Astat

The documentary is made by Harman. Harman makes high-end audio equipment. LP are the newest spokespeople for Harman. This is all about money and trying to sell a company's products. A preview of this documentary was shown before the LP Harman show in Vegas back in January, BTW. Nobody seemed to really take notice for some reason.

Releases album after album with completely brickwalled mastering and doesn't bat an eyelash. Plays major role in documentary that basically consists of a bunch of nitpicking over lossy audio bitrates, claiming that's what's ruining the quality of music these days. That's the Shinoda Way!

Nothing like that would be done without the band's input.

It'd be a plugin on his console just like anything else used on the vocal chain, so yes.

I believe the audio on the DVD is all from the Dallas show. The CD audio/LPU 3 CD tracks are a mixed bag though, there are some different takes on there than what's on the DVD (check out Don't Stay on the DVD vs. the LPU 3 version for example - different speech by Mike during the break before the bridge).

Best "show" to ever take place on two different days in two different locations! LIT isn't nearly as "touched-up" as a lot of people seem to think though. No studio overdubs whatsoever, just normal post-production work like they do at the mixing/mastering stage of any other official release. Last guitar smash was at the end of 2004. Brad tosses his guitar on the ground at the end of shows sometimes and a few of them have broken that way (and been repaired), but he doesn't do it on purpose.

Putting it on the album was an afterthought, the band probably assumed that Michael Bay would pick their song to be the movie's "main track" given their past relationship, and he threw them for a loop when he picked Imagine Dragons' submission instead. Remember that article from about 7-8 months ago where someone was hanging around the studio where LP was recording and mentioned them "mixing a song for a movie soundtrack?" That was Until It's Gone. I know the song title was on the tracking board in the THP teaser video, but that was shot so late in the process that the decision not to have it on Transformers 4 would have been made by then. So yeah, that's a big part of why UIG bugs me so much. They basically shoehorned a song that was recorded for an entirely different project into the tracklisting of their album that was recorded with a completely different mindset...and it shows. Outside of Final Masquerade (which is an infinitely better song), UIG has very little in common with anything else on the album.

Decided on the spot by Brad, who would let Rob and Phoenix know via hand signals during the song. There are a couple videos where you can see him doing it.

Why do people constantly post ideas in here that aren't practical/would never sound good in a million years/are unrealistic to the point of absurdity? This thread is 46 pages long and there are probably about 10 pages worth of actual good setlist ideas in it.

$$$

Play on words with the term "figure eight."

