Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns

They were really good 5-10 years ago. Everything went downhill after the Jay-Z collaboration, which I have to admit wasn't all that bad. And I thought Minutes to Midnight was bad...

Im not a fan of the new LP either but note: this isnt a review thread: how did it become one? Make a thread about it so you and me can tear it to shreds and benji can tell us we're wrong.

This is it. The first "Tear Linkin Park's New Album to Shreds" thread in this forum.

Benji is not allowed in this thread.

for taking advice

Anyway, i've listened to "A Thousand Suns" one time all the way through and have tried again several occasions (to see if its a "grower") and i've yet to finish it. The catalyst seems to be inescapable due to my local radio station, but i still just cant get into this album..

However i think its unfair to say that LP is no longer "good". For what style of music they were going for? its fine. Its just not their Nu-Metal rap-rock roots. I liked Minutes to Midnight myself but I wasnt expecting this big a change in style between albums.

Wanna hear something else terrible involving LP people? Go listen to Chester Bennington singing Riders on the Storm on Santana's new album its pure blasphemy.

Wanna hear something else terrible involving LP people? Listen to any other one of their albums.

Fixed.

:applaud: for taking advice
The catalyst seems to be inescapable due to my local radio station

You've mentioned you live in the Carolinas, is your radio station 106.5 the end by any chance?

Anyway, i've listened to "A Thousand Suns" one time all the way through and have tried again several occasions (to see if its a "grower") and i've yet to finish it.

I only listened to it two days ago, twice in a row. I'm giving a nice break of like two weeks while I listen to a bunch of different stuff. (My music tastes are more scattered than ever: Bullet For My Valentine, Breaking Benjamin, old LP, Between the Buried and Me, Avenged Sevenfold, Story of the Year, Rise Against, and 311 ) I'll listen to it after a week or two.

However i think its unfair to say that LP is no longer "good". For what style of music they were going for? its fine.

Exactly my thoughts. Good if they were a completely different band in a completely different genre of music. Bad if you're a rock band with any reputation for good music.

Wanna hear something else terrible involving LP people? Go listen to Chester Bennington singing Riders on the Storm on Santana's new album its pure blasphemy.

I'm not even going to listen to it. I don't even want to hear it.

I liked Minutes to Midnight myself but I wasnt expecting this big a change in style between albums.

People said that about Minutes to Midnight and Meteora, which I agree with. I can nearly say that I saw this coming. Right after they released "New Divide" which pretty much sounded like a slightly upgraded version of the grossly-overrated "What I've Done". They at least eased into M2M by releasing a comparable sound to their older stuff as a single. This album- not at all.

Wanna hear something else terrible involving LP people? Listen to any other one of their albums.

Fixed.

Leave this thread and don't post here again. lol. Old LP rules!

Wanna hear something else terrible involving LP people? Listen to any other one of their albums.

Fixed.

Truth. I've never understood the appeal of this band at all.

and i dont understand the appeal of LCD Soundsystem, deerhunter, and alot of shit i've seen you guys rave over. Musics a subjective thing. Hell millions of people love Justin Bieber and i think he should be butchered with several sharp knives and it would sound better.

I admit (even though i know its musically simplistic and lyrically juvenile) I have a thing for nu-metal or whatever that weird genre that got big when i was about 13 was with LP, Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit etc. Do i sit here and defend them as a great band that should be enshrined in a Hall of Fame? hell no. Did i enjoy listening to them cuz i was an angsty fuck? yes. Do I still enjoy their old stuff? That I do, but not quite as much as when I was younger.

I understand bands grow and "mature" but some of these bands are going to have to find new fan bases.

LCD Soundsystem...you guys rave over.

I actually fucking hate LCD Soundsystem, but not as much as Linkin Park.

LCD Soundsystem is the shit.

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Discuss.

LCD Soundsystem...you guys rave over.

I actually fucking hate LCD Soundsystem, but not as much as Linkin Park.

That one was aimed at the other person in the thread

LCD Soundsystem is shit.

