Astat

Alright, here's my in-depth review so Y'ALL CAN STOP BUGGING ME ABOUT IT THE ALBUM HASN'T EVEN BEEN OUT FOR A DAY HERE YET JEEZ. Nobody Can Save Me - 7.5/10 This and Talking to Myself are probably the two most conventionally "Linkin Park-sounding" songs on the record. In terms of energy, I think Talking to Myself would be a better album opener than this, but this would probably be my second choice. This one gets lots of comparisons to Battle Symphony and while I think there are some definite similarities in structure, this song's got more interesting stuff going on with the instrumentation. I think a more well-developed bridge would have helped this song tremendously, although I do like how the bridge re-appears vocally at the end of the song to serve as an outro. Good Goodbye - 3/10 Still can't get past the cringeworthy "hoes" line in Stormzy's verse and just how bad the two guest rap verses are in general. If they swapped Stormzy out with Mike's original last verse that he does on the live version, I'd at least bump this up a couple points, but there's still not a whole lot to like about this either way. The chorus is the worst on the album, the instrumentation isn't really that exciting...easily one of my least favorite Linkin Park tracks. At least the music video is fucking hilarious. Talking to Myself - 8/10 That lead guitar line is catchy as hell! Really like the echoed/effected vocal lines in the verses, the acoustic guitar showing up in the bridge and outro is a nice touch, and Chester sounds really good on this one. My only gripe about this song is that the live version brings so much more energy to the table, the studio version just seems to drag a little. Not nearly as drastic of a live vs. studio difference as say, Lost in the Echo or Bleed it Out, but still noteworthy. Battle Symphony - 7/10 Basically take everything I said about Nobody Can Save Me and apply it to a slightly more generic-sounding song, and that's about what I have to say about Battle Symphony. There are a TON of guitar tracks buried in the mix on this one, I wish they were brought out more...geting some flashbacks to the horrible mixing on Living Things with this song, and that's never a good thing. Still, good melody throughout this one, and an overall really pleasant-sounding musical soundscape. Invisible - 8/10 I guess I'm in the minority in that I like this more than Sorry for Now. I like how it's an uplifting song in a major key that still manages to have some really dark-sounding musical elements to it. The guitar part that comes in during the last chorus is just perfect. Brad doesn't play a lot of complicated stuff but he's always been incredibly good at knowing what to play and when. The little music box-like outro is really cool too, wish they included that in the live version. Heavy - 4/10 I still feel pretty much the same about this song as I did when it came out. I don't like Chester's singing on this, to the point that it's almost a relief when Kiiara's verse comes in. This would have worked way better as a song on her album that Mike produced or something. The vocal production on this track is absolutely stellar (check out the acapella), but it's still just a generic, poorly-written song with very little substance to it. Sorry for Now - 7.5/10 While I like Invisible better, I will say that this song has the better vocal performance from Mike. In fact, I think it's the best all-around vocal performance of his career. Chester's bridge on this kind of comes across as a second-rate imitation of Mike's bridge on Waiting for the End, it seems kind of forced, like they just HAD to have Chester on this song for whatever reason. Also, the mixing on this song takes a HUGE downturn during the last chorus - where do the vocals go? The volume of the vocals drops drastically as soon as all of the other instruments come in. It literally sounds like somebody accidentally bumped the master fader with all the vocals on it while they were doing the mixdown. HUGE head-scratcher. Anyway I generally like the song, I think the idea of all of the jumbled-up synth and guitar samples being stitched together into a new musical idea that happens a couple times in this song was a cool idea, it just wasn't as well-executed as it could have been. Halfway Right - 6/10 Most filler-sounding track on the album for sure. There are times when "na-na's" and "whoa-oh's" work (see: Roads Untraveled, When They Come for Me), but they just don't work here, probably because it's the only song on the album that has them, which almost makes it seem like they never finished the song. I WANT to like this song because it has some of my favorite instrumental stuff on the album in it (those tubular bell samples in the last chorus are AMAZING), but I just have an overwhelming sense of indifference every time I listen to this one, and it hasn't grown on me. One More Light - 10/10 Unquestionably the best ballad of Linkin Park's career. It's the most emotionally-affecting song in their discography for me, having lost my dad to cancer not too long ago. The minimal instrumentation works perfectly on this one, and some of those fingerpicked chord voicings Brad uses are just brilliant - I literally thought there were two guitar parts at first! The only thing I would change is to bring out Chester's high "I do" during the guitar solo a little more, it's a really nice moment that gets kind of buried in the mix. But otherwise, this is absolutely the highlight of the album and easily a top 5 Linkin Park song for me. Sharp Edges - 5/10 LP doing an imitation of old Mumford and Sons after Mumford and Sons already abandoned their old sound on their most recent album, particularly as an album-closing track, just doesn't work. I feel like the instrumentation doesn't fit with the lyrical content at all on this one either. If you're going with an acoustic track as an album closer, don't make it an upbeat "stomp-clap" tune when the song right before it is the most heart-wrenching ballad you've ever written. If the lyrics weren't so personal I'd almost think this track is supposed to be some weird form of comic relief. Keep this instrumental track and put some more lighthearted lyrics to it and you'd have something decent, but as it is this is a song that doesn't make sense at all, in terms of both composition and album sequencing. Not a good way to end things. Overall album score - 66/100 I'd have to dig up my reviews of other albums to double-check, but I'm pretty sure this is the lowest combined score I've given a Linkin Park record. It's not irredeemably bad, there are a few highlights and the couple REALLY sub-par tracks on it bring the score down considerably. However, there's a lot of mediocrity here too, a lot of "almost good" and "I like this, but..." kind of tracks. I think between trying to reinvent their songwriting process for seemingly the hundredth time, bringing in SO MANY outside collaborators, and generally trying to write songs in styles they're unfamiliar with, they may have tried to do too many things differently at once. I think this album mirrors Minutes to Midnight in that regard, there was SO much going on in writing both albums that was different than what the band was used to that it was hard to imagine the end result being anything BUT inconsistent (although I do think Minutes to Midnight ended up being a better record than this, for what it's worth). On a positive note, I think the general "Linkin Park does a pop album" thing went over more smoothly with me than I expected it would. I don't know what it is about this band, but they have a knack for doing things that on paper seem like they'd never sound like Linkin Park, but once I listen to them, I just go "Oh...yeah, this actually does still sound like Linkin Park." Whether the songs are good, bad, or somewhere in between, they've ultimately made another album that still manages to make sense as a Linkin Park album, and I think that's probably the most important thing.