Alright, I took my earlier idea and expanded it to 3 sets for Carnivores. I kept the general format the same for all 3 sets because I really like the flow of the current set, so I just sprinkled a few rotating songs in there to spice things up a bit: Set A: 01. The Catalyst/The Requiem 02. Guilty All the Same 03. Lost in the Echo (full song) 04. War 05. Faint (w/ext. outro) 06. Blackout (shortened instrumental, transition outro) 07. Papercut (full song) 08. Points of Authority (w/full intro) 09. Wastelands (w/album version intro) 10. Castle of Glass Experience (piano transition outro) 11. Final Masquerade (w/Drawbar piano outro at beginning) 12. Robot Boy (shortened instrumental) 13. Joe Solo Medley 14. Burn it Down 15. Waiting for the End (w/Apaches intro and Wall of Noise outro) 16. Mike Solo Medley 17. Numb (w/Numb/Encore intro/outro/first verse guitar) 18. A Place for My Head 19. One Step Closer (w/ext. outro) 20. Until It's Gone (w/ext. The Catalyst/No More Sorrow/UIG mashup intro, ext. transition outro) 21. A Light That Never Comes (full song) 22. In the End 23. What I've Done (w/extended solo) 24. Bleed it Out (w/drum solo + The Catalyst refrain, ext. outro) Set B: 01. The Catalyst/The Requiem 02. Guilty All the Same 03. Points of Authority (w/full intro) 04. Waiting for the End (w/Apaches intro and Wall of Noise outro) 05. Faint (w/ext. outro) 06. Blackout (shortened instrumental, transition outro) 07. Papercut (full song) 08. With You (full song) 09. Wastelands (w/album version intro) 10. Castle of Glass Experience (piano transition outro) 11. Final Masquerade (w/Drawbar piano outro at beginning) 12. Robot Boy (shortened instrumental) 13. Joe Solo Medley 14. Burn it Down 15. Mark the Graves 16. Mike Solo Medley 17. Numb (w/Numb/Encore intro/outro/first verse guitar) 18. In the End 19. One Step Closer (w/ext. outro) 20. Until It's Gone (w/ext. The Catalyst/No More Sorrow/UIG mashup intro, ext. transition outro) 21. Lost in the Echo (full song) 22. New Divide (full song) 23. What I've Done (w/extended solo) 24. Bleed it Out (w/drum solo + The Catalyst refrain, ext. outro) Set C: 01. The Catalyst/The Requiem 02. Guilty All the Same 03. Points of Authority (w/full intro) 04. Keys to the Kingdom 05. Faint (w/ext. outro) 06. Blackout (shortened instrumental, transition outro) 07. Papercut (full song) 08. Runaway (full song) 09. Wastelands (w/album version intro) 10. Castle of Glass Experience (piano transition outro) 11. Final Masquerade (w/Drawbar piano outro at beginning) 12. Robot Boy (shortened instrumental) 13. Joe Solo Medley 14. Burn it Down 15. Waiting for the End (w/Apaches intro and Wall of Noise outro) 16. Mike Solo Medley 17. Numb (w/Numb/Encore intro/outro/first verse guitar) 18. In the End 19. One Step Closer (w/ext. outro) 20. Until It's Gone (w/ext. The Catalyst/No More Sorrow/UIG mashup intro, ext. transition outro) 21. A Light That Never Comes (full song) 22. New Divide (full song) 23. What I've Done (w/extended solo) 24. Bleed it Out (w/drum solo + The Catalyst refrain, ext. outro) -Each set has one exclusive new song (War/Mark the Graves/Keys to the Kingdom) and one exclusive Hybrid Theory song (With You/Runaway/APFMH). Each set also gets two out of the three "mega medley" songs from the Europe set (so one set gets LITE/ALTNC, one gets LITE/New Divide, and one gets ALTNC/New Divide). -I also swapped Faint and One Step Closer's spots in the setlist. I feel like Faint works better as an early-set song than OSC, while OSC works better late in the set than Faint. I know the extended outros are supposed to make them more "equal" in that regard, but the audience will always react better to OSC. That's just the way it is, lol. -LITE stays in the early part of the set in Set A, while ITE is moved down into the encore after ALTNC so APFMH can be right before OSC to give that old school 1-2 punch heading into the encore. With APFMH in that position plus LITE taking an extra spot in the first act, I moved POA down to after Papercut to keep the number of songs in each act the same from set to set. -Set B is a little weird-looking. I feel like Mark the Graves is a mid-set song (but slightly more likely to be played live than A Line in the Sand, in my opinion), so I stuck it in the spot normally occupied by WFTE, and since that opened up a spot in the first act, I put WFTE up there. LP's done that song early in the set on a few occasions, and while it may not be the best song to be in that spot, it's certainly not the worst either. With You is in its usual spot after Papercut, and LITE returns to the encore, followed by New Divide. -Set C has KTTK in the same spot occupied by War in Set A (it's totally an early-set song), Runaway after Papercut instead of With You, and ALTNC/New Divide in the encore. You basically get the same "structure" in each set, but it's fairly different from the Europe set this way, and you get a couple "rotating goodies" in each set. I tend to be more in favor of coming up with one really good set and making a few changes to it here and there than doing something totally different every night, so yeah.

I've been arguing for years that the band never should have started tuning the guitars to standard/Drop D instead of Eb/Drop C# on Minutes to Midnight. If they'd just transpose all the songs down half a step that aren't already tuned that way, it'd instantly make everything easier on Chester, AND they'd have fewer guitar changes to deal with. We've seen already that they can transpose songs by a half step when necessary - they tuned Numb/Encore down half a step for Paul McCartney since he traditionally sings Yesterday in F instead of F#, and they tuned the live version of My December up from D to Eb because the guitar on the studio version is in Drop C, which is a tuning they've never used for live performances. So obviously transposing the samples isn't an issue, they just don't choose to do it for whatever reason.

LITE doesn't have anything remotely hard for Chester to sing in it, and there isn't really any more screaming in it than a song like One Step Closer either.

Depends on the song/part, Pooch constantly plays around with the volume levels between the two of them. Mike's is cranked way up on the live outro to One Step Closer, the main melody part of Guilty All the Same, etc.

Is Elias doing this show? I've completely lost track of the drummer situation with this band, haha.

