Astat

From the way Garrix has been talking lately, it sounds like he's changed his mind completely and doesn't even plan on releasing the album at all. What a take-your-ball-and-go-home pissbaby. D'aww, you literally made more money than some countries did last year but some big bad meanie leaked a shitty hacked-up version of a song you already debuted at a show that was broadcast everywhere, so now you're just abandoning not only the song but the entire album it was going to be associated with. Cry me a fucking river. People like Martin Garrix are the cancer that's killing the music industry.

Complimentary was also largely built around samples of existing LP songs, but they weren't necessarily ones included with the software, they were just whatever samples Mike happened to use in making the song. There's a drum fill from In My Remains in there, the main synth parts use a combination of patches from Burn It Down, etc. The Loop Jams and Asteroids may not have even necessarily been put together by LP themselves for all we know.

They'll talk our heads off about how much material they've recorded and how good it all is and how excited they are like they always do. Then they'll cut it down to 12 tracks for the album like they always do. And then they'll never release any of the remaining tracks, like they always do (Minutes to Midnight being the lone exception).

My assumption with Pretend to Be is that it got the Not Alone treatment, where the music was already there and they either redid or added vocals to it later. It definitely SOUNDS like a Minutes to Midnight demo, and probably a fairly early one at that. The drums in particular have a really rough demo-ish quality to them. 2006 demo w/2008 vocals is my guess. Chester's voice also gradually got more nasally in the 06-08 time period and the vocals seem to have more of an MTM tour tone than an MTM studio tone to them. They recorded sporadically in Europe in 2008, plus at least once in Asia when they were working on We Made It.

It's a "reprise," so it's a return to a theme established in an earlier piece of music. The Catalyst (or at least some form of it) had to come first by default.

The little clean guitar loop with a simple beat behind it was on Frat Party but I doubt that was polished up to the point of what the released version sounded like before 2002, particularly considering it has live drums on it. Mike had a home studio capable of recording the full band as early as the start of Reanimation-related work in late 2001. Anything labeled "The Stockroom" is Mike's home studio. I'm sure some home recording took place in 2003, but there's also pretty substantial gap between the Meteora demos we've gotten and the sporadic stuff that's been released from 2005. I'm pretty sure most of the recording Mike was doing at home in the 2003-2004 period was early Fort Minor-related stuff, and LP-related writing/recording mostly took place in the tour bus studio. I also feel like Attached doesn't really vary in sound quality from any of the other Meteora demos we've gotten. Yeah it's a more mellow track, but Breaking the Habit also came out of that period, so... Yeah, I know Mike added that afterthought, but it didn't stop people from immediately jumping on the "OMG ANIMALS = ROADS UNTRAVELED DEMO" train. Granted, it's the same kind of people who legitimately believe the hidden track on the HTEP is somehow a demo of Session, so it's not like I'd expect otherwise, but still.

Given Up's extended outro didn't originally have that final chord that led into whatever the next song in the setlist was. Once they added that aspect to the outro - "extra note."