I dunno about the rest of you guys, but I would totally understand if Chester decides to cancel the Kimmel performance tonight. Losing Chris has to be like losing Scott for him, except even worse because Chris was actually one of his best friends.

1. One More Light 2. Invisible 3. Talking to Myself ------- For the moment, 4 through 8 are some undefined mix of Battle Symphony, Sorry for Now, Sharp Edges, Halfway Right, and Nobody Can Save Me ------- 9. Heavy 10. Good Goodbye (swap Stormzy's verse out for Mike's alternate verse from the live version and it'd be above Heavy at least, but sorry, still not forgiving the use of "hoes" on an album track)

I'm going to forgo my traditional song-by-song review for now and just say the following: -Invisible and Talking to Myself are good songs (although the live version of Talking to Myself absolutely DESTROYS the studio version). -Good Goodbye and Heavy are both still trash. -Of the remaining six songs, five of them have a general consistency to them of having some really interesting sounds contained within them, but being rather forgettable because the songwriting just isn't up to par. Sorry for Now has one of Mike's best vocal performances and some really cool guitar sounds, Sharp Edges is one of the more immediately "different" sounding songs LP has ever done, Halfway Right has some really cool stuff like the tubular bell samples that show up in the last chorus...but behind the cool sounds, where are the songs? Lots of stuff that would probably be relegated to filler territory on other albums, and this is completely independent of the pop sound, I could take or leave that (all things considered, this album still manages to sound more like Linkin Park than I expected...it's just not necessarily GREAT Linkin Park). However...any mixed feelings I have about the rest of the album can be put aside for the fact that this album gave us the song One More Light. Or even more personally, it gave ME the song One More Light. I'll defend that song to death, and fuck you if you hate it because I guarantee you haven't spent the last two years feeling like half of a person because your dad was the only person in your family you were still close to, but he died from cancer before you ever got the chance to make him a grandpa, so you tried time and time again to write a song about it because music is the only thing you've ever been good at so how else would you cope, but the words just never came out right...only for this song to come along and say everything you've been trying to say all along. Not that a lot of you guys really "know" me (I'm an intentionally impersonal dick online for a reason, after all), but if you do, you know that I don't tend to be emotionally affected by lyrics...music, sure, I'm a sucker for great harmonies and well-executed key changes and stuff that'll give me goosebumps, but I'm a pretty emotionally bottled-up headcase otherwise. But fuck it, I've healed to some extent from hearing that song, and I'm not ashamed to say I've cried like a baby about it every time I've listened to it so far.

