Agree with everything you said and everything we talked about last night. It's the fact that LT followed up experimental and jamtastic stuff from MTM and ATS that makes it feel much weaker when compared. Skin to Bone has an awesome sound and could have been much more than it is had it been a bit longer. The end of the song is when it feels like it's about to pick up into this awesome finale of sorts but then just falls flat and ends. I'll Be Gone suffers from the same issue. Powerless is perfect, the over 4 minute time gives it what it needs to fully flesh out and build up into the epic song that it is. Had a few other songs been done this way, I think the record would be A+. LITE is fine for what it is, the bridge for IMR makes the whole song, and I've grown to appreciate BID a lot more recently (a lot of cool layering going on in the song). CoG is great as well.
I understand what the band (or maybe just Shinoda) was trying to do with this record, they said time and time again they were going for that "firecracker" sound for these songs. The problem is that we now know that LP is capable of mid length, bombastic shit with songs like Catalyst, WTCFM, and so on. We don't need another ATS, I think we just want the energy and fun of LT combined with the effort and creativity of ATS.