Given Up, Crawling, New Divide for sure. I don't think Blackout is really that tough with the way he sings it live, he's not nearly as aggressive with it as he is on the album. A Light That Never Comes is really tough on Chester, but I'd at least like to see it stick around for one touring cycle just so it gets a chance. Chester used to say years ago that With You was really hard for him to sing, but in comparison with some of the more recent stuff they've done, I don't think it's that bad. Burn it Down is pretty tough on him (at least the chorus is), and it's never sounded that good live. Drop that and let COG be the "big single" song to represent Living Things in the live set. They kind of did the same thing with The Catalyst (which is also hard on Chester) and WFTE, they dropped the lead single that more people probably know and kept the one that sounded better live.

Easy, Meteora's had over 11 years to fail to hold up, Living Things has only had 2, LOL. The only Meteora songs I can stand to listen to anymore are SIB, LFY, Figure.09, and FTI. Faint's good but I don't like the album version anymore, and I had a soft spot for Easier to Run for years but lyrically I just can't stomach that one anymore. Until it Breaks is pretty good and Roads Untraveled is an A+ song, easily the best on Living Things. I still love IMR, IBG, COG, and Victimized too. LITE album version is dull as hell but it's a beast live. Only songs I don't like on Living Things are BID, LGM, and STB. Pretty indifferent to Tinfoil/Powerless but I don't really hate it. Final version of I'll Be Gone is 100x better than Primo, BTW. Would've easily been the worst song on A Thousand Suns if they had released it in that form.

