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Great to see. Wish I could be there, but I know it'll be a great event for everyone who can make it.

I've listened to the album several more times since Thursday, and I feel like I was a little too quick to judge it initially. I wasn't connecting with any of the songs, really, aside from the last two. But the more I listen, and maybe (almost certainly) with new context, the more I can enjoy a lot of the songs. Heavy is still kind of bad, Halfway Right is boring, and Talking to Myself doesn't really land with me, but some of the other tracks have become really, really good to my ears. Maybe I just needed to open them up a little and not be weirded out by the new sound. Nobody Can Save Me is a gorgeous song. Invisible and Sorry For Now are great showcases of how far Mike has come as a singer. I'm still disappointed that there's only a single rap verse from Mike, though - one! That's crazy. Imagine finding that out in 2003. I don't know if it's because of what happened, or if it's just the additional context of letting the songs exist for a couple months. But One More Light is a much better album than I thought.

I'm a little bit in awe of how much you've stepped up in the wake of everything that's happened the past few days, Soul. You've come a really long way as a vital member of the community. We need to stick together, as members of our individual communities (LPL, LPA, etc.) and unified as fans of Linkin Park. This is something we all need to remember: this is not the end. We're all here, we can get through this. The guys will get through this, maybe not as Linkin Park, but they'll still be here. It's never too late for anybody. If you're feeling down, try your best to reach out to someone, because there are people here who are here to help. And, if you're here to help, then help. Reach out to someone. This is our job as members of this community, and it's how we'll survive. Because of course we'll survive. Reach out. My PM box is open, too.

It's been several days now and I don't think the weight of what happened has fully landed on me yet. Like, it still feels like an awful invasive thought in my head - I think "Chester Bennington is gone, LP is (maybe?) gone too", and my brain just says "get that out of here, that's not real, why would you think that?" It's a strange feeling to contend with. It feels like I haven't grieved properly yet. With other celebrity deaths - Bowie, Chris Cornell - I felt it the whole day, and it brought me down the whole day. But with Chester, even thinking about it and trying to grasp and comes to terms with it isn't working. I don't know. I don't want it to sound like I'm completely emotionless about it, because I was devastated for a couple days afterward and it still hurts. But it just feels like it's not processing completely and I don't know if it will any time soon. Maybe once the band issues an official statement and potentially clarifies their future (because I really, really need to know), it'll solidify everything. But that could take a long time, and honestly, it should take as long as they need it to. We'll probably hear something soon because they'll want to not leave the fans hanging, but I hope they also understand that we're not going to rush them at all. I hope you all are doing alright. We have to try our best to support each other.

I'm really, really dreading whatever statement the band ends up releasing. I cannot imagine how they must feel. To be together as one lineup (more or less) for 18 years, and to have it end like this... This is just terrible. It'll take a long, long time for this one to settle in my heart.

What an incredible performance that was. It almost hurts to listen to.

I wrote more here and I don't have the energy to repeat it all, but I'm legitimately devastated. I love Soundgarden, I loved Audioslave, and I loved Chris's solo work. It's surreal to me that, not only is he gone, but he killed himself. I want to understand why. On the outside, and I know we see very little of celebrities' lives, but from what we could see, he really seemed like he'd managed to leave behind his demons and emerge a happier man. I suppose those things are always around the corner, though. I hope his family and friends can recover from this.

I don't really like it. This is a pretty quick reaction after the first listen, but it feels very forgettable to me. Most of the songs haven't really made an impact on me, aside from Good Goodbye for the features and Mike's verse, Invisible, and One More Light. Sharp Edges might've been better without the electronic elements. I liked where it was going in the first verse, but I think it took the wrong turn. OML, in fact, is probably the best song on the album for me, because it's a big change of pace from the rest of the album. I didn't think I would mind the modern pop production, and I don't necessarily mind it, but it just feels so...regular. Feels very 2017, in the way that I think a lot of other people could've made the beats here. Battle Symphony probably has the best one. I don't know. It could grow on me - like I said, this is just the first reaction after a first listen. But I don't feel compelled by it. In terms of albums I listened to on or around release day, all of them prior to this (starting with Minutes to Midnight) grabbed me right off the bat, even Living Things. This doesn't really do that, and that's concerning. But I need to listen to it a couple more times, I suppose.