Looking forward to the next six months of replies like this from you every time someone has anything positive to say about this record. Also looking forward to the inevitable "WHY DO YOU HAVE SUCH A VENDETTA AGAINST ME" private message too.

Couple of piano/vocal songs + Q&A session is what I'm guessing.

The thing with Dave being listed under PRS is an error BMI has been making from time to time for years. They have multiple musicians named David Farrell in their database and sometimes they attach the wrong one to LP entries. Sometimes it's obvious because it lists "David Paul Farrell" instead of "David Michael Farrell." The songwriting credits being updated is interesting, because Heavy absolutely did not originally list all six members of the band. Also, some other songs from OML still don't - Halfway Right for example.

I dunno man, they use Sennheiser e865's for vocal mics...supercardioid patterns shouldn't be THAT forgiving. Mike pulls the thing all the way down to his waist at a pretty sharp angle away from his mouth, with barely any noticeable change in the tone. If he was still keeping it pointed in the same direction as he pulled it away from his mouth that would be one thing, because 865's are pretty good at maintaining clarity when your lips aren't right on the mic, but angle-wise...they're designed as stage mics for a reason, they have excellent side rejection. Is Chester singing in unison with him at that point? I can't tell. That's about the only non-lipsyncing reason for what you see Mike doing vs. what you hear that I can think of.

There are other points in the track where he's slightly off-key, and it's definitely not the same vocal track as the studio version, but still, that looks pretty damning at first glance. Chester's vocals on Talking to Myself have definitely been augmented a ton with backing tracks on this tour too, although you can still hear him singing over them. Anyway, looks like there's a second full video source for this show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbPQG7-jWRU

Another note for the show page - Joe's samples weren't working during the Burn it Down intro.

Why are we saying "verse 1 only" for the Roads/Fallout intro when it's verse 1 + verse 3?

Because some people inexplicably live in a world where music magically gets better the longer they wait to hear it, but is also never as good from the second listen onwards. I pity those people.

Because there totally haven't been songs without guitar and/or bass in the verses that have opened LP shows before. *cough*The Catalyst, Given Up, Guilty All the Same, New Divide, Wretches and Kings, What I've Done, With You*cough* DAMN do I have a bad cold...

VERY relieved OML only has minimally more instrumentation than what we originally heard in the stripped-down version. I was really concerned that with the direction of everything else on this album, that they might have buried such a beautiful song under a bunch of distracting synths and beats. And fuck me, it makes me think about my dad.

I think this song sounds a bit more like what the average person would probably expect from the "Linkin Park goes pop" description. Probably would have been a more "safe" choice for a first single, but that might have led to a similar situation to MInutes to Midnight, where What I've Done didn't really give people a good indication of what the album sounded like.

No MGK for west coast is how I understand it.