Fixed...look i can quote and edit too!!!

LCD Soundsystem is shit.

Fixed...look i can quote and edit too!!! I am as cool as you and have good opinions...

On OPPOSITE day!

I agree.

My sentiments about Linkin Park exactly.

(Fun-Fact: There's a park in Seattle called "Lincoln Park")

WAS INTENDED TO BE POSTED AFTER MC5's FIRST POST IN THE THREAD

First, let us note I just started a holier-than-thou review thread.

Linkin Park's original appeal was that they're trash-pop, but with a rock/rap/nu-metal genetic line which at the time was the most popular version of "rock" and they introduced electronic usage to it. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying trash-pop, it's designed to make you enjoy the hooks and you have to ignore the lyrics. That's the trash part, because they're tumor causing if you read them, and generic if you're lucky. And Linkin Park had an ungodly debut album in its terms of writing hooks that could show up in any pop song but injected them into a genre that was not particularly radio friendly by design. Listen to Hybrid Theory, look at how the verses-choruses-bridges all work, it's blatant pop-song construction, but the instruments, style of singing, etc. their use is all inherent rock/rap that the 90s was rife with, they distilled the two into a commercial monster. Hybrid Theory is not intelligent, but it's hard to say it's not constructed specifically. It's easy to forget how something like Crawling compares to the pop-rock scene it was inviting itself to. Sugar Ray. Smash Mouth. It lost none of the hooking choruses, the meaningless versus, it just brought it in a way the radio/MTV audience was not used to if they were not privy to the metal/electronic/etc. parents that birthed Linkin Park. Compared to the radio of the 1990s, Linkin Park WAS "heavy."

Then they tried to strike out on their own, and it fell apart for a while.

We should also note, as others have on here, that I've ever increasingly become easy, I'm a nymphomaniac porn star or something in regard to how I'll like music anymore. Thus why Lady Gaga and who knows what else showed up on my end of the year list last time. (Which would look nothing like my 2005 one if such a thing existed.) But at the same time my 5/5 zone increased to become harder and harder to penetrate. Most media has gone this way for me, as I've raised for more tolerance to things are just average or good, and heightened the level of a "classic" and this is part of why my A Thousand Suns stance was what it was.

But really I shouldn't rehash what was said there: viewtopic.php?p=1258461#p1258461

However, for those who missed the point in my simple satire, A Thousand Suns's relevance is that it's not like the rest of Linkin Park. Another Meteora or Minutes to Midnight would have been diminishing returns. There was nowhere for Linkin Park to go after the original, they had nearly perfectly mined the well, you can still go back and the album still has it all, the hooks are unchanged. And things like Numb that came out on the later albums was what they missed while making the first one. So after was a b-side album with a couple misplaced tracks followed up by a c-side album with a misplaced b-side that was left off the album.

But Hybrid Theory isn't where the band peaks. Reanimation is, and anyone who argues otherwise is a Communist Kenyan Muslim. Nothing the band will ever do can compare, it's almost a mistake that they did it because it will forever overshadow anything they actually do. The only thing keeping it from classic status is the phone calls and a pair of dud tracks, but it's in the next tier. If they had released Reanimation first, they would never have sold a billion copies but it'd probably have been a cult hit that got all the indie cred.

I know a lot of people who hate Reanimation and adore the albums on either side. They're wrong, but they're the majority.

And Reanimation is why I like A Thousand Suns, the experimentation. With Reanimation they had somewhere to start as they completely reworked these beloved by millions songs, for the latest they started from scratch and instead of covering the same rehashed expected bases they've been over many times they went somewhere else. And delivered the best song since Reanimation (maybe a few as I've re-listened) so I had little to complain about.

A Summary: After Minutes to Midnight, I not only wasn't even interested in the album I didn't know it released until someone made the claim it was "techno." And this one has made me automatically interested in the next. Knock a point off and make it 3/5 - Good, I almost did, but decided to be provocative like a real reviewer.

