GraDoN

On 10/6/2020 at 9:40 PM, Justin said:

Oh that’s very much a real thing. That’s literally the reason a lot of people hate on LP. There are people who will love a band, but then as soon as they get heavy radio play they say “they sold out, so mainstream” and will literally stop listening to them and go find something else lol

It's also exclusivity, the idea that everyone listens to the LP version and you are one of the few that knows about a demo version gave a 13 y/o me a false sense of superiority. 

On 10/4/2020 at 10:31 PM, SFNL14 said:

Is that really a thing? I thought that was only an internet meme.

ITE was pretty popular back in the day. I'm referring to the LP version, not the demo.

Back in my hipster days i only listened to the demo because of how mainstream the song was. Nice to have this remastered and it really sounds great.

25 minutes ago, rd1994 said:

Excuse me? But for all this Content I think 200 $ is super cheap.

look at the Recharged/Living Things boxset that had 2 CD and a sculpture thingy and was 500. So which do you think warrants it's Price?

I mean both can be overpriced?

Value is obviously subjective, I'm sure there were people who thought that the TL box set was decent value, personally I was hoping for some more legit new stuff no one has seen/heard of. That is obviously asking a lot after 20 years since most of the content leaked some way or another by now. It's just that $200 is a lot for polished rehashed content IMO. Not judging you for thinking it's reasonable.

Isn't this a bit of a cash grab? I mean does it add enough value to warrant the price?

3 hours ago, LinkInThePark said:

My December and She Couldn't in 2017 would sound outdated as hell...those songs perfectly fit in their respected time period 

Don't mean exactly like this, more tonally.

And ironically, the EDM pop garbage that was much of OML was also outdated since that shit went out of favour in 2014-ish.

When they said that they were going for a more poppy sound on OML, this and My December was what I hoped they would gravitate towards. Still have no idea what they were thinking on that record. Really nice to have a good mix of this song.

I'm not a production expert, but it feels like the was produced by Imagine Dragons... sounds so loud and compressed.

On the music, nothing feels like it's an improvement on the originals. Some decent songs, but nothing that I want to listen to again.

I don't mind the name change of The Down Syndrome, but I always liked the line "... that smile on your face seems it seems happy. Are you happy?". I'm not sure if I read too much into it, but isn't it a reference to down syndrome people? They have this semi-imprinted smile on their face that makes them always look happy.  

I'm still baffled by how bad OML was. The direction they took was weird, basically a sound that left the charts 3 years prior, but that's fine if that's what you want to do. The main problem is the output was generic and bland with some of the worst features I've heard in a long time. Those Stormzy bars sounded like something he pulled out of his ass 5 mins before recording and were so out of place.

Even though there are a few bright spots, I have not listened to most this album since release and I won't ever again.

If you are going to change direction, do so boldly, don't make some generic forgettable excuse of an album.

actually liked quite a few of their songs back in the day, will def check this out.

will be nice to hear some OG Chester and forget the awfulness that was One More Light

haven't listened to OML since it's release given how bad the album was on my first listen, gave it another go to see if anything has changed. good grief is it a bad album, I actually thought that THP was pretty damn decent barring a few tracks and that the band was moving in a decent direction... but hot damn OML is really bad.

The main issue with a sound change is that you alienate a large portion of your 'old' fans in search of new ones. LP's sound change was gradual, all the albums after Meteora felt like a mixture of old and different, but OML was the fist album where they went all out different.

I was actually quite excited when they were talking about a more pop-like record as i like their slower songs, but what i got was some EDM/pop/rap fusion that sounds like garbage top40 overproduced trash. I just can't understand how these veterans, especially with how talented Mike is, could not muster anything more interesting and unique than this...

sucks being honest on a forum full of fanboys.

claiming a review is subjective is the same as saying the review is biased. subjectivity has no place in reviews as it allows personal views to dictate the direction of your conclusion. Taste is subjective, and sure some subjectivity is allowed when reviewing, but you have to be overwhelmingly objective when your review is not just personal.