Sad is dated 1999, not 1998. Any of those instrumentals from the pre-HT period could easily be either year, no reason to question any of them IMO. Pretend to Be originates from the MTM sessions but wasn't finished at the time, so the 2008 date refers to it being worked on more later. No reason to question Divided being a 2005 demo IMO. Music WAS worked on during this period. Note that on LPU 11-13, not all demos specifically had dates attached to them, so we're doing some guesswork regardless. Slip is from 1999, not 1998 (the recording we have, anyway - the song itself dates back to the Xero era). What I've Done was the last track finished for Minutes to Midnight and the demo was done very quickly right before the band moved from Laurel to NRG, which I'm pretty sure dates Bang Three to early 2007. Robot Boy is 2010, it's literally the finalized album mix with a different vocal take. ATS came out late enough in 2010 that anything that was at this stage of completion would have to be 2010. Blue is 1999, not 1998. I'd say Asbestos could possibly be from 2007 considering it actually has some pretty fleshed-out lyrics, but then again the song itself feels so incomplete that 2006 is more likely. So Far Away is 1999, not 1998. Debris absolutely WAS a Minutes to Midnight demo, the song was reconsidered for use during the ATS era as well. I suppose there's a possibility that they mixed things up and put the ATS-era recording on the CD (which would be from 2010), but if they used the correct demo it's in the same category as Asbestos - probably 2006, possibly 2007. Basquiat's definitely 2006, not 2007. It's tuned down half a step but played on a Strat, which was only be a characteristic found on Mike demos from early in the MTM writing process (Mike used Strats on some of the Fort Minor-era material in the old tuning, but tuning up from Db to D wasn't suggested until they got in the studio with Ethan Mates at Laurel). LPU 14 - I'd say Heartburn is probably 2006, not 2007. Everything else seems correct to me. LPU 15 - Attached is definitely 2002, not 2003. It's not a post-Meteora demo, as I confirmed with Sean Paden a while back that LP didn't book any studio time while on tour in 2003 (a question I originally asked in reference to the possibility of portions of Live in Texas being redone in the studio - it's all live!). I'd say Chair could potentially be a beat Mike made in 1998, but he also correctly identified Pods as being from 1998 on the same release, so I'm inclined to believe 1999 is correct for Chair. LPU 16 - Dark Crystal is questionable, it uses a loop from the second Stagelight sound pack, which came out in November of 2014. However it's at a different speed than the original loop, and no other samples from that track are found in the sound pack, so the sample may have been reused later on. Bleed it Out demo is almost definitely 2006 instead of 2007. Burberry is just a shortened version of Space Station, which came out in 2012. Maybe they edited down the original in 2015 and re-titled it, but otherwise they didn't do shit to this song in the three years between when we originally got it and when it's allegedly from. Also, demos released with incorrect titles: -In the End (Demo) = Untitled -Forgotten (Demo) = Rhinestone -Pretty Birdy = Seen on Making of Meteora song board as "Pretty Birdie," unknown which spelling is correct -Breaking the Habit (Original Mike Demo) = Would have still been referred to as "Drawing" at this point, but since we already got the Drawing instrumental on LPU 9, it's probably easier to differentiate between the two this way -Bleed it Out (Demo) = Accident -Lies Greed Misery (Demo) = Piledriver Also also, numerous statements Mike made in the LPU track-by-track videos are incorrect, including Animals being an early version of Roads Untraveled (obviously untrue), and Part of Me being a Xero demo (it was not).

Wrong. There was an alternate mix of The Catalyst, but it did NOT have altered lyrics. Don't you think if your statement was true, SOMEONE in the entirety of the Linkin Park community would have noticed that oh hey, there's a Catalyst alternate mix with different lyrics out there, at some point in the last...SIX AND A HALF YEARS?! This is what you're thinking of, by the way: http://www.lpassociation.com/forum/threads/gundam-game-trailer-featuring-the-catalyst-released.32194/?t=32194

In addition to Consequence and Burberry (Space Station) as previously mentioned, portions of Dark Crystal were previously released in Stagelight sound packs as well (check out "BASSARP A2" in the Mixed Loops folder of the second pack). ...And like Burberry, it's a demo that's supposedly from 2015, which really makes me question their intentions in trying to call some of this stuff recent material...

I honestly still don't know what the "NoBrain Thing" note on the setlist for WTCFM referred to exactly. I'd guess that it was some sample thing that Mike had to trigger, but it probably didn't have anything to do with the theremin because NoBrain's contributions to WTCFM were only used during the outro, and Mike didn't use the theremin in that part of the song. With the Ableton Live setup most of the effects changes in the show are done automatically by the central "brain" computer (which also runs the light show, I believe). Mike doesn't have to change any sounds on his keyboard, Brad/Benjamin don't have to switch effects/amp models (other than the foot-controlled stuff like the pitch shifter on the WFTE solo, the volume swells on GATS, and the wah effects on the GATS/ALITS solos - Benjamin does all of those from offstage except the WFTE solo, which Brad still does), Joe doesn't have to switch sample banks between songs, Rob doesn't have to switch what sounds are coming from the triggers on his drum kit, etc. Basically the guys just play their parts and the computer takes care of anything that involves manipulating the sound.