Time for one of my ridiculously in-depth album reviews! Took me a while to get around to doing this. I open my review of The Hunting Party with a question: Why is new music from Linkin Park always met with a mix of overwhelmingly positive ad overwhelmingly negative reactions from fans? More so with this album than any other I can remember, I look around the fanbase and see people who seem to either be salivating over new Linkin Park music to the point that Mike Shinoda could fart into a cassette recorder and people would love it, or people who seem to be determined to write everything the band does off as "not Hybrid Theory, therefore it's garbage." I know the band has said the "love/hate" reaction is what they're hoping for every time they release new music, but I'm not sure this is exactly what they had in mind...if you can't justify why you rated a song a 0/10 or a 10/10, I shudder to think of what your decision-making process is like when it comes doing things like voting for the next President. a little objectivity will go a long way towards improving the quality of your life as a whole, people. Anyway, enough life advice, and on to the review! 01. Keys to the Kingdom On my first listen through the album, I honestly didn't know what to think of this song. It grew on me quickly after a few listens, but it's still not one of my favorites on the album. I think what hurts this song most is having it as the opener. Having no build-up whatsoever before you have Chester blowing your eardrums out with a bunch of over-processed screaming is really hard on the ears, particularly through headphones. I feel like having some kind of build-up into the first song is one of those time-tested things that shouldn't be messed with. As it is, any moderately curious fan who picks up this album without knowing what they're getting themselves into is likely going to skip this song after hearing about 3 seconds of it. Getting into the rest of the song though, I love it once the guitars kick in. The riff gets a little repetitive, but it works. Rob kills it on this song...and basically every other track on the album. The dreamy-sounding harmonies that Mike comes in with to start the first verse are a brilliantly deceptive move, and I like how the instrumental section under the verses is very A Thousand Suns-like, but you also have the guitars chugging along in the background to remind you that something's different this time around. The little bursts of noise/static that interrupt the song at various points...yeah not sure what to think of those. Not a fan of cutting off a vocal in the middle of a word. I know Chester's chorus vocals were improvised, and I can appreciate keeping the lyrics he spontaneously came up with, but he really should have re-recorded them. His screaming on this song is the most strained I've ever heard him sound, and the voice cracks that occur on "casualty" and "futility" are just downright sad. Chester's been having vocal issues for years, but this is the first album where I think it even showed in the studio. A shame that one of the great voices in modern rock is starting to show so much wear. Mike's rap in the second verse is pretty cool...not sure where the "half-fried panko" line came from though, haha. I LOVE where this song goes after the second chorus. The breakdown with the mellow-sounding guitar that builds into the guitar solo, then things just EXPLODING after that is one of the coolest moments on this album. The only fault I find in the outro of this song is Brad's lead work when Chester comes back in. What the FUCK was Brad doing there, and even better, why on earth did they decide to leave it in the mix? Random chromatic run that doesn't fit in the context of the song whatsoever. He "finds" the right scale again after a couple bars, but it's still the most distracting thing ever. A modern guitar god, you are not, Brad Delson. The "hard rock version of Until It Breaks" description of this song I heard the day it leaked is still probably the most accurate summary I've seen of it. Very disjointed, a few things I don't like about it, but overall not a terrible song. Score: I'M NOT ALLOWED TO SAY CERTAIN THINGS. AUGHHHHHHHH...but there's nothing that says I'm not allowed to give this one a 7/10. 02. All For Nothing The discordant droning guitar at the start of this track is totally Page, haha. There's some really cool guitar stuff throughout this song. Great groove in the verses, Mike sounds really good on this track. Love the count-in to the choruses too. The chorus itself is the weak point of this one, though. Page sounds...not like Page at all. Leave it to Linkin Park to over-process a traditionally raw-sounding guest vocalist's voice on an album that generally has more raw production on the vocals! His vocals are so polished that they actually seem out of place on the track. Lyrically, it's not a very good chorus either. Cool gang vocals help redeem it somewhat, but I was pretty underwhelmed by this one. The high point on this track is the guitar solo, it's my favorite one on the album. Brad actually sounds like he put some thought into doing something melodic that still covered a lot of ground, I LOVE the quick little ascending pattern he does at the end of the solo. Best interlude on the album is after this track too, the "put the heavy shit here" commentary that goes into GATS is hilarious and brilliant. I also REALLY hope we get an official release of that waltz-y instrumental in the background at some point too, sounds interesting (Mike confirmed on Twitter that the background music there was an original composition). As for my final summary of this song, great piece of music with a tremendously disappointing chorus, and a guest spot that wasn't handled the right way (go listen to Unsung - THAT'S what Page Hamilton's voice should sound like). Score: 6.5/10 (I normally don't do half points, but I like this one better than Wastelands but less than KTTK, so I gave it a 6.5) 03. Guilty All the Same How weird is it for me to be saying that the first single on an album is actually where it starts getting good?! I still haven't grown tired of this song. Love the way the intro progresses, love the harmonized guitar melody, love the drumming, love how they incorporated a bunch of synth-y stuff into such a heavy song and made it work. Rakim's verse is a highlight too. Not a big fan of Brad's solo during the outro, but it's probably my second favorite one on the album. I can't find much fault with this one other than Chester's vocals again sounding pretty strained. Score: 9/10 04. The Summoning I've heard some theories that this song has samples of a bunch of other LP songs in it...I don't hear it. This is one of those tension-building things that sounds like it should be on a horror movie soundtrack. Comes across as being sort of filler-ish at only a minute long and not really going anywhere, but if they were trying to put something on this album that's creepy enough to make people physically uncomfortable, they accomplished it with this track. I feel like they could've potentially opened the album with this and War. Score: 7/10 05. War The first thing that instantly popped into my head when listening to this track was Motorhead. This TOTALLY reminds me of a track like Ace of Spades. Chester supposedly "wrote this song in like 5 minutes," and I definitely get that vibe from it, but it works. The production values on this track are probably intentionally bad, which I can appreciate for a song of this nature. Love Chester's delivery on this track, it's not really a vocal style we've heard from him before and he pulled it off. I love how perfect the 8-count break after the first verse is, having that gap of silence there only to be interrupted with "WAAAAAAAAR!!!!!!!!" is brilliant. Brad's solo on this track is so WTF-inducing that I start laughing most of the time I hear it. It sounds like he's doing some cool stuff in there, definitely more complex than the solo at the end of GATS, but like GATS, the effects on the guitar solo are so over-the-top that they practically render the solo incomprehensible. I will most likely never be able to transcribe this solo without the multitracks for this song, so if Brad was trying to come up with something I'd never be able to tab, congratulations to him on succeeding. Overall, I love this song, I just wish the guitar solo was easier to make sense of. Score: 8/10 06. Wastelands This is by far the biggest "throwback track" to the Hybrid Theory/Meteora era that the band has done in recent years. The structure, the instrumentation, it all screams "throwing a bone to people like Joe_LP who have hated everything we've done for the last 7 years but still hang around LP fansites for some reason." ...Oops, did I say that out loud? LULZ. Anyway, there's still some cool "newer LP stuff" in this track too, I love the crazy synth in the bridge and the clanky-sounding drum samples. Mike's pretty good on this track too. Another weak chorus hurts this one though, and I don't know why, but I just find it to be one of the more forgettable tracks on the album. Maybe being so stylistically reminiscent of the band's nu metal days makes this song seem really phoned-in to me, like they didn't have to try very hard to write it. I'm already skipping this song on most of my listens to the album. Score: 6/10 07. Until It's Gone Musically, I love this song. Lyrically, this is one of the biggest steaming piles of crap the band has ever put out. Sorry, Cinderella did the whole "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" cliche better...and Cinderella was one of those laughably-bad '80s hair metal bands that people like to pretend never existed. Not