Based on reviews for OML, the vast majority consensus is that it's not a very good album. average at best.

it's one of their worst reviewed album to date, i'm sorry that this seems to be hard to digest for some of you but facts are facts.

if we do not critically evaluate what we consume, we are no better than sheep.

ATS wasn't as personal to Chester as OML though and While I think that Cornell's death is the main reason, I strongly believe that backlash contributed to a degree .I mean let's be honest Chester wasn't handling criticism the right way this cycle that he even went out of his way to lash and respond to some losers on the internet. He spent way too much time on twitter and social media more than he would normally do . He responded to one guy on instagram aggressively calling him "douchebag" because he said something like " Your new music has no soul " or whatever.The guy was losing his fucking mind and Cornell's death made it worse. Look at his kerrang interview where he said "I will punch you in the face you fuckin pussy " to some people calling them "sellouts". The only thing I agree with is that the criticism wasn't nearly as bad as ATS's but keep in mind that Chester was in better mental state then.He simply didn't give a fuck. he didn't spend that much time on social media wasting his time to responding to some people on the internet and even putting that aside, Criticism of any kind can take a toll on you after a while even If you are normal person. Chester was very passionate about the album . It was very personal to him.He had a hard time in 2016 and I believe the only thing that kept him alive was making this album and he was on top of the world in the beginning of 2017 and speaking from mentally ill person perspective ( like me ) , when you are so happy about something , you will most likely be affected by any negative response to the point you can't even ignore it.

Making something that has personal significance or sentimental value doesn't make it immune to criticism. Should we just hand every album a gold star because doing otherwise could hurt the artist's feelings?

OML wasn't a very good album, regardless of whether you enjoyed it or not. That's just a fact.

 

Still, his best friend died recently. We can't really know what was going on through Chester's mind.

i ain't judging, obviously you got to be facing some heavy shit to go that far, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a very selfish act

i know depression is a beast as my dad has been suffering from clinical depression for the better part of 4 decades, but this is such a selfish thing to do... the guy has 6 kids, some of them still very young.

Suicide's biggest impact is on the ones the remain, not the person committing it.

okay every critic probably isn't HT fanboy, but they compare OML with older stuff (LT, THP) alot. If they would uninterestedly rate individual songs, I bet album rating would be like 50-60%. Yeah this album is very different and there are weak songs but 30% is bullshit.

More like 40%-50%, quite a few people on here need to make peace with the fact that objectively, this is a below average record. The fact that they enjoy it is subjective and absolutely fine, but that doesn't change the before mentioned fact.

The album is their worst album by some margin if you look at reviews, which isn't everything, obviously. I do however agree with them in this instance, metacritic score stands at 43% which I think is decently accurate. It's just bland and forgettable for the most part.

Love all these people that are saying that the album's commercial performance equates to it being a good album...

The album is pretty much like the singles and released songs.

On the lyrics, there are quite a bit of corny bits on this album, like staple pop "terms" like 'sky is falling' 'fall wide awake' ect...

I really laugh at their story about best lyrical album.

Overall, I won't listen to this again probably, which is a shame as them doing pop appeals to me as I have grown out of their nu-metal stuff. This is just not the type of pop i can stomach. It's just so average and generic.

I might be completely wrong, but One More Light reminds me a lot of TLTGYA lyrically and musically.

OML feels kind of smug to me though, "Oh look at me so caring while no one else is".

Might just be me though.

 

I'm pretty much here, too. I don't hate the new stuff, but I don't really think any of the new batch is particularly memorable. Or at least, I'm not itching to go back and listen to the songs again. I miss hearing guitars and such. I think I've listened to BS 3 times, and GG, and will probably listen to Invisible once before release.