The most recent Guitar Hero game also has Wastelands on it. Definitely not true. The theremin was basically just functioning as a MIDI controller for the real-time oscillation and EQ filtering effects on WTCFM and New Divide's synth parts. Watch the 2009 New Divide performances and you'll see how Mike had to awkwardly play the synth parts with his hands crossed so he could manipulate the knobs that controlled those effects on his Virus synth. I think adding the theremin was something that made it easier for him, and it happened to end up being used on WTCFM as well. Once they switched to Ableton Live and added a lot more automation of effects to the live show in 2012, the theremin setup went away.

Lockjaw was essentially just a demo track for the new (at the time) MIDI capabilities of Pro Tools 8. It was in that short promo video first, then the song was released on LPU a little later. Don't get used to it. You forget how to Internet there, bud? "You guys?" Plural? As in POSTS OTHER THAN THE ONE I ONLY QUOTED IN REFERENCE TO ONE SPECIFIC, COMPLETELY UNRELATED THING? Sheesh, you're exhibiting the logic of a certain President-elect that I know you voted for.

Announcement Service Public/QWERTY. Also, you guys are MASSIVELY jumping to conclusions by expecting that the 2014/2015 demos included will be demos of tracks that are actually going to be on the album, or even that they'll give an indication as to what the album will sound like. This would be completely unprecedented by Linkin Park standards and I can't imagine that they'd let anything that was even remotely still in consideration for the album come out in any form on an LPU CD months in advance. Think about it, they're instrumental demos. What is the ONE thing Linkin Park has stressed more than anything else about this entire writing process? "We're focusing on melodies and lyrics first." For instrumental demos to exist from this period they'd either have to be exceptions to the rule, or material that wasn't intended for the album in the first place.

Where in the world was there guitar improv during the Live 8 set?

I always liked the Meteora World Tour stage with the catwalks that extended way out from the sides. Carnivores Tour with the cages and the crazy production value of the last China tour stage were both cool too.

On a lot of those plain white promo discs, the text is just stamped on the CD so slight text variations are common. I wouldn't worry about something that obscure being fake, personally.

I think it's easier to list the bands that Brooks or his brother Chad haven't played drums for. And most of the remaining ones probably had Josh Freese at some point.

Nothing better than an entire video centered around a completely inaccurate story.

I always assumed the Esaul video was done at Mike's old place on Stocker Street in Glendale (same address in the original HTEP booklet), source of the "Ten PM Stocker" alternate band name idea and the story of Mike's neighbors getting mad about the noise while Chester was doing the OSC vocals.

FYI the ones sold in 2008 was just the LPU getting rid of the last of the 2001 reissues they had left at HQ. It was literally maybe 20 copies total, they had them at the merch booth for a couple shows and they sold out almost immediately. Pretty sure LPU has no copies left of the first few years of LPU CDs anymore. I wouldn't put it past them to do another reissue at some point but it would probably be for Record Store Day if they did.

The IDX rip is the first rip of the tape that circulated (same as what you'd find on pushmeaway.com and other similar places back in the day). The speed is slightly off (it runs a bit fast/high-pitched), and there's a skip during the first chorus of Stick N' Move. It's still one of the clearest-sounding rips of the tape IMO, but it has no low-end frequencies to speak of, in addition to the other previously mentioned problems. I have 5 rips: 1. 2002 IDX rip 2. 2006 LP:Fuse rip 3. 2007 nkramar rip (as far as I know, this is the same one contained in Nick's demo compilation as well, but someone can probably correct me on this) 4. Skittle021's first rip ("Garage Days Revisited" - 2010) 5. Skittle021's second rip ("Garage Days Unleashed" - 2011) Not sure how many different tapes were involved in the creation of these rips though.

It's a crapshoot for sure. You're never going to get two cassettes, particularly 20-year old cassettes, that sound the same. I think I'm up to 5 or 6 different digitized versions of Xero rips from various sources and they all have their pros and cons. At this point I'd honestly think of a Xero tape purely as a collection piece because I really doubt a better rip is going to be feasible anymore. Still holding out hope that Mike digitized the master tape at some point early on in the band's career and that a proper reissue of the songs is a possibility.

Scream at the end was just "Breaking apart"

He also played drums on the Ryan Giles track from LPU 13.