to mention the same lyric was basically regurgitated by Mike when he did Where'd You Go back in 2005. Never heard a more unoriginal-sounding set of lyrics in my life. Knowing the story behind this song too, it really pisses me off that a better song was likely left off the album just so this one could get released (Hint: This song was NOT meant to be on The Hunting Party originally). They should've just canned the vocals and released the instrumental as an LPU track. I could jam to this all day if it was an instrumental but I'm practically embarrassed to play this song when anybody's around because the lyrics are THAT bad. Score: 5/10 (taken as an average between a 10/10 for the instrumental, and a 0/10 for the lyrics) 08. Rebellion Daron Malakian brings us back to the good shit here. Lyrically, this is probably the best song on the album. Very thought-provoking, I didn't initially interpret it as straight-up sarcasm like Mike said during the Twitter listening party, more of just a commentary on people with a sense of entitlement that feel "oppressed" over stupid shit. I can't say enough about Daron's contribution to this song, though. Great riffs, nothing EXTREMELY complicated, but he made an absolute monster of a track with these guys. Mike's singing on this track is my favorite singing I've heard him do, and Chester brings it as well. Chester sounds a little weird on the bridge, his screams are a lot higher-pitched than normal and he doesn't really sustain them like you'd expect (particularly on "we lost," he cuts that one off practically instantly). I'm on the fence as to whether or not Daron should have done some vocals on this track too, I think he would've sounded good on this song but his voice is also definitely an acquired taste. This song is definitely in my top 3 on the album. Score: 9/10 09. Mark the Graves This song is a trip. It covers more ground thematically than any other song Linkin Park has ever done. Love how distorted the bass is, and how it's cranked way up in the mix for a change! This song's really deceptive with its chord changes too, nice to hear something this unpredictable from LP. There's some awesome guitar and drum work on this song, I also love Mike's little whispered count-in during one of the breaks in the intro, nice touch to leave in the mix. Another good song lyrically, and I still love hearing Mike and Chester singing in unison, there's something about havig their voices synced up like this that sounds perfect on certain songs, this being one of them. The chorus on this one is as simple lyrically as you can get, but it works PERFECTLY on this track, particularly with Chester and Mike both belting the words out the way they do here. Brad gets two solos on this one, and actually puts in some solid work. Love the little tapping thing at the end of the first solo. My biggest complaint with this song his how Brad's lead guitar work gets completely buried at the end of the song. Still, this is one of those tracks that makes a big statement about how talented these guys can be when they choose to do something challenging. Score: 9/10 10. Drawbar I fully agree that Tom Morello's talent gets kind of wasted on this track, all he plays is some arpeggiated E minor chords throughout the whole song. Still, the SOUND of the guitar part is totally him, it's got a trippy ring modulator effect on it or something, and it stands out from any of the other guitar parts on the album. The highlight of this track is actually Mike, though. This is easily the best piano stuff we've heard from Mike on an album. Rob's drums add a lot to this one too. Definitely sounds like an improvised jam, which is basically what it was, to my understanding. The way this song ends is the absolute highlight of the album, though. Having everything but the piano fade out for a brief period on an album that's so raw and in-your-face like this is just STUNNINGLY brilliant. And when that chord progression morphs into the chorus from Final Masquerade, it's one of the most beautiful moments in the entire Linkin Park catalog. The first time I listened to the album was the way I always do my first listens - with my headphones on in a completely dark room so I have no distractions. Having heard Final Masquerade prior to the full album leaking, when that chord progression suddenly emerged from the mix, it was such an unexpectedly touching moment that I actually got a little choked up. I'm not a guy who gets overcome emotionally by music a lot, but the Drawbar > Final Masquerade transition does it for me. The rest of Drawbar is kind of forgettable in comparison, but the ending more than makes up for it. Score: 8/10 11. Final Masquerade This sounds like one of those songs that should be an album closer, it's everything a Linkin Park ballad should be. Until It's Gone sounds even worse with this track on the same album! I'm very excited to see this as the next single, I know people will get sick of it and be bitching about how it needs to be dropped from the setlists in favor of some forgotten turd like Hit the Floor or whatever, but I can see this one being a highlight of the live show over the next few years. I've been pretty hard on Chester throughout this album, but he puts in one of the best vocal performances of his career on this track. This song just has that "something" about it that makes it stand out, like everything just came together perfectly on it. Rob's drumming is great without being overly flashy, the keyboards add a ton of color to the song without being too in-your-face like the synths on the last two albums were at times, the vocals are great, the guitars sound great...this is about as perfect of a song as I've heard from Linkin Park, and definitely the best ballad of their career. I really hope this one does well on the charts. Score: 10/10 12. A Line in the Sand So here we are, last song. And it's a monster. Mike's singing on this one gives me chills EVERY time I listen to it. And then when it gets heavy...oh man. The guitar comparisons to Victimized and Guilty All the Same are definitely warranted, but does that really matter when the song is this fucking good? Chester's rough vocals really suit the chorus on this and serve as a nice contrast to Mike's singing. Like Mark the Graves, the lyrics on the chorus are normally something I'd complain about, but they work so well in context with everything else in the song that I can't complain about them. I feel like Mike's rap part in the middle seems a little forced, like it didn't NEED to be there, but I think there's an intentional lyrical reference to Rebellion in it, and it really gives the song depth. The "I had never seen blood/you had sold me an ocean/and I was lost in the flood" part is one of those things that almost CAN'T be accidental. I also love the piano underneath the rap verse. About 2/3rds of the way through the song, there's a point where it sounds like it's over...and then it kicks into the heaviest fucking guitar riff Linkin Park has ever recorded. It's a thrash breakdown that sounds like it was pulled straight off an '80s Metallica album. Then we get one more chorus with modified lyrics, and an outro with fantastic drumming, Chester giving it everything he's got, and Brad going off on a maniacal two-hand tapping lead part. I'm pretty sure it's the most emotionally aggressive moment in the Linkin Park catalog. Mike's reprise of the intro at the end is the perfect way to end it. The first time I listened to this album, my reaction after hearing this last song was to just get up and pace around my apartment for a few minutes because I literally had to catch my breath and try to process everything I'd just heard. I honestly didn't think that Linkin Park was capable of a song like this. It still blows me away every time I hear it. This song is such a profound statement by the band that if they were to break up tomorrow, I'd be perfectly content with this being the last song on their last album. I don't know how they'll ever top this one...but damn am I excited to hear them try. Score: 10/10 (I'd literally give this one 11/10 if I could but I have to draw the line SOMEWHERE) Overall, this album really impressed me. It gets off to a little bit of a rocky start, and there's one forgettable song and one absolute turd of a song in the middle of it, but the rest of the album makes up for those moments. I'm incredibly impressed with Rob's playing on this record, not so much with Brad but I hope he uses it as a stepping stone to do even greater things in the future, and I'm getting kind of concerned for Chester's voice but he still puts in good performances most of the time on this record. I listened to all 6 Linkin Park studio albums in a row today, and WOW does Living Things ever stand out as a weak point when it's bookended by A Thousand Suns and The Hunting Party. THP is almost the yin to ATS's yang, they're definitely cousins in terms of progressiveness, one is just very synth and beat-driven while the other is guitar and drum-driven. Living Things sounds like the kind of album that would've come out 6 or 7 years ago to me, not one that's only 2 years old...jeez, how did the band do this big of a turnaround in 2 years?! I know they won't continue in this direction in the future, but I hope they keep pushing themselves creatively like they did on this album, rather than doing a "comfort zone" album like Living Things again. Top 3: A Line in the Sand, Final Masquerade, Rebellion Bottom 3: Until It's Gone, Wastelands, All For Nothing Rather than give the album as a whole a rating, here's my new ranking of the 6 albums: Hybrid Theory > The Hunting Party > A Thousand Suns > Minutes to Midnight > Living Things > Meteora.