Not even close. Synth samples are different, guitar part is different, underlying chord progression is different.

lol ok

Rebellion and Lying From You: No music video OR CD single/promo discs with single artwork = not singles (LFY can be distinguished as a "radio-only single" or whatever, but it needs to be classified differently from other singles). I distinctly remember LFY being more or less ignored promotion-wise when it was initially released to radio during the Meteora cycle, only for LP to retroactively start calling it a single because it went to #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, which allowed them to promote Meteora as having "five #1 singles." Anyway, after seeing the setlist picture, I stand corrected about the Roads Untraveled/Fallout intro (although I personally don't hear anything from Fallout in there). As long as it's specifically designated as an intro like the Mashup Intros were, that works. Re: Sampled vocals on TTM/Heavy - Already kind of addressed TTM, Heavy's excessive backing track vocals largely consist of Kiiara's harmonies from the studio version, they swapped Chester in for her lead parts in the second verse/bridge but kept all of her backups in the mix. There are a shit ton of vocal tracks on that song either way, it probably rivals Robot Boy in terms of vocal layering.

Right? It's not like you can just take LP's word for what is a single and isn't, they've literally referred to With You as a single in the past because...reasons? LOL. Definitive list of Linkin Park singles, IMO: One Step Closer Crawling Papercut In the End It's Goin' Down Pts.of.Athrty/H! Vltg3 (this was, for all intents and purposes, a double-A-side single, although POA was the only one that ever got any promotion) Somewhere I Belong Faint Numb From the Inside Breaking the Habit Numb/Encore What I've Done Bleed it Out Shadow of the Day Given Up Leave Out All the Rest We Made It New Divide The Catalyst Waiting for the End Burning in the Skies Iridescent Burn it Down Lost in the Echo Castle of Glass A Light That Never Comes Guilty All the Same Until It's Gone Final Masquerade Darker Than Blood Heavy Good Goodbye (I've seen conflicting reports as to whether or not this is actually getting released as a single, but I think the music video release is a pretty good indicator)

LPL's definition of what is and isn't a single has always been complete bullshit TBH but I've unsuccessfully argued this way too many times to bother anymore, lol. If it doesn't get released to radio, it's not a single. Period.

I think you could make the exact same song selection work WAY better if you just changed a few things around. Check this out for example: 01. The Catalyst 02. One Step Closer 03. Wastelands 04. Good Goodbye 05. Lost in the Echo 06. Talking to Myself 07. Burn it Down 08. Castle of Glass Experience 09. Battle Symphony 10. New Divide 11. Breaking the Habit 12. Crawling (Piano version) 13. Leave Out All the Rest 14. Somewhere I Belong 15. Heavy 16. Papercut 17. Faint ------------ 18. What I've Done 19. Numb 20. In the End 21. Bleed it Out

Jim Digby*

I kind of liked the shakeup of the set, but a few of the song placements were head-scratchers. Wastelands second? Burn it Down fourth? Papercut second to last? Didn't really care for the new ending to COG Experience, and Battle Symphony sounded pretty rough. Sounded to me like Chester was singing along with his vocal track from the album recording for the entirety of Talking to Myself, maybe they wanted to ensure that the song sounded "extra good" since nobody's heard the studio version yet. On the plus side, I really liked the new Roads Untraveled intro to The Catalyst, the new WID intro, and I LOVED the new version of LOATR.

I don't think the intro should include Fallout at all, the Roads Untraveled vocal thing was just over the sustained drone of the intro synth from The Catalyst. The Catalyst (w/Roads Untraveled intro) is how it should be IMO. The Catalyst had no bridge or third chorus, went straight from the second chorus to the quiet piano section. The One Step Closer intro was kind of a hybrid of a couple of the previous extended intros but didn't quite match up with either one of them, I'd probably just call it a new intro. They also brought back the short pause before the extended outro, which they hadn't done for the last few tours. Castle of Glass Experience had a COMPLETELY different ending from the old version. LITE isn't listed correctly. It was the longer of the two shortened versions - Intro/First Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus/Outro. We need to come up with a consistent way to list the Crawling piano version - It's shortened (no first chorus/shortened outro), but not all of the show pages list it that way. I think we should somehow make note of when Mike plays guitar on the bridge/last chorus of In the End, as it's not something he's done consistently ever since he started doing it in 2014. Were we also noting when Brad plays the Numb/Encore guitar part during the first verse of Numb? I thought we were, but I might be wrong. Bleed it Out had an extended outro.