I won't tell any of you that you're wrong on something like this, I don't really care. I only give my views on music and TV shows and such so those few who agree with me can maybe take a chance when I actually do praise something. And I don't mind having a friendly debate. See Jae taking a look at Raising Hope and this, I don't mind he doesn't like either, but we've liked enough common stuff that there's a reason for both of us to investigate what the other likes. I look into the things he suggests, and vice versa, it's not perfect 100%, and the actual agreement is far lower, but we hit enough for each other that we pay attention to the views of the other. I'm sure Jae wouldn't have given two shits about Linkin Park's latest but I think he likely looked into it because I was not tearing it apart. That's all that really matters in our suggestionship. Then we have wild sex for hours and hours, but not even the porn sites will let us post the videos.

Oh, and Fort Minor's album was easily better than both the prior Linkin Park sequel albums. And is a top four Linkin Park universe album.

And nothing will ever be worse than Out of Ashes.

(Fun-Fact: There's a park in Seattle called "Lincoln Park")

FUNFACT: They were going to call themselves that but the URL was taken.

Linkin Park's original appeal was that they're trash-pop, but with a rock/rap/nu-metal genetic line which at the time was the most popular version of "rock" and they introduced electronic usage to it. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying trash-pop, it's designed to make you enjoy the hooks and you have to ignore the lyrics. That's the trash part, because they're tumor causing if you read them, and generic if you're lucky. And Linkin Park had an ungodly debut album in its terms of writing hooks that could show up in any pop song but injected them into a genre that was not particularly radio friendly by design. Listen to Hybrid Theory, look at how the verses-choruses-bridges all work, it's blatant pop-song construction, but the instruments, style of singing, etc. their use is all inherent rock/rap that the 90s was rife with, they distilled the two into a commercial monster. Hybrid Theory is not intelligent, but it's hard to say it's not constructed specifically. It's easy to forget how something like Crawling compares to the pop-rock scene it was inviting itself to. Sugar Ray. Smash Mouth. It lost none of the hooking choruses, the meaningless versus, it just brought it in a way the radio/MTV audience was not used to if they were not privy to the metal/electronic/etc. parents that birthed Linkin Park. Compared to the radio of the 1990s, Linkin Park WAS "heavy."

I've never listened to any Linkin Park besides the radio hits (which I tried to avoid), but I never would have considered writing strong hooks to be their big strength. I can't even remember the tune of any Linkin Park song. As for Linkin Park bringing the heavy to mainstream music, I remind you that both Korn and Limp Bizkit (LP's parents, to use your term), achieved similar if not greater commercial success (I haven't looked at the sales figures) as LP. And as much as I hate those bands, I can at least remember how the chorus of "Nookie" goes (and now I am remembering it, and it fucking sucks, and will likely be stuck in my head for days now...fuck!). And surely, blatant pop-song construction, but rather hackneyed blatant pop-song construction.

And finally, I will suggest that Nirvana was vastly "heavier" than Linkin Park, with the exception of the absolutely neutered Butch Vig production on "Nevermind". Hell, even early Silverchair had more balls than Linkin Park.

You're free to make all those claims, but I was not speaking for myself.

Limp Bizkit's best went 7x Platinum, but Linkin Park's debut went 10x Platinum and sold to a difference audience. Follow the Leader hit 5x. Linkin Park went where the others didn't, and the biggest pop market, females. And held against the likes of N'Sync.

Males are mostly irrelevant to control of the pop market. Linkin Park had a more sustained single market because they were going where Limp Bizkit, Korn, etc. did not go, which was the female market, which is the money maker. Limp Biztkit's singles peaked at where Linkin Park hit at the lowest.

I didn't enjoy this album so much, but Minutes To Midnight was one of my favorite albums of 2007. The whole thing was pretty awesome, that's just my opinion though.

Quite true. And I must admit I'm a little bit surprised about those sales numbers. But I think I've got the female market thing figured out:

this


and this


vs. this

It's entirely anecdotal, but those pop hooks do a lot to bring the females into genre's they'd otherwise never touch, and perhaps explore from there. (White Stripes and some others have also applied as gateway drugs.) I know at least one girl I introduced to kaddisfly after her exploration to the rest of rock via her introduction to it via Linkin Park years earlier.