Lithograph was a long, narrow strip of art panels that came in a poster tube for me.

Final Masquerade is the next single. It's going to be played live...likely at every show from here on out. Also, love the cliffhanger ending to your post. Again, Rebellion is in Drop C. Linkin Park doesn't play in Drop C. They have backups for every guitar they use, meaning that if they were to add Rebellion to the set, that's 2 extra guitars in Brad, Mike, AND Phoenix's rig (unless Phoenix transposes Rebellion to a 5-string bass, which I doubt with how frequently the riffs bounce off the open low C). They've only got so much space in their guitar racks. They COULD play Rebellion, but it would probably come at the expense of With You/Runaway (ditch the Drop B guitars) or any possibility of APFMH/Forgotten/Somewhere I Belong being played in the future (ditch the Eb guitars). Also repeating myself, I'm not necessarily saying Brad wouldn't be able to play Rebellion, it's a matter of whether or not he would actually DO IT. You know that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter music video for Powerless that has performance footage from the Berlin soundcheck mixed in? Ever notice how Brad's barely even shown in the video? That's because Mike recorded all of the guitars on Powerless, and Brad never bothered to learn how to play it. He showed up at the video shoot with NO CLUE how to play the song they were filming, so they purposely kept shots of him to a minimum to keep the illusion of it being a live performance believable. Brad Delson is the same guy who played the bridge of Runaway wrong for almost 2 years straight. He's the same guy who's routinely been coming in on the wrong chord in the Numb chorus for the last 2+ years. He's the same guy who uses an automatic gating/killswitch effect on Points of Authority because he's too lazy to learn the proper left-hand muting technique to replicate the way the guitars sound on the original recording. He's the same guy who's been teasing Sweet Child O' Mine on stage occasionally for the last 13 years but has never bothered to learn anything other than the song's intro. He's the same guy who still needs a cheat sheet with the notes for New Divide taped to the floor at the side of the stage 5 years after the song came out because he either can't or refuses to memorize a song that consists of 5 notes. Still think Brad's actually going to put in the time to learn how to play a Daron Malakian song? Sometimes he doesn't even put in the time to learn songs that he actually PLAYED ON.

