Astat

I think of it as LP featuring on the soundtrack the way Styles of Beyond featured on the Fort Minor album. They're there on a bunch of it and composed a bunch of stuff for it, but the whole thing isn't exactly theirs.

It Goes Through, The Last Line, Devil's Drop, Dancer, and Mal RX7 are repurposed Linkin Park demos. White Noise is basically a Linkin Park song with Alec Puro playing drums instead of Rob. I wouldn't take issue with calling any of them LP songs.

The rest of the stuff on there is film score stuff that was mostly composed by Joe and Alec specifically for the movie. I wouldn't call any of that LP material any more than I would stuff like Mike's soundtrack for The Raid: Redemption or Alec and Joe's soundtrack for Blade of the 47 Ronin.

On 9/19/2025 at 12:02 AM, TPhil said:

Do we know any From Zero working titles? It's about time to update this

Villain was the working title for IGYEIH. I think that's the only one we know of so far.

On 7/14/2025 at 7:02 PM, JZLP-Benningstrong said:

I was looking for an HTEP discussion thread and couldn't find anything.

 

Just wanted to talk about this EP your thoughts about it and some random questions.

 

I recently said in the shoutbox that this album doesn't have live drums, i read that somewhere but im not really sure if its true, can you explain it please @Astat

 

I love the unique vibe of the songs, seems like the band didn't really liked them, i remember some old interviews in which they said that they were having difficulties to play headliner shows when HT got big and they only played Step Up, why the band disliked the songs? 

 

I love the quality of the recording for basically being a demo tape it sounds so fucking good, crystal clear vocals and the guitars are so freaking heavy.

 

Chester's vocals are so fucking amazing, he was very young how was he able to sound like that?  insane.

The songs they did with Mudrock (Carousel/And One/Part of Me) have live drums, the others don't.

On 8/3/2025 at 5:59 PM, linkindan said:

bUt iT DoEsN’t mAtTeR WhO mIxEs It, iT sOuNdS eXaCtLy hOw ThE bAnD wAnTs iT to SoUnD

I mean, yes and no. The band's ultimately going to be the ones who give a mix their approval, but that doesn't mean there's only one exact mix that would get approved.

I really feel like Chester did this a lot more than people seem to remember him doing.

Of course they're legit, anyone with editing software can verify what's being shown in the videos.

The band has never outright denied sampling anything from other sources, they just don't come right out and admit it all the time. There's probably a bit of obfuscation going on with Faint specifically because they talked a lot about the "live strings" on it but never specified that those were playing the low-end string line during the verses instead of the main string sample.

These days, they'd probably talk more openly about stuff like this, but during the HT/Meteora period they were fighting for every shred of credibility they could obtain while the "manufactured/boy band nu metal" accusations were going around. I feel like if it had gotten out back then that a hit single like Faint was built around a string loop lifted from a Bond film, the press never would have let us hear the end of the "ripoff" claims.

Re: Faint

Keep in mind that any weird track separation stuff in regards to game stems is usually just a result of the game developers trying to give each instrument enough stuff to play. The low end strings are in the verses of the bass track for the same reason the main strings are in the guitar track, it's more interesting to play from a gaming standpoint than the really spaced-out open chord stabs that the guitar and bass actually play.

As far as potential filtering to isolate the strings, considering we now know that the main Faint synth loop is a heavily cut-up and reversed loop of a track from an old James Bond soundtrack, the string layers probably aren't separated out in the original Pro Tools session.

The clicking just sounds like a vinyl crackle or maybe a slightly imperfect loop point that creates a popping noise. It's in the Faint concert stems too (Tintro_Faint.PADS2_01), so it's not unique to the Fortnite stems, it's in the original session.

On 6/5/2025 at 9:26 AM, JZLP-Benningstrong said:

 

By Myself - Big Pun 'Intro'

I'm not totally convinced on this one. It's a generic enough white noise-ish sample that it could come from a lot of places, and the tonality sounds different enough when the pitch is adjusted that it doesn't seem quite as solid as most of the other samples this channel posts.

