Astat

For all you guitarists out there, I'm pretty sure this photo Ethan Mates posted on his Instagram shows the pedals used for the solo at the end of GATS: http://instagram.com/p/kTMBTgiO0Z/ Photo is captioned "My trademark is my solos," and the pedals pictured would produce a very similar sound to the GATS end solo depending on the settings. Those pedals are a Devi Ever Truly Beautiful Disaster, an Earthquaker Devices Hummingbird, a Moogerfooger MURF, a Strymon BigSky, and a Strymon Mobius. That's over $1,800 of pedals for the solo on one song!

Typical so-called Linkin Park "fan" thought process: Heavy guitars = Hybrid Theory/Meteora = NU METAL ROXXX! Not-as-prominent guitars = Everything else = "New shitty techno LP," OMFG WHERE ARE DA GUITARZ BRAD DIDN'T DO ANYTHING ON THIS ALBUM

I hear it more commonly than any other post-Minutes to Midnight track. It's on at least a couple times a week up here, probably gets more airplay than any other Meteora song except for Somewhere I Belong. In fact, I should try and do a list of all the LP-related tracks I've heard on the radio... LP songs: Papercut One Step Closer Points of Authority Crawling Runaway In the End My December Enth e Nd My<Dsmbr Somewhere I Belong Lying From You Faint Breaking the Habit Numb Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying From You Numb/Encore Given Up Leave Out All the Rest Bleed it Out Shadow of the Day What I've Done New Divide Waiting For the End Iridescent (Transformers version) The Catalyst Lost in the Echo Burn it Down Lies Greed Misery A Light That Never Comes Guilty All the Same Other: Fort Minor - Remember the Name, Petrified, Where'd You Go Dead By Sunrise - Fire, Crawl Back In, Too Late, Let Down Z-Trip - Walking Dead X-Ecutioners - It's Goin' Down Motley Crue feat. Chester - Home Sweet Home The only actual singles I've never heard on the radio are Pts.Of.Athrty, From the Inside, We Made It, Burning in the Skies, and Castle of Glass. And as you can see, I've heard quite a few non-singles too.

If they play in Mexico, I hope they stay the hell away from the people who "organized" the Heaven & Hell festival.

Am I the only one who thinks there won't be any collabs on this tour?

Given the subject matter of The Mall, I'm kind of wondering if it hasn't been quietly cancelled due to the recent mall shooting in New Jersey. Time will tell, I suppose.

Purely speaking in terms of BPM, yes (unless there's something faster on the album that isn't listed on the paper). But again, BPM isn't exactly a good indicator of a song's style, or even how fast it "feels" at times. One of the fastest tracks in the LP catalog (also at 200 BPM) is none other than...Breaking the Habit. The softest song released on either of LP's first two albums was also the fastest.

The one in D Minor at 200 BPM. The only instance of an LP song changing tempo and/or key between demo and final version was Three Band Terror > Until it Breaks. Considering how much of LP's music is created (or at least "started") on a computer, plus the fact that they record all of their songs as demos before entering the final phase of recording (Rob has to either play along with an existing recording or a click track, after all), that kind of stuff is usually "locked in" very early in the process.

The chorus on OSC is all Chester on the studio version. I was pointing that out (along with Breaking the Habit) as an example of an "all-Chester song" back in 2007 when the entire LP community was losing their shit over how Mike didn't have a lot of vocals on Minutes to Midnight and therefore must be quitting the band.

Both of these are absolutely Chester. The vocal makeup of Hybrid Theory/Meteora-era Linkin Park was that Chester was the singer, and Mike was the rapper. No need to have Mike sing backup vocals in the studio, because Chester was the lead singer, and as anyone who's ever recorded harmonies knows, there's no voice in the world that you blend with better than your own. Mike only sang harmonies live for the sake of not leaving out vocal parts that were present on the albums. Chester even talks about this on LPTV 2007 or the Making of Minutes to Midnight (maybe both) when mentioning Mike singing on No Roads Left/In Between - "You've been singing harmonies live for years, why not try doing some singing in the studio?" It was a completely new thing at that point, save for So Far Away being a random anomaly from the pre-Hybrid Theory period (Mike also sang the ending of the non-Xero Forgotten demo, but that part is so low, I doubt Chester was capable of producing the notes, so Mike probably just sang that out of necessity).

Scott Koziol (Kottonmouth Kings) - bass on One Step Closer Ian Hornbeck - bass on Papercut, A Place for My Head, and Forgotten Kyle Christner (NoseDive) - bass on at least some of the Hybrid Theory EP (both he and Brad are credited with playing bass on the original pressing, but it doesn't specify who played on which songs) John 5 (Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie) - Guitar on Buy Myself Remix Mudrock - production on Carousel, And One, and Part of Me

Mike didn't do any actual singing vocals on Hybrid Theory or Meteora, they just credited him in the booklets the same way they credited the other 4 guys for backing vocals (despite none of them actually recording them).

Could have easily been the gang vocals on GATS, just saying.

...The exact same thing was said about What I've Done, The Catalyst, and Burn it Down. None of those tracks were album openers.

I saw Mark mention it on here a while back. Figured he's usually pretty good with his sources, hadn't heard anything from mine.

It's probably just a matter of logistics delaying the album release. In both cases, there was a European tour that preceded the album release date (I'm assuming the album release for LP6 will be after Europe, so they can do their usual promotional stuff without being busy with a bunch of live shows). They're apparently doing a MUCH more extensive series of rehearsals this time around though, starting in early April. They probably could release the album a month or so earlier than they are, but they'll be busy with other stuff.

The bridge only has one guitar part in it anyway. It's basically the second half of the intro, the choruses, the part between the first chorus and second verse, and the outro that have more than one part.

