You're right, the ATS backlash at first was freaking awful (slowly fading away until more people accepted the album and became a fan favorite of many) with the ocassional: "Oh now they're trying to sound like 30STM and Muse combined even more, they stopped having an unique sound after Meteora". Even myself I was very skeptical when The Catalyst was released, then a few months later I was a HUGE fan of the album, it tells you how persective can change that quickly, for the better of course, but what I don't remember if the MTM backlash was as bad as ATS or nothing at all, I didn't paid much attention at the time and I was only enjoying the new music videos that they were releasing.
I was aware of Chester's bad problems the last couple of years of his life, Chris Cornell passing away didn't helped at all and then he got out of control, wich is true, it was sad to see him reacting to the usual comments but here it was worse, because yes, I said that it could affected him somehow but not being the direct cause of taking his life. We all miss him, we all wish things were different, but it cannot be changed, life's a bitch.