Lmao. Chester's face when the girl is in midair is great. He's just like "oh fuck, I'm gonna get dunked on by a grade-schooler." This video is so dumb but it's incredible.

I don't think Warner will bother blocking this show. 2002 was fifteen years ago and they were coming off a red-hot debut album, so they clamped down too hard. Not to mention that they had the contract issue a few years after that, and it seems that LP has been fine with them since then. The atmosphere is way different now - the only thing, I think, that would cancel the show is if it gets in the way of touring obligations somehow.

The fanbase meltdown when MMM Cookies first came out was hysterical. I couldn't believe how angry some people got over it. The only good thing that came out of the backlash was that they switched to releasing demos on every subsequent LPU CD exclusively. As long as this isn't tied into anything else that the fans are expecting, it'll be funny like the first one was supposed to be.

I like this song a lot more than Heavy. I think if they're going to do a pop album, it needs to be like this - lean into it. Heavy felt a little half-hearted to me, but this hits the spot. Hopefully the rest of the album has a feel similar to this track.

Cool to see Mike acknowledge stuff like this, though he's always been pretty open about old stuff the community unearths. He's put up with over a decade of Pictureboard questions, after all.

Holy shit lmao. I never imagined more Xero songs would be dug up by anyone but the band themselves. This is awesome. "Drop" has some weird-ass lyrics when compared to the rest of the Xero-era music we've heard. I really like Mike's flow on Fiends, too. In your face the whole time. I wonder what other pre-Hybrid Theory music might be out there on random compilations like this that we haven't found yet...

It's funny how effortless it could be to convert the song to a heavier style. The lyrics could still work well enough.

What's funny is that this song would be just fine if it was Kiiara feat. Linkin Park. But that's not what it is. I wasn't really sure what to expect because I hadn't paid very much attention, but I certainly didn't expect a straightforward pop track. I don't know how I feel about it. I think, as a song, it's fine. Chester's vocal performance is interesting, but I don't think his voice is suited to the style he's trying out. I think he needs to have a harder edge to his vocals for them to sound good, and this performance is a little too airy. It's a catchy song, and I think it could gain traction on pop radio, if people get past the idea that it's a Linkin Park song and don't have an automatic "ew the nu-metal band" recoil. Who knows.

Maximum of ~44 minutes, then, probably under 40. Vinyl's a little on the pricey side for one record, but I think I might go with that. I'm still on the fence about it, though. I'm intrigued by the direction of the album, at the very least.

Very nice to see a new LP wiki being launched (remember the one LPA made like five years ago?), and I think it's a smart move to keep its editing limited to staff members. It already looks like a very well-crafted resource.

The race to grab QWERTY from somewhere was my introduction to the online LP fandom. I think I finally grabbed a horrible-quality bootleg from either lpfuse or pushmeaway.com. Those were wild times.

Hope you guys don't run into any legal repercussions for this, even though the shows aren't available any more.

Lmao this was really well-done. I was actually still questioning it right up until it didn't download the way the actual website does.

I wonder if, had Elizondo stayed with the band through Hybrid Theory, he would've ended up being their permanent bass player. Mike seems to respect him a lot more than Koziol or Christener. Probably not, though. Elizondo made the right choice with his career in the end.

I'm not entirely surprised and that's an awful feeling. I always hoped that he would get it together eventually, but it seems like he just couldn't. Very sad.

I always thought that Pretend to Be was a track that was close enough to be one of the last tracks, but it wasn't completely ready for MTM, so it was finished afterwards and marked as a 2008 track. I don't think Not Alone was the one - people talked about that when it came out, but Mike's quotes implied that it was far from done in 2007, since I think they had to write lyrics for the entire song. I could be remembering that wrong, though.