Astat

Absolutely two different songs.

There's one discrepancy between the official lyrics and what's actually on the album - in Keys to the Kingdom, Mike says "Y'all locked in that same flow" instead of "Y'all stuck in that same flow."

The One Step Closer instrumental found in the Hybrid Theory instrumentals isn't actually ripped from the CD, it's put together from the Guitar Hero stems. Apparently the guy who ripped the CD thought it wasn't necessary to rip that track because "there was already an instrumental out there," even though Guitar Hero mixes always sound different than the original recordings.

Simple answer to both is that the guy who originally ripped it threw a temper tantrum when the mp3 rip leaked, refused to share it in better quality, and never posted scans of the CD. For some reason, LPL staff turned that into "well we can't TECHNICALLY prove that the CD exists, therefore we have to pretend the HT instrumentals don't exist because omg phear WBR," even though they're no more or less illegal to share than HT unmastered, The Rising Tied instrumentals, etc...it's stupid.

Technically speaking, that part of the ALITS riff is still different from Victimized. Same strumming pattern centered around a D, but Victimized is mostly single D notes with a D octave at the end, while ALITS bounces back and forth between an open D5 chord and a D octave. Victimized also has a shitload of effects on the guitar, if you strip those away it doesn't sound quite as similar. Plus there's a different turnaround at the end of each riff, it's only the first part that's mostly the same. Nowhere near as blatant reusing of the same riff/chord progression as Faint/From the Inside or What I've Done/A Light That Never Comes. The "Victimized riff" is one small component of a 6 and a half minute song that covers a ton of ground. They've built entire songs around identical chord progressions in the past.

I don't think there's any significance to the interludes. Listen to The Shape of Punk to Come all the way through once, and you'll immediately figure out where they got the idea.

Sounds like a total "let's just toss a shoddy copy of the album online somewhere to shut this guy up" deal. I have no idea why you'd even be getting it through Rhino Records, the email to download the record is supposed to come from linkinpark.com directly, therefore it should be the same for everyone worldwide. It's a WBR download link that's unique to each email they send out, 320kbps, with embedded album art in each mp3 file.

Rob always played along with it dating back to the Third Encore performances in 2007. Sometimes you can hear Rob in the mix, sometimes you can't.

Where are people hearing Blackout in Mark the Graves? I'm not hearing it at all.

Listening to the show right now, and I'm sorry, but anyone who says the crowd was "epic" is obviously letting their memory of being at the show and enjoying themselves make it seem better than it was. Crowd is dead silent between songs, the band basically got a fucking golf clap after Forgotten, numerous points during songs where the crowd can't be heard at all, people not even blowing up big when the intros to Papercut, OSC, ITE etc. start like they do at basically any other venue. Only appropriately-big reactions for a headliner at a festival of this size were on Crawling and Numb. It literally sounds like a crowd for an opening band, like LP was playing before Metallica again or something. Listening to the ITE bridge again, sounds like there are like 20 people singing total lol. Band performed very well, particularly impressed with how well the HT songs went for the most part. Only big hiccup was Chester missing the first line of Forgotten. Mike blanked on the lyrics to the second verse of By Myself for like 2 seconds and recovered, but that's nothing.

Most video shows listed on LPL as sources come from camcorders that record to a physical format (VHS, miniDV, minidisc, removable memory, etc.). There isn't really a "video file" until it's transferred to a computer and rendered in a digital format. DVD-format files are essentially the equivalent of FLAC audio files, they don't compress the original data at all like transferring to a .avi/.mpg etc. file would. Same goes for webcasts, you can record it into your video capture software but the file still has to be rendered in some kind of readable file, so people typically save it as a DVD file (or burn it directly to a DVD) to keep the quality from degrading. There are some video sources listed on LPL that aren't in DVD format though.

I see no need for that. Only noteworthy instrumental difference is the beat continuing under the "now for a lesson in rhythm management" part. It's Joe's solo spot and he has control over the samples being played, so of course it's not going to 100% match the album version. The vocal samples are the "unedited" ones found on the unmastered version of Hybrid Theory (this was the case for the 2007-2011 version of the song as well). The only one that's different from prior performances/clearly Mike is the "Wasn't that fun? Let's try something else!" one. I think calling a song a "different version" because of one sample is some Wesley-level shit, lol.

CFTI also essentially takes the spot of Joe's solo at this show, so it's not like that's really "missing."

I have the book, but I don't really have a way of scanning it. Would some hi-res photos be alright?

Requiem/Catalyst > GATS > Given Up > Blackout interlude > Papercut. Can't really imagine them doing it any other way. My setlist prediction: 01. The Catalyst/The Requiem (Mashup intro) 02. Guilty All the Same 03. Given Up 04. Blackout Instrumental 05. Papercut 06. One Step Closer 07. With You 08. Points of Authority 09. Crawling 10. Runaway 11. By Myself 12. In the End 13. A Place For My Head 14. Forgotten 15. Cure for the Itch 16. Pushing Me Away 17. Burn it Down 18. Waiting For the End 19. Mike Solo Medley 20. Numb 21. Faint ---------- 22. Until It's Gone 23. What I've Done 24. Bleed it Out With all of the usual extenders to the non-HT songs, obviously. If I'm doing the math right this comes out to about an hour and a half on the dot assuming they don't do any extenders on the HT songs.