7 hours ago, Steve said:

meanwhile someone found origin of scratch in What ive done 

 

This one's actually been known for a long time, it's been on WhoSampled for years and it's one of the samples on the Tasty Gas Station Breaks vinyl.

3 hours ago, blackout said:

Thank you for all these videos @JZLP-Benningstrong! Crazy discoveries. I was sure that "Faint" sample is original - meaning that it was taken from the orchestra studio recording sessions for "Meteora". Very interesting

So the thing with Faint is that there ARE live strings on it, they're just the low-end stuff happening in the verses instead of the main intro sample.

On 5/9/2025 at 4:48 AM, Shifter said:

Hello!
Could you please tell me, I saw a picture in a video about Mike Shinoda's music room, there was a picture of a Japanese woman on a red background in an art deco fascist uniform.

What was he trying to say?
Whose side is he on?

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTPFbbISRnw&pp=ygUTbWlrZSBzaGlub2RhIHR3aXRjaA%3D%3D

Why do you constantly come in here just to ask blatantly loaded questions that serve no purpose other than to imply Mike is a shitty person?

Here's my remix that I didn't get done in time for the album lol

Lol I actually forgot I played bass on By Myself on this 😂

1 hour ago, neil said:

This is a sad one and completely out of nowhere.

Nick and I were very close online friends back in the days before LPLive, (on MSN messenger - now I feel old) tracking down not only show recordings but physical items.  I still have the Hybrid Theory skate deck he traded to me for an original release HTEP.  We often did bulk buys of collectable lots and would split them - it was a really fun time.  He truly cared about the community. the recordings and
and was a super nice and kind person to boot.

He once trolled me by telling me he had an early snippet of Somewhere I Belong.  I thought about it all day, got home and he sent it to me.  It was a clip of this ringtone -

Here's an old picture I found circa 2007-2008 (per the file marker, could be older) of a pair of sunglasses he rigged up to record LP at a festival.  I was always entertained by his stories of what he had to do in order to smuggle recording equipment into shows and festivals:



RIP Nick, you were a truly great friend, family man and member of the LP community.

Holy hell, I'd forgotten about those sunglasses. Core memory unlocked. 😂 What a legend.

We kind of skimmed over this when it first happened because we didn't want it to get lost in the flood of From Zero-related news, but back in September, while in town for the first show of the From Zero World Tour in Los Angeles, LPLive staff members Mark (Hahninator), Dylan (RogueSoul), and Anthony (Astat) had the chance to spend an afternoon hanging out and filming some content with Jeff Blue! There's more of this stuff in the works, so be sure to follow Jeff on his socials so you don't miss out on anything! You can find him at JeffBlueMusic on Instagram, X/Twitter, and YouTube, as well as at jeffbluemedia.com.

You're probably already aware of who Jeff is if you're part of the LPLive community, but here's a short summary: In 1997, while working at Zomba Music Publishing, Jeff was also giving lectures on the music business at UCLA. In attendance at one of these lectures was a young Brad Delson, who met with Jeff a short time later and convinced him to hire him as an intern. Jeff subsequently attended the very first Xero show at the Whisky a Go-Go in Hollywood, and signed them to a publishing deal. Over the next three years, the band played showcases for every record label imaginable (many of them on multiple occasions), nearly split up following a particularly disasterous performance in December of 1998, saw Dave Farrell leave the band in early 1999 and spend the next year and a half recording and performing with numerous bassists (Kyle Christner, Ian Hornbeck, and Scott Koziol most notably), replaced vocalist Mark Wakefield with Chester Bennington, changed their name to Hybrid Theory, finally got signed to Warner Brothers after Jeff was hired to their A&R department, changed their name AGAIN to Plear...for about a week, before deciding Linkin Park was a better option, and finally, in October of 2000, released the album that would change all of their lives: Hybrid Theory. Jeff served as an executive producer on Hybrid Theory, and continued his A&R role with the band through the end of the Hybrid Theory touring cycle in 2002.

