor and the melody isn't even remotely catchy. Shit. I would rather listen to The Summoning than this song

Sorry for being a little out of the loop. People are saying they heard the song but I don't see any links to the song or anything filtered new on YouTube. What's going on? Where can I hear my fix of the latest pop music?

Going to Manchester from Scotland. Would be so much easier if they just played the Hydro Arena in Glasgow

Wow this is atrociously bad. Not sure what to even say about it.

 

What happened to the instruments? Sounds like a ProTools demo made in 10 minutes. Even Lockjaw (LPU Demo) sounds like it had more time spent on it.

I thought the same thing. Lockjaw, a song which was made in one day sounds 100x better than this basic pop song. I'm dreading this sooo much. I've never been so bored listening to a song in my life.

It's always the last place you look. Good luck though!

Holy shit.

There are going to be 8 short clips. Is it possible that it will have one of each member of Linkin Park + a Kiiara on the 8th clip? It's a long shot but who knows, we'll find out probably from clip #2 if it's another member or not

Guys

Anyone got a stream link to watch Conan online? Outside of the US that is

Would appreciate it!

Wouldn't Fort Minor be clashing with Linkin Park if Linkin Park releases an new album in 2016?

my theory was that if Fort Minor were to do another album it would be released on November 2015. The Rising Tied was released on November 2005 so for a 10 year anniversary it would make sense. It might not be the case though