I know the band will likely be playing more than one setlist on Carnivores, but using the European setlist as a starting point, I came up with the following, I think it keeps most of the "good stuff" from the European set intact but includes more full songs plus a couple more THP tracks: 01. The Catalyst/The Requiem 02. Guilty All the Same 03. Lost in the Echo (full song) 04. Points of Authority (w/full intro) 05. War 06. One Step Closer (w/ext. outro) 07. Blackout (shortened instrumental, transition outro) 08. Papercut (full song) 09. With You (full song) 10. Wastelands (w/album version intro) 11. Castle of Glass Experience (piano transition outro) 12. Final Masquerade (w/Drawbar piano outro at beginning) 13. Robot Boy (shortened instrumental) 14. Joe Solo Medley 15. Burn it Down 16. Waiting for the End (w/Apaches intro and Wall of Noise outro) 17. Mike Solo Medley 18. Numb (w/Numb/Encore intro/outro/first verse guitar) 19. In the End 20. Faint (w/ext. outro) 21. Until It's Gone (w/ext. The Catalyst/No More Sorrow/UIG mashup intro, ext. transition outro) 22. A Light That Never Comes (full song) 23. New Divide (full song) 24. What I've Done (w/extended solo) 25. Bleed it Out (w/drum solo + The Catalyst refrain, ext. outro) -Drop the Crawling chorus from the encore. It sucks donkey balls. -Drop the Ballad Medley. It's outstayed its welcome about as badly as Pushing Me Away (piano version) had in 2008. -Drop Given Up. It's been played to death, it kills Chester's voice, and it isn't THAT popular with audiences. -Drop the shortened version of Runaway. Weak song, Chester hates doing it so you know they aren't going to do the full version, and the transition to Wastelands doesn't work very well either with the dramatic tempo change (Wastelands should just have its regular intro IMO). -Add Final Masquerade in place of the Ballad Medley. Perfect spot in the set for it with the piano transition outro from COG, you could also work the piano outro from the end of Drawbar in there too. -Add War near the beginning of the set, essentially replacing Given Up. It begs to be played early, would probably translate better live than some of the more complex THP songs, and doesn't take up a ton of time. -Move Lost in the Echo to the first part of the set and make it the full song. Great live song, tons of energy, people love it. Should really be near the beginning of the show (I feel the same way about having it in the encore as I do about having Papercut or Lying From You in the encore). -Make Papercut, With You, A Light That Never Comes, and New Divide the full songs (and restore the POA intro to its normal length). They don't really chop a ton out of these songs, and there's a little extra time in the set with some of the cuts made elsewhere (War is shorter than Given Up, Final Masquerade is shorter than the Ballad Medley, Runaway and Crawling are gone), so they'd come out about even time-wise this way. -Keep the transitions between UIG/ALTNC/New Divide intact in the encore. Those songs work great in the "mega medley" format. -Give What I've Done its normal intro back. The current ticking intro with the first repeat of the piano part missing sounds weird as hell.