Given that Jeff was basically the only person other than the band themselves who was involved with their entire pre-Hybrid Theory journey, he amassed a huge collection of material from the band during his time working with them, and having visited with him, we can tell you that the guy has held on to ALL of it, both for archival purposes and out of a genuine love for what the band was doing. Every demo tape or CD, set of lyrics, photo shoot, contract, piece of artwork, etc. that the band produced between 1997 and early 2002 is still in his possession, and a lot of it is stuff that the fans have never seen. In fact, Jeff may be the ONLY person who still has a copy of some of this stuff! Jeff utilized this archival material to write his book, One Step Closer - From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park, which was published in 2020 and documents his time working with the band.

It goes without saying that as archivists ourselves, we share a massive mutual interest with Jeff when it comes to this stuff, and it was an amazing experience to go through a bunch of it with him. After the 20th anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory was released in 2020 with previously-unheard tracks like "Dialate," "Could Have Been," "Pictureboard," the Xero version of "Esaul," and the Chester version of "Stick N Move," some of us thought that we may be getting pretty close to having all of the band's pre-Hybrid Theory material, but the information in Jeff's book and our visit with him confirmed that there's still a LOT of stuff in the vaults. Obviously, we can't release any music without the band's permission, and neither can Jeff for that matter, but here's hoping that the rest of the world will get to hear songs like "Ashes," "Deftest," "Turn to Grey," and the various unreleased demo versions of other songs someday!

As far as the content we made together, Jeff has been uploading bits of it on social media recently. His first video features him meeting us for the first time, a brief summary of all the stuff he has, the story of how he met Brad and decided to sign the band, and some cool tidbits such as an early copy of the Xero demo tape (with "Dialate" as the second track instead of "Rhinestone," as well as artwork that differs from either the "baby" version we all know and love, or the more rare "shopping cart" version), Jeff's letters to Danny Hayes (the band's lawyer for many years) and Richard Blackstone (Jeff's boss at Zomba) regarding signing the band, and some details on other artists Jeff worked with during the same time period (check out that copy of Korn's "Neidermayer's Mind" demo tape!).

Jeff's second video focuses on his massive binders full of lyrics and song notes. In addition to having copies of the lyrics themselves, Jeff would often have Mike write summaries of what his mindset was when he was writing them. Jeff wanted to be able to explain what kind of place the band's writing was coming from when pitching them to record labels. You can see some glimpses of demo lyrics (both typed and handwritten) in here, and just from the size of the binder and the equally-large one under it, it's clear that even in their primitive state, these were songs that had a lot to say to the world.

Video #3 touches on the differences between his roles as a music publisher with Zomba, and an A&R executive with Warner. These typically aren't roles that are occupied by the same person, Jeff just happened to make signing the band part of his employment contract when he was hired by Warner (since the band kept getting rejected by record labels otherwise), so he naturally became their A&R guy as well.

Again, we have more content planned from our visit with Jeff, so keep checking back! A HUGE thank you to Jeff for inviting us into his home to check this stuff out, we're hoping we get to visit with him again in the future!

On 4/12/2024 at 5:55 AM, ShineWolf said:

Someone that has this edition, can you give me some info about it?

https://lpcatalog.com/item/2007_minutes-to-midnight/deluxe-edition/0093624999607_us

 

Like in the 60 pages book there is a lot of new stuff?

I just have the book like DVD version not this fan version and I would know if it's worth it buying this.

A lot more pictures, mainly. IIRC there's some additional commentary on the recording process compared to what you get in the smaller CD/DVD edition too.

7 hours ago, nickishere12345 said:

There's clearly two guitars in this mix. Was mike's tech playing offstage or something? I think the right ear is Alex but there's clearly another guitar in the left ear

Stereo doubling trick they've been using on the single-guitar songs for as long as I can remember. You put a very short delay on the guitar, pan the dry signal to one side and the delayed signal to the other side with the phase flipped. With the Axe FX rigs they might be doing it with different cab sims on each side too.

You can hear it on plenty of old stuff though, like the chorus/outro of this recording of APFMH from 2014: 

Been watching Drumeo for a long time, and it's always a treat to see Brandon behind the kit for a change. Excellent drummer that doesn't show it off very often. Having the new LP record as the focus of an entire video is just *chef's kiss*

Would love to see Colin featured on the channel at some point too!