Missed it, the official lyrics were edited into the news post on LPA. Here's Rakim's verse according to those, although I think he may have changed a couple words here and there from what was written down: Can y'all explain What kind of land is this When a man has plans of being rich But the bosses plans are wealthy Dirty money scheme A clean split is nonsense It's insane Even corporate hands is filthy They talk team and take the paper route All they think about is bank accounts Assets and realty At anybody’s expense No shame with a clear conscience No regrets and guilt free They claim that ain't the way that they built me The smoke screen before the flame Knowin’ as soon as the dough or the deal peak They say it's time for things to change Rearrange like good product rebuilt cheap Anything if it's more to gain Drained, manipulated like artists, it's real deep Until no more remains But I'm still me Like authentic hip-hop and rock Til’ pop and radio and record companies killed me Try to force me to stray and obey And got the gall to say how real can real be You feel me, we'll see That green could be to blame Or greedy for the fame TV or a name The media, the game To me you're all the same You're guilty

@ lyrics websites. Thank you, knew there was a bunch of shit wrong in there. Sounds right as far as I can tell now.

Not Rob's BEST drumming ever, but one of his top 4 or 5 tracks for sure (Easier to Run, The Little Things Give You Away, The Catalyst...) Brad's best work since In Pieces. Both songs are extremely simple to play outside of the solos. Phoenix sticks to his usual "double the guitars an octave down" stuff on this song, nothing really noteworthy. It's hard to judge Joe's studio output because you never know which electronic elements in various songs are actually done by him and not someone like Mike or Brad. I pointed out earlier that there's some "Joe-ish" stuff in this song if you listen for it, but it's not necessarily Joe doing it. I think this will be one of those songs where Mike switches back and forth between guitar and keys. There are a few spots with multiple guitar parts playing at once.

Yeah, Rob's quick with a single pedal, he does some pretty convincing heel-toe stuff from time to time that sounds like a double pedal, but it's only ever been on quick successions of 2 kicks. That fill in the intro has a really fast triple kick though, and there are VERY few drummers that I've ever heard pull off something like that with a single pedal (Off the top of my head, John Bonham and Josh Eppard are the only ones I can think of). Kind of crazy if Rob's going to a double kick setup now, he's said in the past that he hasn't used a double pedal since he was in like high school, like pre-Xero even.

I'll pop in here with a bit more musical analysis and such, now that I've gotten in a few listens with headphones on: -Surprised nobody noticed this, but Rob is 100% using a double bass pedal on this song. It's not in there a lot, but it shows up in the drum fill under the melodic guitar line during the intro (the guitar that mimics the vocals in the verses), and there are some double bass "gallops" under part of the outro guitar solo as well. -Re: Chester's vocals. The amount of pitch correction used on a song like this is really hard to discern without at least having an acapella. I think a lot of people tend to forget that Auto Tune can be 100% transparent depending on how you use it. LP HAS been endorsing Antares in their album liner notes going all the way back to Hybrid Theory, after all. But the vocal sound is a lot more "dry" than most of the vocals on the last two albums. We've gotten used to hearing Chester's voice drenched in studio reverb, flangers, layered in 3 and 4-part harmonies, backed up by gang vocals, etc...with that said, I still think he sounds strained. This is the first time I've heard a studio cut from LP where Chester's voice sounded like it does during live shows. Kind of worrying to me (is his voice getting shot to the point that they can't even hide it with "studio magic" anymore?), but it ultimately doesn't detract from the song. Also on the subject of vocals, there ARE backup vocals in this song. Each "tell us all again"/"show us all again" is doubled, as are the pre-chorus parts. There's also a harmony part that shows up in both pre-choruses and the second verse, and there are actually some gang vocal shouts on the repeated "GUILTY ALL THE SAME" lines after the second and third choruses. -Electronics: There's plenty of Joe-ish stuff hiding in the background of this song. I definitely hear some MPC-style samples mixed in with the bed of synths that back up Rakim's verse. Not really sure where the Crawling comparison is coming from though, I don't hear it. There's also some pretty subtle scratching during the intro, it sounds almost like really staccato needle drops, creating a "tapping" noise. Also, there's a really distorted low-end synth that doubles the bass throughout most of the song, kind of reminiscent of New Divide.

I think that guitar tone is specifically a result of Ethan Mates being an engineer on 4 consecutive albums, but not working on HT/Meteora. He tends to gravitate towards more vintage-sounding guitars, even for heavier stuff (he was a big part of why they incorporated Strats into their guitar arsenal starting on MTM). As a result, they don't layer the rhythm tracks as much as they used to. I'd say this song has a pretty similar tone to No More Sorrow or Given Up. Those songs were recorded with "heavy" guitars like PRSs and Les Pauls, but they're really light on the layering and a lot more dry-sounding. On Meteora in particular, I've heard stories of their being 8 to 10 guitars all playing the same thing with different EQ and phase settings on tracks like From the Inside and stuff like that. I don't think they go above 3 guitars (basic left/right/center) for rhythm tracks that are playing the same parts anymore. There's also some holdover stuff on there from the last couple albums too. The A7X-like "harmonized" riff people are talking about is actually just one guitar part with the Electro-Harmonix HOG on it. At least it isn't present throughout the whole song like it is on Victimized and Wretches and Kings though, I thought that effect got old pretty fast.

First use of a wah pedal on an LP guitar part since Step Up, no joke (unless I'm totally blanking on something). The lead work in the outro sounds cool, but it's pretty similar to some of the stuff Brad does on the live outro to Faint, just more refined.

I've always been under the impression there's a general "code" amongst emcees that you don't rap someone else's verse. Happens all the time with live performances by mainstream rap artists, and Mike cut Motion Man's verse out of Enth e Nd at Fort Minor concerts.