Only one of those three has a sex tape that I'm aware of. And Chester foolishly married young before he became a rock star.

Isn't Jonathan Davis like monogamous and straight edge. What a weird time the 1990s was in producing rock stars.

This post is just more evidence people should have just replied to my laughable review in the other thread instead of making a whole new one.

Linkin Park went where the others didn't, and the biggest pop market, females. And held against the likes of N'Sync.

Linkin Park had a more sustained single market because they were going where Limp Bizkit, Korn, etc. did not go, which was the female market, which is the money maker.

Minutes To Midnight was one of my favorite albums of 2007. The whole thing was pretty awesome, that's just my opinion though.

I rest my case.

I don't know if that means much, as Doobie has proven his poor judgement multiple times.

We shouldn't impugn females like that. I mean, nobody bought Minutes to Midnight.

Just for perspective. From the Video Games section and Xbox Live gamer tag thread.

Friends playing this game:

Netflix

Saelito13 is watching:

Dear John


Doobz, you better be getting laid or you have to hand over your nuts. Like now.

No comment. Wasn't a bad movie though.

I mean, nobody bought Minutes to Midnight.

I bought the album.....

Catchy heavy music = success in the late 90's - early 00's. You can argue and shit about what is heavy and what isn't, I really don't care, but as Ben said when LP came along they were heavy. So were Korn, so were Slipknot, so were all those other nu-metal bands that got popular around that time. Essentially Hybrid Theory is full of songs with choruses that you don't forget. The verses come and go, I probably couldn't name more than 5 lines from verses on that entire album, but I can remember pretty much all of the choruses.

The singer/screaming guy's voice is heavy enough that it didn't fall into mainstream rock (like Foo Fighters, RHCP etc) but not heavy enough to make them unlistenable to teens and other youngsters. The rapper guy pretty much capitalized on the fact that Fred Durst and Eminem had made white rappers relevant/acceptable again and it left them with basically a perfect mix of catchy pop-esque songs made in a style that stops them being categorized as pop music that can cross over into different genres. If you were an angsty teenager back in those days, before the internet took over and gave you instant access to any music you could ever want from anywhere, then you relied on bands like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Slipknot and such because they were seen as "acceptable" bands to listen to that were also accessible via mass media.

If you listen to stuff by Korn/Limp Bizkit/Deftones etc before they got successful in the mainstream, the music was just as heavy but no where near as catchy. The songs didn't have that thing that made them get stuck in your head. To see the difference just listen to Three Dollar Bill Y'all and compare that to Significant Other.

Interestingly, the biggest success Limp Bizkit had from Three Dollar Bill was a cover of a pop song.

Just to expand on Jae's well done post, Linkin Park was heavy in context to the radio/MTV hits of era. The Korn/Limp Bizkit songs that went sorta-big and crossed over had no screaming and were the "softer" radio-friendly tracks, Linkin Park had hits that had screaming and things like Crawling were major hits when they should not have been without the hooks they put up.

But again, as Jae notes, the songs were constructed entirely like pop-songs, the choruses are what you don't forget, the verses are throwaway. And the point I was trying to make, why Linkin Park had such a resonance was not their inherent quality at producing brilliance, but that they had drilled 200+ song concepts down to a 10 or so that perfectly left a field for them to mine singles as if they were pop-songs instead of tracks on a "heavy" rock/nu-metal/rap-rock album. They put out half the album as singles. In the U.S. that is not normal behavior.

Lady Gaga lives on the hooks, so did Linkin Park. Let's just hope she didn't peak on the second "album" like they did.

Oh, and I still think Results May Very is the best Limp Bizkit album. Will never be able to decide on Korn's. Whether or not A Thousand Suns is a top favorite depends on the next album, they have all the pressure they can get from the benji now. The Sound of Animals Fighting had to bail out from that pressure, who knows about Linkin Park.