I'm sure there are more moments in the show where Chester and/or Mike use Auto Tune, but they definitely aren't using it on everything. Your guess is as good as mine on GATS, no clue why Chester needs it on the verses. Only thing I can think of is they're using it more for the chorus and just leaving it on throughout the song for simplicity's sake.

My understanding of it is that they started using it on certain songs/parts of songs at some point during the Living Things tour. I first became suspicious of this when Chester's tone randomly started sounding totally different on the Ballad Medley midway through the tour, and his singing on that track became a lot more consistent. I think they may have started using it on Numb around the same time as well. Up until this point though, it's been pretty transparent, ikely because they were only using it on more melodic, clean singing-based songs. GATS is a lot more aggressive, the raspiness Chester uses on heavier songs like that can confuse the Auto Tune plugin when used in a live environment - you can overdrive a microphone just like an amplifier if you sing into it loudly enough, and the subsequent distortion creates harmonic overtones which can confuse the plugin since it's designed to be monophonic (it only tracks one note at a time). There's one REALLY bad Auto Tune glitch during GATS at Rock Am Ring, I forget where it is but it jumps all over the place for a split second as one of Chester's words is trailing off. On top of that, there's the issue with the key/scale not being set right to account for the C# notes Chester sings in the chorus, which results in them being "snapped" up to a D and sounding really weird.

My theory is they're trying to push UIG as much as possible because it's more of a "single-ish" track than GATS, but rock radio is still playing GATS nonstop while practically ignoring UIG. I have yet to hear UIG played once by any of the 4 rock stations in my area.

Yep. It's not necessarily that they CAN'T play it, I just question whether or not they'd put in the time to learn it, particularly with the aforementioned tuning discrepancy. They could play it up half a step in C#, I suppose...tuning a song UP rarely sounds good, though.

With a few exceptions, I see this album being really difficult to do live. Final Masquerade will probably translate well. I can see The Summoning/War being used as an opener on Carnivores, Brad will probably B.S. his way through the solo like he does on GATS but other than that it'll probably work pretty well live. Keys to the Kingdom will probably suck live. It jumps around a ton, the vocals will be incredibly tough on Chester, and the way it opens up with practically unaccompanied screaming, I can see it being a song that the band fucks up the intro of all the time. All For Nothing would be a little easier from a musical standpoint, but Mike doing Page's vocals will probably be pretty iffy. Rebellion will flat-out not be performed live without Daron, I almost guarantee it. The guitar tuning Daron uses is not one that LP uses. Brad and Phoenix would also have to learn guitar/bass parts that they didn't have any part in recording, and fairly difficult ones at that. It's a shame, because other than the instrumentation being a deal-breaker, this song would probably translate pretty well live. Drawbar has no reason to be played live, other than the piano at the very end potentially being used as a Final Masquerade intro. Mark the Graves and A Line in the Sand are extremely progressive tracks with weird timing and dynamic changes and a million things that could go wrong. They might TRY to play one or both of them live, but I don't see either one working out well. So yeah, I predict Final Masquerade and War (potentially with The Summoning) being added for Carnivores, but not much else.

The Project Spark video WAS the GATS music video. That's all we're getting for that song.

I think the mindset that Rick got the band into by working with them for a few albums is still something they believe in (don't be predictable, don't make music to satisfy anyone but yourselves, etc.). They were probably just at the point where they couldn't justify paying Rick a shitload of money to produce another album when they knew exactly what he'd bring to the table and they'd likely be on the same page anyway.

I saw someone mention that they think the first half of the album is the strongest - I disagree. From Rebellion onwards this record is damn near flawless. I feel like KTTK/AFR are a kind of odd pairing to open the album with, KTTK in particular has to be the weirdest opening song they've ever done. It's like a rock version of Until It Breaks. I'm not saying I DISLIKE those songs, but I think the sequencing is a little weird on the front half of the record. The Summoning/War seems like the more "natural" opening pair to me. I probably would have put it together like this: 01. The Summoning 02. War 03. Keys to the Kingdom 04. All for Nothing 05. Guilty All the Same 06. Wastelands 07. Until It's Gone 08. Rebellion 09. Mark the Graves 10. Drawbar 11. Final Masquerade 12. A Line in the Sand But yeah, tracks 8 through 12 just blew me away. Loved The Summoning/War as well, and I have a new appreciation for GATS hearing it in sequence (the studio banter between Mike and Brad leading into it is just PRICELESS). Least favorite track is Until It's Gone, with Wastelands second from the bottom.

People who can't make out Tom Morello's playing on Drawbar obviously aren't familiar with some of Tom Morello's guitar tones. That thing accompanying the piano isn't a synth, people. It was established quite a while ago that most of the songs on this record were connected by short interludes. No different than what they've been doing since Meteora with making songs flow together (Don't Stay > Somewhere I Belong, Breaking the Habit > From the Inside, Shadow of the Day > What I've Done, etc.). I'll be reviewing this, might not get it done tonight though.

Why do people act like festival shows "don't count" for some reason? I'll GLADLY go see LP play a full-length headlining set (translation: the SAME FUCKING SET THEY'D BE PLAYING IF IT WAS AN AREA TOUR) in front of 80,000 people any day. On a similar note, why do people act like U.S. amphitheater tours "don't count" unless they have the Projekt Revolution name attached to them? Because obviously the name of the tour makes ALL the difference, right?