 

I don't mind the band's wanting to experiment with sounds and such; it's commendable. I like listening to Breaking Benjamin, but get tired of the same recycled sound, album-in, and album-out. Clearly they're taking a page out of Madonna's book - to reinvent themselves with each release. Sometimes it'll be a hit (Ray of Light/William Orbit-produced), sometimes it won't (pretty much everything after RoL). Many folks were also turned off by ATS, but I loved it - it reminded me of listening to Enigma (The CROSS of Changes, Le Roi Est Mort..., The Screen Behind the Mirror, in particular).

The problem with LP changing their sound is that they seem to have no direction, their last few albums have been all over the place with regards to their feel/sound. There have been many artists/bands that made fairly drastic changes to their sound over the years/decades that felt natural and came off pretty damn good. LP is not in that group.

They seem to have reached where they wanted to go all along: pop. I have no problem with this, it just sounds so bland and unimaginative. I actually wish that some studio exec held a gun to their heads when they made this because if this was all them then it's pretty disappointing. I mean they have never been geniuses, but this is a new low.

 

I'm sick and tired of word "generic" and "forgettable". Maybe you'll forget or not gonna listen to the record forever but for others (including me), I'll keep jamming to this record over and over again because I like it. HT is unique but during that era, there's tons of music like that. Limp Bizkit, Static-X and more nu-metal band, same just like this era that Top 40 fills with pop songs.

Yeah, but with LP of old you could hear that it's a LP song without even hearing any lyrics. There was no way of confusing a LP song with a LB or Korn song. LP always carried with them a bit of that, their LP DNA was in the music even if it was less so later on.

This album has none of it, if Chester or Mike isn't singing there is 0 way of telling it's an LP record. RHCP changed their sound many times and yet you can always hear that distinct DNA that makes it a peppers song. Even if it's not as apparent as it was at the start. You are free like like the new LP album, but so far it is generic and forgettable, as much as you hate hearing it.

 

I grew up listening to them since HT and never miss anything that the band released. the first 2 album using the same recipe, while the rest has their own style. Same goes to OML. it's different than others because they decided to open up their creative door to different people/songwriters. LP aim to be different this time and yes, they achieved it. this album have LP unique sound but it just that you guys have taken the "songwriters" term too much and overlook every single songs that has been release is colaborators touch, not LP style. what if they didnt say about songwriters at the first place? i'm sure the comments will be different.

 

if OML is THE MALL soundtrack? heck, i still love it. Even The Mall OST also different musical style. not even close to THP.

 

but in the end of the day, it's everyone choice. For me, I believe in what they did.

 

 

These songs are def not unique nor does it have a LP feel to it.

You are free to like them, but IMO, unique does not automatically mean good.

These songs are so generic, any top 40 pop band could cover these and it would fit right in with them.

I just wish they approached pop differently to the way they did, which is generic and forgettable.

I haven't listened to the live songs yet, but everything released so far has been

@GraDoN What you said is also subjective. You say the band isn't talented, as if that's just an unspoken fact that is indisputably true. There are literally millions of people who would disagree with that statement, though. I am one of them. I feel LP as a collective, are a talented band. Do they have misfires? Yes. Any band that switches up their style as many times as they have are bound to have a couple of misses, but as a whole I think they are an innovative band that's very open to change, and almost always pulls it off.

True, it might be subjective. I do disagree that LP innovated though, they took something that existed (Korn was already well known) and made it radio friendly enough to sell it to the masses, something that wasn't really achieved to the level that LP did. Their later works are far from innovative.

I mean i really enjoy old LP and many of their later songs, but personally I don't see any big innovations nor bursts of talent.

 

What do you mean by groundbreaking music? Something that other artist didnt do? How can you say they're not talented enough? By judging this OML album? Give them a break. They can do whatever they want.

Groundbreaking might have been too strong a word, but the generic stuff they are putting out now isn't going to do anything.

And I'm not hating on them, just stating a fact, they are not very talented