Just edited my review into the first post, sorry mine was a tad late!

7 hours ago, GreyFox-AFCA said:

What a great video.

Last time i was on a set was about a year ago. i totally forget how much work there can be, even in small videoclips like these.

 

Emily is a great actress by the wayz same can be said about the Korean actress. She was great by the way, and looked so humble to be there.

 

I really love the song, and part of it probably has to do with the awesome videoclip. Shout-out to Mr. Hahn for this one!

I can't even imagine how much work goes into shooting something this elaborate in one night. My band did a music video last year that was a combination of green screen and miniature models, and that took us two 12-hour days to film.

Also, get you someone who looks at you the way Joe Hahn looks at his stick.

20 hours ago, Cesar656 said:

Good performance, Emily and Mike as per usual doing a great job. As i said in the chatbox, the tone of that strat in the solo sounds pretty bad even if played correctly. Wonder if Alex really went for that tone... 

 

Alex has been playing WID (the entire song) on the neck pickup, for reasons I really don't understand.

Holy shit guys. I can't even put tonight into words.

I'm also supposed to be up in like 5 hours lmao, send thoughts and prayers

There's a lot to consider about why Brad did this. He dealt with a lot of injuries, especially in the last few years prior to 2017. He hurt his back on the THP tour, and he spent a significant portion of the THP and OML tours wearing KT Tape on his right arm on stage because of chronic wrist problems. He also had the ever-present issue of ear sensitivity, which is why he always wore headphones, and it resulted in concerts being cancelled a few times when he developed ear infections.

He's also always been heavily invested in the business side of the band. Remember, Brad's dad was the head of their original merch team (he founded Bandmerch), and Brad by extension had a lot to do with that, and many other business projects since. He's one of Mike's most valued partners when it comes to songwriting/arrangments/production, and apparently he also had a lot of input on the live show production for this run. He wears a LOT of hats, possibly even more than Mike does.

I think when you couple 7 years of aging with a previous history of issues that affected his ability to play/tour, plus the numerous other things he does behind the scenes, it's not surprising that the grind of touring might not be the best thing for him. Also, he already set the precedent for this a little bit by missing a few shows here and there starting in 2014 and having Ben fill in for him.

On 8/20/2024 at 12:09 PM, Poofanda said:

Bro you don’t scare me and this is the sort of fans lp have I wouldn’t want to come back either lol threatening people like it’s laughable there’s so much evidence and basically lplive admitting they are label plants cuz no way Mike would trust fans with shit

Heyyyyyyy friend how you doing today LOL

Still waiting on all that sweet label plant money though. Daddy Astat has concert tickets to buy.

3 hours ago, Poofanda said:

LPLIVE will never know anything. They kept leaking stuff with Mike, said hurtful things about oml that hurt Chester, he got sick of them, Warner got sick of them and that’s why they ain’t ambassadors anymore haven’t been since 2019. They just want to think they know everything. They have so much guilt how they treated cb that’s why they act the way do. Clickbait like all the other fan sites. They just push for lp because they can never take back what they said to Chester and if none of you believe me go read his twitter responses to lplive. They are still up. They disrespect Mike cuz they were the ones that leaked MIUAIG. And he wasn’t happy. You all forgot Rob is missing, Joe didn’t care much for papercuts everyone is mentioning Joe cuz they saw it. What’s linkin park with 2-3 members huh. Mike doesn’t need the backlash you fans caused when he’s been there from day one. Remember post traumatic he could have done the other four and yeeted out but no. Twitch streams in Covid to make us feel less lonely and all you do is spew hate on him. You don’t know how to respect others. and why should Mike do everything for lp he has carried LP alone and the fans for 7 years. Where’s your precious Rob. Precious Dave. No one ever aims stuff at them why? Or Joe 

Let me get this straight: Mike "hates us" over stuff we allegedly said/did when Chester was still alive, yet we were consulted for archive material for both HT20 and Meteora20 and thanked in their respective album liner notes? The math ain't mathing, lmao.