I know Sean's lingo/abbreviations for things like the back of my hand, lol. Correct! Lots more to it though. Using the Mountain View setlist as a starting point, the numbers on the left are wireless channels. Brad has a 4-channel wireless unit, this allows him to have multiple guitars "on" at the same time so he can make quick swaps without Sean having to change wireless frequencies. Generally speaking, #1 is always his main PRS in Db Ab Db Gb Bb Eb tuning, while #2 is his main Stratocaster. The rest of his guitars get bounced around between channels 3 and 4, so they do have to make SOME wireless frequency changes throughout the show, but not many. The letters on the right are tunings. "DD" = Drop D, "DB" = Drop B (for Don't Stay), the rest are pretty self-explanatory. In later years, Sean got more specific with these abbreviations, as he started using multiple guitars in the same tuning throughout the show - "DDS" = Drop D Stratocaster, "B C#" = brown soldier PRS in C# tuning, "R C#" = red soldier PRS in C# tuning, "LP DD" = LP-logo PRS in Drop D tuning, "ES" = Stratocaster in standard E (used for Jornada Del Muerto), "DDW" = white PRS in Drop D tuning. The things with the circles are pedal settings. "C1" and "C2" refer to Brad's Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer pedals, which he had 2 of in his rig for many years. "LF" refers to Brad's Ibanez LF-7 Lo Fi filtering pedal. "NS-2" is Brad's Boss Noise Suppressor pedal. "CE-5" is Brad's Boss CE-5 Chorus Ensemble pedal. "Boost" refers to Brad's boost pedal, which was usually an MXR Micro Amp. The "HI" note with 5 circles refers to Brad's Hiwatt amp model on his old Randall MTS preamps, Sean would occasionally tweak the settings on that preamp for certain songs. "Virus" refers to the Virus synth that Brad uses on a couple songs (Blackout/The Catalyst), there are also notes for the songs Brad plays drums on (The Catalyst/Blackout/When They Come For Me). The "sus" on No More Sorrow refers to Brad using the guitar with the Fernandes Sustainer pickup on that song. The numbers on the right of the South American rehearsal set are tempos. "Neck p.u." on Burning in the Skies refers to most of that song being played on the neck pickup (to date, this is the only song Brad has ever used the neck pickup on his guitar for, at least for live performances). "Delay out/delay flange/delay 1000ms" etc. refer to songs that lead into the encore break or end the show, that usually end with a bunch of guitar feedback. Sean puts delay and/or flanger effects on the feedback while it sustains after Brad stops playing. The "ms" notes refer to the number of milliseconds for the delay effect. The numbers/letters on the left side of the 5/4/2012 rehearsal set refer to the patch banks on the GCX MIDI pedalboard for each song. First song in the set is 0, then Sean hits the "bank up" switch to go to song #2/patch 1, etc. That same setlist also has the key of each song on the right in parentheses. "Machine" (spelled wrong, actually) refers to the Native Instruments Maschine Micro that Brad used on several songs starting in 2012 (Lies Greed Misery, Victimized, Castle of Glass). The "9th fret" note on Breaking the Habit starting in 2012 refers to Brad starting that song on the 9th fret. In 2012, Brad switched from playing that song in C# tuning to Drop D tuning, so everything was moved down one fret. He did this because of the feedback transition out of the end of the Wall of Noise outro on WFTE into the BTH intro originally, but he kept playing BTH in that tuning throughout the Living Things touring cycle. The "Gates" note on Points of Authority at the X-Games show refers to the newly-added Drawmer Dual Gate that Brad has been using on that song the last couple years. It's the same "chopping" effect Mike uses on Lies Greed Misery, they started using it on POA to recreate the chopped-up sound of the guitar on the album version more accurately.

Not the one we're talking about here.

Part of the reason it sounds so different is the existing rip of the One Step Closer multitrack was done incorrectly. The drums should be separated into kick/snare/cymbal tracks like they normally are on rips from that game, but it's all one track for some reason, and even weirder, they have the bass drum on one side of the mix and the snare/cymbals on the other side. Sounds totally "wrong" compared to how the drums are actually mixed on the recording.