Astat

Otherwise, I could potentially see there maybe being a legal dispute between Cinderella and Linkin Park over the lyrics to UIG that was never publicized? "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" was that band's biggest hit, after all.

Recharged peaked at #10.

Look at the context, this wasn't in reference to the live set whatsoever, it was about UIG being dropped from the Transformers 4 soundtrack: https://twitter.com/ChesterBe/status/867773573993078784

Translation: "I'm one of those APFMH fanboys who will do a complete 180 and say the set is great if they add it to the show, even if they don't change anything else about the set." People may think I'm being hyperbolic here, but it's literally happened with a surprisingly large number of people on the forums every single time that song's been brought back after any kind of absence, lol. What do you want them to do, play the full version of Crawling in its original key with the full band again even though it and Given Up have been utterly destroying Chester's voice for a decade or more? The piano version in the current set isn't just about doing something different, it's about doing something for the sake of the longevity of their lead singer's ability to continue having a fucking career, lol. Yeah let's just go ahead and do that, plus throw APFMH, With You, From the Inside, and Lying From You back in the set, drop all but 2 songs from the new album they're trying to promote, and call it "more passionate." Because clearly, "passion" and "early 2000's nu metal teen angst" are fucking synonyms. Nevermind the fact that these guys are in their 40s and maybe, just maybe, "YOU TRY TO TAKE THE BEST OF ME, GO AWAY" seems a little juvenile and/or insincere to them literally TWO DECADES after originally writing that song?

This will be considerably more than six songs.

So you absolutely love a song from an album, but refuse to listen to said album because of your preconceived notions of what it sounds like? I wish I could understand what it feels like to be this ignorant.

Holy shit, I thought the LP fanbase had its fair share of idiots, but look at the comments from Depeche Mode fans on their Facebook page, lol. Wow.

Michael Keenan and Michael (Keenan) Leary are the same person. He uses his middle name instead of his last name professionally.

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.