Please show me the hurtful stuff we supposedly said about OML. I'll wait. Not all of us liked it, but I will happily dig up numerous examples of myself and other staff members coming to Chester/the band's defense in response to stuff other people said that was actually hurtful.

Let me guess, your entire belief that Chester got "sick of us" is based on this? Congratulations on not understanding how Twitter works just like every other person who's brought this up lately. That was Chester replying to someone else under one of our Tweets, whose account was deleted sometime between then and when Twitter became X. That's how any reply to a pre-X deleted account looks these days, which you would have figured out in about five seconds by scrolling through Chester's Replies tab and seeing the numerous other Tweets that appear to be replying to nobody. Not to mention any other time he replied to us has the "replying to LPLive" tag on it when that Tweet doesn't.

Yeah, Chester TOTALLY decided he hated us in May of 2017, then continued replying to, retweeting, and liking our posts throughout June and July. 🙄

The ambassadors program doesn't exist anymore, lmfao. Grey Daze used the ambassadors email list to try to rope people into doing promotion for them, but outside of that, the program has been completely nonexistent for years.

Hard to feel guilt when there's nothing to feel guilty about. 🤷‍♂️

...We didn't "leak" MIUAG. We released the live video for it. Because Mike literally CHOSE US TO BE THE ONES WHO RELEASED IT LMFAO. Yeah, sure sounds like a guy who's "unhappy" with us, huh? 😂

There isn't a day that goes by that people don't talk about Rob's absence. WTF are you even talking about?

If by "spewing hate" on Mike during his COVID streams, you mean "provided ongoing coverage of them and promoted all three Dropped Frames releases that came from them," you'd be correct. Sorry some of us don't like NFTs. Some My Chemical Romance fans don't like comic books. Some Offspring fans don't give a shit about microbiology. Some 30 Seconds to Mars fans don't care about Jared's movies. To any reasonable person (a.k.a. not you), that's fine.

You know nothing of our relationship with Mike and the LP team. That's generally how professionalism goes in the music business, everything's on a need-to-know basis. There's a lot of stuff we don't know because we don't need to know, and there's even more stuff that you don't know because you don't need to know (which is clearly for the best, as you've demonstrated about half a dozen times here that you can't behave rationally with the information you already DO have).

With all due respect, please go embarrass yourself somewhere else.

On 6/28/2024 at 9:36 PM, JZLP-NaughtyNottingham said:

Fuck Hoax Theory and every thing that they do.

 

 

Yeah, how dare musicians get paid for gigs?

🤡

On 4/14/2024 at 1:19 PM, martinez said:

So Waiting For The End on "Papercuts" CD contains no transition to Blackout which is happening for the first time, since the WFTE Promo CD single or the official CD single released in stores had the album version of the song.

 

Besides the lacks transition to Blackout, the song also contains different effects used on vocals. A different delay effect on the Papercuts version can be heard when you compare below two fragments:

 

WFTE-album version
WFTE-papercuts version

Another example with even more noticable difference is at the end when Chester sings the last word "got!":

 

WFTE-album version
WFTE-papercuts version
 
When you compare those fragments you will be able to hear those differences. Also, there might be something else which I'm not sure about it. I exctracted the acapella from both versions and I want you to compare and let know what you think about it. Here are two fragments of the acapella:

 

WFTE (acapella)-album version
WFTE (acapella)-papercuts version

 

When Chester sings "Flying at the speed of light" - it's about the last word "light" it sounds a bit different and the question is, is it sounds different because of the different effects on the vocals or it's different vocal take?

 

EDIT: sometimes try to listen to those fragments in the different order, it  can help to notice better the differences.

It's not a different vocal take as far as I can tell, but there's absolutely a different treatment on Chester's vocal when it comes to pitch correction on the Papercuts version. He kind of slides up into the word "light" on the original album version, on the Papercuts version the pitch jumps to the "final" note he lands on a lot more quickly.

We've got some kind of Shadow of the Day alternate mix crap going on with WFTE on this version, ladies and gentlemen. Bravo, Warner, bravo.