Zangief

1. Using guest song writers on One More Light. I liked when the entire band wrote an album together, without any outside influence aside from a producer (Don Gilmore, Rick Rubin). I feel like Mike is already such a great song writer that they don’t need other song writers to help them. It made the album feel almost not like Linkin Park for me and I feel like it kind of felt more like a Mike and Brad solo effort like it’s been said above. There are some good songs on the album such as Nobody Can Save Me, but still. I can’t help but feel that they kind of lost their identity with this album because of it and I don’t think any of them obviously could have ever known things would fall apart for the time being after it. 2. Not making up any shows from the cancelled 2015 U.S. Tour. Fans still talk about this to this day on social media for the band. They were going to play a ton of places that they hadn’t played in forever or ever before in the U.S. A lot of fans didn’t think that Carnivores was the best tour and this tour had some great opening acts, not to mention a very good sounding show from the band judging by the first 2 shows of the tour, especially Orlando. I know that Chester’s broken ankle forced them to cancel, which is understandable, but they could have made an effort to at least make up a handful of shows, if not the whole tour. They had time off in between in 2015 and later in 2015, not to mention all of 2016, I know they started writing a new album but they could have made up a few shows in 2015 at least. I’m sure fans would have attended. Chester doing that STP tour a few months after the cancellation while not healed yet kind of added fuel to the fire too. When Dave Grohl broke his leg once, he told the fans he would make it up immediately, all the cancelled dates, and he did. I’m not going to say Chester could have even sang from a chair on stage for some of the tour after the surgery because obviously he was in severe pain and it wouldn’t be ideal to travel like that either but I feel like they could have figured something out after. They didn’t have too hectic of a schedule in 2015. 3. Putting UIG on THP. The song was rejected by Michael Bay for Transformers 4 and the band threw it on THP afterwards. I am not a fan of this song and I don’t think it fit the THP album at all. I think a different song could have been added instead, I’m sure they had a few at least. It ruins the flow of the album and the sound and lyrical content just don’t fit with the other songs for me. Mike even at one point said that they used a drop in the song, something they learned from Steve Aoki. The song feels very much like Living Things or Recharged era to me, which is maybe why it doesn’t fit in terms of sound for me. Makes sense. 4. I’ll get some flack for this one but I’m gonna say it. LPU8. Mmm...Cookies. Fans nowadays love the thing. In 2008, many people hated it. Some even considered it a slap in the face, Mike even addressed it. I just don’t think it was the right idea for them to release that and only that for the LPU8 CD. As much as fans hated the old 6 song format of a few live tracks, a few rare tracks, I think if they did it smart they could have made some cool stuff still. Some rare live tracks from 2008 such as RME, etc. We Made It. Hunger Strike, The Outsider, I know those aren’t LP and it would be hard to get licensing but idk. Maybe a MTM demo or two, complete ones. They shot themselves in the foot because with LPU9 they felt bad and gave us demos finally. And I think they felt obligated to give us demos every time after even if maybe they didn’t want to, 10 or more for each. The old format was fine to me. I think the fanbase kind of selfishly forced them into giving us demos every time because of it. And after the DSP’s stopped, it would have been nice to get some live stuff if they had continued the old format. 5. Stopping the DSP’s and/or not releasing old shows. I always found it strange that they stopped the DSP’s in the middle of a touring cycle. Why not wait until after the LT touring cycle was done in 2013 at least? Fans have pined over this for years after. And 2013-2017 shows would have been amazing to have as DSP’s. Surely it couldn’t have costed that much to have Pooch mix them and host them. Just because Warner didn’t make tons off of it anymore doesn’t mean some fans didn’t still buy them. Maybe it’s because fans just downloaded and shared them only but idk. Old shows that they had in the vault would have been great to release too for a price. They’re old shows so it’s not like demos the band can revisit or something. They have to have at least some judging by the live tracks released on singles pre 2007. Those would even be fine. Also the first half of 2007 I think was recorded and so wasn’t the European summer tour in 2008, they could have found a way to give us those years later.